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. Prajwal Reddy 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. “I spoke to other Kannadigas who were in a similar situation as me – people not brought up in India and didn’t have early exposure to the language. I was surprised to notice that many of them were uninterest in learning Kannada as ‘it was not required’, while those interested didn’t know where to start. That’s when I got the idea of combining my interests in programming and languages to develop an app that teaches Kannada to non-Kannada speakers,” said Reddy. He started working on the app in September 2022 and took over a year to perfect the work. Currently a class 12 student at Greenwood High School, Reddy plans to expand the app to other languages which will help individuals learn Kannada through Hindi, Telugu and Tamil. Including an interactive space for quizzes and language games, he intends to make learning fun for individuals. So far, the app has 1,600 downloads and Reddy aims to collaborate with schools to integrate it into the curriculum for primary school children to learn Kannada.
