Canara Coast · Western Coastal Strip
This is a seam, not a block. Kannada is the language of the region and of its administration, but the coast holds a Konkani-speaking population that arrived by sea and by migration from the north, the ghat uplands hold an archaic Kannada spoken almost exclusively by one cultivating community, and Bhatkal at the southern end holds a language spoken almost nowhere else. Almost nobody here is monolingual, and the working assumption in a market town is that the person across the counter speaks a different first language.
Speech varieties
A conservative variety retaining verb and pronoun forms that standard Kannada has lost, spoken by the Brahmin community that cultivates areca and pepper above the ghat. It has its own literature, its own broadcast presence and a strong sense of itself as older rather than deviant.
Speakers: The Havyaka community across the areca uplands, and into Shivamogga and Dakshina Kannada
The Kumta, Honnavar and Bhatkal register, shading southward towards Kundapura Kannada and the Tulu country. It carries a substantial Konkani and Marathi loan vocabulary, especially for fish, boats and trade.
The variety of the Halakki Vokkaliga community of the coastal plain, distinct enough in vocabulary and intonation to be identifiable immediately, and carrying an oral song repertoire that has been documented far better than the speech itself.
Spoken by Saraswat, Kharvi, Christian and other communities of the northern coast, continuous with the Konkani of Goa immediately north and written here in Devanagari or Kannada script depending on the community.
A Konkani-based language carrying a large Persian, Arabic and Urdu vocabulary, spoken by a merchant community whose settlement on this coast is traced to Arab trade contact. It is chiefly a spoken language, is not used in schooling, and is sustained by a community that has emigrated widely for work and continues to use it abroad.
Speakers: The Nawayath community of Bhatkal and its diaspora
The northern and eastern forest taluks shade into Marathi and into the Konkani of the Goan hinterland, and village names there read Marathi long before the administrative boundary suggests they should.
Indigenous terminology
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Adike ಅಡಿಕೆ | The areca nut, and by extension the crop, the price and the year. When people here ask how the year has gone, they are asking about adike. |
| Thota ತೋಟ | The garden — the terraced, irrigated, multi-storey plot in which areca, pepper vines climbing the areca, banana, cardamom and betel leaf all grow together. It is the region's unit of land, wealth and inheritance. |
| Koleroga ಕೊಳೆರೋಗ | The monsoon fruit rot of areca, controlled by spraying before the rains. A bad koleroga year is the local equivalent of a failed harvest anywhere else. |
| Kali | The dark decoction of earlier areca boilings in which fresh nuts are cooked, carried over from batch to batch. It sets the colour and grade of the finished supari. |
| Kagga | The salt-tolerant rice landrace grown in estuarine fields that flood with brackish water, and the name of the fields themselves. |
| Appemidi ಅಪ್ಪೆಮಿಡಿ | The tender fruit of wild riverbank mango trees, picked for brining. Individual trees are named, valued and willed, and their fruit is not interchangeable. |
| Thambuli ತಂಬುಳಿ | A cold buttermilk preparation with a raw ground leaf in it, eaten first in the meal and never heated. |
| Malenadu and karavali | Hill country and coast. The district contains both, plus the drier bailu seeme in the east, and people identify with one of the three before they identify with the district. |
| Jatre ಜಾತ್ರೆ | A temple festival with its chariot procession and fair. The Sirsi Marikamba jatre is the largest in Karnataka and is held only in alternate years. |
| Bhagavata | The singer who narrates and directs a Yakshagana performance from a fixed spot, controlling tempo, entries and the length of the night with his cymbals. |
| Prasanga | The sung text of a Yakshagana episode. The verse is fixed; the spoken dialogue between the verses is not. |
| Chende and maddale | The upright stick drum and the horizontal hand drum of Yakshagana. Badagutittu leans on the chende, and the difference in drumming is the fastest way to tell the northern style from the southern. |
Sayings
| Saying | Literally | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Arankusam ittodam nenevudenna manam banavasi desamam | Though pricked with a goad, my mind still remembers the Banavasi country | From the tenth-century poet Pampa, and the most quoted line in Kannada about a place. Banavasi is in this region, and the line is what every school child associates with it. |
| Haasige iddashtu kaalu chaachu | Stretch your legs only as far as your bedding reaches | Live within your means. In an areca economy where prices swing year to year, it is practical advice. |
| Kai kesaradare bayi mosaru | If the hand is muddied, the mouth gets curd | Work with your hands and you will eat well. Said of field and garden labour. |
| Uppu tinda mele niru kudiyabeku | Having eaten salt, you must drink water | Consequences follow what you have already chosen to do. |
| Adike thota iddavaru | Those who have an areca garden | Shorthand for a settled, landed household above the ghat. The phrase is used to place a family without naming a caste or an income. |
Speech varieties, indigenous terminology and sayings of Canara Coast. (17)