Old Mysore · Deccan Inland Plateau
The Kannada of this region is the register that standardisation settled on, which has an odd consequence — it is the least marked speech in the language and therefore the hardest to describe, and speakers here tend to think of themselves as having no accent. The plateau also holds three languages that are not Kannada at all: Sholaga and the Kuruba tongues in the southern forest, and a Dakhni Urdu that has been a city language in Mysuru and Bengaluru for four centuries.
Speech varieties
The register of broadcasting and of schoolbooks, with the fewest regional markers of any spoken Kannada. Its distinctive feature at village level is a set of agrarian and irrigation vocabulary that a city speaker will not know.
Heavily code-mixed with English and, in the old pete, with Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. Its verb morphology is simplified in ways that older speakers notice and complain about, and it is the variety most non-native residents actually learn.
A separate language, not a dialect of Kannada, spoken by a forest-dwelling community whose settlements lie inside protected areas. Its vocabulary for plants, honey and forest seasons has no Kannada equivalent.
Speakers: Tens of thousands, largely in the Biligirirangan and Male Mahadeshwara hills
Two related tongues of the Nagarahole and Bandipur forests — jenu means honey, and the name records the occupation. Both are under heavy pressure from Kannada schooling.
The city Urdu of the old quarters, carrying Kannada word order and vocabulary in a way that surprises speakers from the north. It is a household language in Mysuru's Mandi Mohalla and in parts of the Bengaluru pete.
In Kolar, Chikkaballapur and the eastern taluks of Bengaluru Rural, Telugu is a household language of long standing, and Tamil is the language of communities settled in Bengaluru since the eighteenth century. Bilingualism here is old and unremarkable.
Indigenous terminology
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Kere ಕೆರೆ | An irrigation tank — an earthen bund thrown across a valley with a stone weir and a sluice. The bund is the road, the bed is the summer grazing, and the name survives in dozens of city wards where the tank itself does not. |
| Kalyani or Pushkarani ಕಲ್ಯಾಣಿ | A stepped stone tank attached to a temple, cut down to the water table so it never runs dry — an architectural object and a well at the same time. |
| Raja kaluve ರಾಜ ಕಾಲುವೆ | The main channel connecting one tank's overflow to the next. In Bengaluru the term now appears mostly in flood reports, because the channels were built over. |
| Kaval ಕಾವಲ್ | A reserved grazing ground. The Amrit Mahal Kavals were grasslands set aside by the state for its own cattle breed, and several survive as some of the last unploughed grassland on the plateau. |
| Hagevu ಹಗೇವು | A sealed underground grain pit. Ragi stored in one keeps for years, which is why it was the crop a household planted against a bad year rather than for the market. |
| Mudde ಮುದ್ದೆ | The ball of cooked millet, and by extension the meal itself. Mudde oota is a specific promise about what is on the plate. |
| Saaru and huli ಸಾರು / ಹುಳಿ | The thin broth and the thick tamarind stew — the same pot of cooked dal split two ways, and the pair that structures every meal. |
| Jaatre ಜಾತ್ರೆ | The annual village temple festival, with a cattle fair, a procession and a night of theatre attached. Ooru habba is the same thing described from inside the village. |
| Ambari ಅಂಬಾರಿ | The howdah carried on the elephant in the Dasara procession. Jamboo Savari, the name of the procession itself, simply means the elephant ride. |
| Gombe habba ಗೊಂಬೆ ಹಬ್ಬ | The Dasara doll display — tiered steps of figures set up in the house for nine days, arranged in an order that is itself an argument about the household's taste and lineage. |
| Darshini ದರ್ಶಿನಿ | A stand-up self-service eating house — pay at the counter, take the token, eat standing at a ledge. The format dates from the early 1980s in Bengaluru and reorganised how an entire city eats breakfast. |
| Pete ಪೇಟೆ | A market quarter. Bengaluru's old town is a grid of them named for what was traded — Akkipete for rice, Balepete for bangles, Taragupete for grain brokers, Cottonpete for cotton. |
| Nati ನಾಟಿ | Country-bred, native, unimproved — of chicken, of rice, of a variety. Used as a compliment on a menu and as a mild insult about a person. |
Sayings
| Saying | Literally | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Haasige iddashtu kaalu chaachu | Stretch your legs as far as the bedding | Live within what you have. Quoted at anyone planning a wedding. |
| Kai kesaraadare bayi mosaru | If the hand gets muddy, the mouth gets curd | Work in the field brings food to the table — the standard answer to a complaint about hard work. |
| Hittalada gida maddalla | The plant in the backyard is not medicine | What is close at hand is undervalued. Said about local talent that had to leave to be recognised. |
| Aadu muttada soppilla | There is no leaf a goat will not touch | Said of a person who has tried everything and settled at nothing, and occasionally of one who will take any job going. |
| Ondu kannige benne, innondu kannige suNNa | Butter for one eye, quicklime for the other | Blatant partiality — the standard complaint about a parent, an employer or a government that treats two claimants differently. |
Speech varieties, indigenous terminology and sayings of Old Mysore. (18)