Evolution
Over the centuries some changes have been made to the Kannada script. These changes consist of:
- Modification of existing glyphs: In the early Kannada script, no orthographic distinction was made between the short mid ಎ, ಒ and long mid ಏ, ಓ. However, distinct signs were employed to denote the special consonants viz. the trill ಱ the retroflex lateral ಳ and the retroflex palatal ೞ found only in South Indian languages, by 5th century.
- Introduction of new characters: Kannada script includes characters like ಶ, ಷ, ಋ, ೠ, ఌ, ౡ, ಐ, ಔ, ಅಂ, ಅಃ, and mahāprāṇa characters like ಖ, ಘ, ಛ, ಝ, ಥ, ಧ, ಠ, ಢ, ಫ, ಭ. The introduction was done so that Sanskrit and also loanwords into the Kannada language from the donor language Sanskrit) could be written using the Kannada script.
These changes have facilitated the use of the Kannada script for writing many of the literary Indic languages, including Sanskrit.
Read more about this topic: Kannada Alphabet
Famous quotes containing the word evolution:
“Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species.”
—Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989)
“By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature—for instance in a biological survey of evolution—we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.”
—Owen Barfield (b. 1898)
“As a natural process, of the same character as the development of a tree from its seed, or of a fowl from its egg, evolution excludes creation and all other kinds of supernatural intervention.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)