Kannada language: After signboards and banks, now iPhones too ?

Bengaluru: Chairman of the Kannada Development Authority (KDA),  Prof S G Siddaramaiah has written to chief executive officer of AppleINC, Tim Cook, to provide more support to the Kannada language by adding a Kannada dictionary, spell check, and grammar check to the Kannada keyboard layout. But interestingly, his letter is in English.

Listing various complaints, Prof Siddaramaiah told Mr Cook that there were many concerns about the usability of Kannada in the Apple INC systems.

 “We have local software engineers who have chipped in to analyse the problem thoroughly. The company needs to eliminate all the serious bugs in the system, default fonts and update it with open type features. There is a need to localise mac OS and iOS to Kannada to help Kannada users work on Apple computers more easily,” he explained.

Asked why he chose to write  the letter in English being head of an authority set up to make Kannada the administrative language of the state, the professor told the Deccan Chronicle, “I had expected a call from my media friends about this. I knew it was a mistake on my part. I should have written a letter in Kannada to AppleINC and sent the translated version to Tim Cook.  I usually write letters to the Prime Minister and Union ministers in English, but in future I will write to them in Kannada and send translated versions to them as well as they don't know our language.”