Meaning of "Kannada" in the English dictionary

Kannada /ˈkɑːnədə/ or /ˈkænədə/, or Kanarese /kænəˈriːz/, is a language spoken in India predominantly in the state of Karnataka. Kannada, whose native speakers are called Kannadigas ಕನ್ನಡತಿ and number roughly 40 million, is one of the 40 most spoken languages in the world. It is one of the scheduled languages of India and the official and administrative language of the state of Karnataka. The Kannada language is written using the Kannada script, which evolved from the 5th-century Kadamba script. Kannada is attested epigraphically for about one and a half millennia, and literary Old Kannada flourished in the 6th-century Ganga dynasty and during the 9th-century Rashtrakuta Dynasty. Kannada has an unbroken literary history of over a thousand years. Based on the recommendations of the Committee of Linguistic Experts, appointed by the Ministry of Culture, the Government of India designated Kannada a classical language of India. In July 2011, a centre for the study of classical Kannada was established as part of the Central Institute of Indian Languages at Mysore to facilitate research related to the language.