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Prajwal Makes App For The Love Of Mother Tongue.
Upon his return from the US, his parents took him on road trips. When he visited many cultural and historical sites such as Belur, Halebidu, and Hampi, he felt the need to understand Kannada culture and literature better. This is what led Prajwal Reddy, a student of grade XII, Greenwood High School, Bengaluru, to create an app that makes Kannada easy for beginners.
Bengaluru student launches ‘KannadaDisco’ app to help learn Kannada. A 17-year-old boy has developed a mobile application named ‘KannadaDisco’ to help people learn Kannada easily through bite-sized lessons daily.
Prajwal Reddy from Greenwood High creates Kannada Learning App. Prajwal Reddy, a 12th-grade student at Greenwood High International School, has created the KannadaDisco mobile app for non-Kannada speakers to learn Kannada and its culture. The app is available on Android and iOS.
Bengaluru is a melting pot of different cultures. People from across India and the world, who do not belong to the city, call the IT hub their home. However, not many speak Kannada fluently, which tends to hamper communication at times, particularly in local markers and public transport. In a bid to bridge this language gap, Bengalurean Prajwal Reddy has come up with an application, KannadaDisco.
“During research, I found out that Kannada literature has received the second highest number of Jnanpith Awards and I was awed by it. I spoke to people who did not know the language and noticed that many of them who were interested in learning did not know where to start. That is when the idea struck me to develop an app that facilitates easy language learning for everyone,” he tells us.
Seventeen-year-old Prajwal Reddy has developed a mobile application to help non-Kannada speakers easily learn and converse in Kannada through daily bite-sized lessons. The KannadaDisco app is available on both Android and iOS App stores free of cost.
The content of the course is easy to understand and can be accessed from anywhere and anytime without an internet connection. Individuals can also schedule their daily reminders to not miss their lessons.
The app has different sections such as reading and pronunciation, ‘Word of the day’, vocabulary, grammar, and conversation phrase book which includes phrases one can use in the market, restaurants and government offices. The phrases are simple sentences in the Kannada language with their English translation to help the user interact, making it street-friendly.
Moving from the US to Bengaluru at the age of 10, Reddy learned Kannada all by himself. He learnt the language over a period of 6-8 months by studying expansive modules.
In keeping with the vibrant intellectual and creative traditions of Greenwood High International School, 12th grade student Prajwal Reddy has developed a mobile application, known as KannadaDisco, for non-Kannada speakers to learn Kannada and its culture. The app is available on both Android and iOS App stores.
During his research, he also got to know that Kannada literature had received the second highest number of Jnanpith awards and was amazed by this recognition, hence began his interest in Kannada. Being a lover of languages, he self-learned Kannada employing fundamentals of linguistic theory (for language acquisition) and through completing expansive modules over a period of 6-8 months.
“In my journey of learning Kannada, I spoke to other Kannadigas who were in a similar position as me – people not brought up in India who didn’t have early exposure to the language. I was surprised to notice that many of them expressed minimal interest in learning the language because it was not required, while the interested others didn’t know where to start. That’s when the moment of inspiration struck and I got the idea of combining my interests in programming and languages to develop an application that teaches Kannada to non-Kannada speakers and thus integrate better into their adoptive homes in Karnataka,” says Prajwal.
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