SPOKEN FORMS OF KANNADA:  

Karnataka or the land of Kannada is vast; spread over an area of 191,791 sq km it is the 8^th largest state in India in terms of geographical area. Kannada is the administrative language of Karnataka. The state shares it’s boundaries with Tamil, Marathi, Telugu, Konkani and Malayalam speaking areas. Before the unification of Karnataka Kannada speaking areas were scattered under the rule of Madras, Bombay and Hyderabad states. These scattered areas were under the influence of different administrative or major languages in the region such as Tamil, Urdu, Telugu, Marathi and English too. This unique situation has played a prominent part in bringing out great differences in the spoken forms of Kannada in different regions of the state. There is a marked difference among the spoken forms of Kannada from different regions, whereas the written form is uniform throughout the state.

There are at least 20 different and unique dialects in the spoken forms of Kannada. Based on major geographical regions spoken Kannada can be differentiated into three main forms as follow.

1. Mysore Kannada spoken in southern Karnataka, 
2. Dharwad/Hubli Kannada spoken in northern Karnataka and 
3. Mangalore/Karavali Kannada spoken in coastal Karnataka.