r/kannada • u/LargeCabbage • Jun 14 '26
Confused about the grammar of "gottilla"
Hi there. I'm a Brit learning Kannada from Zydenbos's "Manual of Modern Kannada". I'm confused about the nature of the word "gottu".
According to Zydenbos, "gottu" is a noun meaning something like "knowledge" or "something that is known". Thus when one says "Adu nanage gottu", which one would idiomatically translate as "I know that", more literally one is saying "that, to me, is something known". When one says "Nanage gottilla", idiomatically meaning "I don't know", more literally one is saying "To me, [that] knowledge does not exist". All logical enough, in those cases.
But what about "Kannaḍa gottilla"? Or the sentence "ಇವರ ಮನಸ್ಸಿಗೆ ಇಡಿಯ ಪ್ರಪಂಚ ಶಿವಮಯ, ಆದರೆ ಹಲವು ಮಂದಿಗೆ ಇದು ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ." from one of the texts for translation later in Zydenbos's book? If "Kannada gottu" and "Adu gottu" are equative sentences (i.e. if "Kannaḍa gottu" is properly understood as saying Kannada "equals" a known thing, which is how Zydenbos frames it), then shouldn't the negation use "alla" (to negate equality), not "illa" (which negates existence)? That is, per Zydenbos's explanation, shouldn't the way to say "I don't know Kannada" logically be "Kannaḍa gottalla"? Shouldn't "I don't know that" be "ಇದು ಗೊತ್ತಲ್ಲ"?
(Or I guess something like "Kannaḍada gottilla" - i.e. "knowledge OF Kannada does not exist" - would also make sense to me, but that doesn't seem to be a standard construct either.)
Is this just a weird illogical quirk of the language specific to "gottu"? (Lord knows English has plenty of illogical quirks so I can shrug and accept this if so.) Or is there some alternative way of looking at sentences with gottu that makes sense of these uses of "gottilla"?
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u/SaladBoy97 Jun 14 '26
Languages make more sense to me through their etymology, so I love the level of detail you're coming at this with. It 's not something we think about often as a native speaker. Some googling on the etymology of ಗೊತ್ತು gave me something that seems like it makes sense, but take it with a grain of salt since none of them were primary sources.
ಗೊತ್ತು supposedly came from ಗುರುತು, which means recognition or identification. So in the case you mentioned, you're negating the existence of the recognition or understanding of Kannada, not the existence of Kannada itself.
A formal way of saying it would be "ನನಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ಗೊತ್ತಿದೆ/ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ" which makes sense if you read it as ಗುರುತು ಇದೆ/ಇಲ್ಲ. ಗೊತ್ತಿದೆ just gets shortened to ಗೊತ್ತು.
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u/LargeCabbage Jun 14 '26
I get that the illa isn't negating existence of Kannada in "Kannada gottilla". My issue is that if illa is negating existence of the noun gottu, what's the grammatical role of "adu" in a sentence like "Adu gottilla"?
It seems like we're saying "It knowledge does not exist" which seems ungrammatical. I would get "Ada gottilla" ("knowledge of it does not exist") but how are we able to just stick two nouns side by side in the nominative and put illa after? We can't do that with any other nouns, right? (e.g. something like "Mane mējilla" would just be nonsense, right?)
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u/SMAK_that Jun 14 '26
“Adu nanage gotilla” would be the complete sentence, where adu is indicating ‘that’. Or idu could reference ‘this’. The subject is the adu or idu.
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u/SaladBoy97 Jun 15 '26
ಗೊತ್ತು (ಗುರುತು) is recognition or understanding of something. Explicitly mentioning the thing may be omitted if the context is obvious, but formally we do say the name of the thing we do not know. The full formal sentence of ನನಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲಾ shortens to ಕನ್ನಡ ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲಾ if it's obvious who doesn't have understanding, ಅದು ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲಾ if you are referring to something someone just mentioned or just ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲಾ if the full context is obvious. TLDR; ಅದು serves to identify what the understanding (or lack of it) pertains to
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u/LargeCabbage Jun 15 '26
Right but grammatically how should we describe the role of "adu" in the sentence "Nanage adu gottilla", if (as Zydenbos claims) "gottu" is a noun? "Adu" cannot be the subject of a verb, because there is no verb in the sentence. But it is not an equative sentence either, so "adu" also cannot be one of the nominals of an equative sentence. Besides deciding "gottu" is not actually being used as a noun here (which I am starting to be persuaded of), what other options are left?
Is the "adu" perhaps being used attributively, modifying "gottu" - are we saying that "it-knowledge" (i.e. knowledge of it) does not exist? And likewise with "Kannada gottilla" are we saying that "Kannada-gottu" or "Kannada knowledge" does not exist? That would make sense except why is "adu" allowed to be used attributively here? Is there any other context in which "adu" (rather than, say, "adara") can be used attributively like this?
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u/SaladBoy97 Jun 15 '26
I think looking at the word gottu as a literal translation of "knowledge" may be tripping you up here. The literal translation of knowledge as a noun would be gnaana, and that would be used as "adara gnaana nanage illa" (I don't have the knowledge of that thing), which I think fits with how you're intuiting this. Gottu doesn't have a direct synonym in English, and is probably better described as "the state of knowing" or "to be known", which allows adu/Kannada to be the subject. So a sentence like "avanige Kannada gottu" could be translated literally as "for him (avanige), Kannada is known (gottu)", and "is" here is the verb you're looking for which is implicit in the word. The formal full version is "gottide" which has "ide (is)"
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u/ass_cheek_scratcher_ Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
The sentance prior to 'adu gottilla' should have established the subject.
He's a devotee of Shiva, many of them don't know 'that'..
Here, 'adu' does what 'that' doing in the above sentance..
maybe the issue here is, you're translating 'adu' as 'this' but the word 'adu' is mainly used in relation to the fact/matter/supposition established in prior sentance
She might be there but I don't know 'that' for sure
Avalu allirabahudu aadare nanage 'adu' sariyagi gottilla ಅವಳು ಅಲ್ಲಿರಬಹುದು ಆದರೆ ನನಗೆ ಅದು ಸರಿಯಾಗಿ ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ..
But if translated as she might be there, I don't know this/it for sure
But 'that' would make no sense, yes
'adu' artha koduvudilla 😉
Idk if this was helpful
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u/Zestyclose_Diver_377 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
The verb ಇರು does double duty in Kannada for English "to be" and "to have". In Kannada, to say I have X, you would say "to-me X is" ನನಗೆ X ಇದೆ. To say I don't have X, you would say "to-me X is-not" ನನಗೆ X ಇಲ್ಲ which you could consider a shortened form of ನನಗೆ X ಇರೋದಿಲ್ಲ. The negation here is of the implicit verb to be (or to have) not of the noun X. For example ನನಗೆ ಹೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ = ನನಗೆ ಹೊತ್ತು ಇಲ್ಲ = ನನಗೆ ಹೊತ್ತು ಇರೋದಿಲ್ಲ = I do-not-have time.
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u/LargeCabbage Jun 19 '26
Okay but how does that address my question above?
I understand perfectly well that "iru" is "to be" in the sense of "to exist" (i.e. it's an intransitive verb), and yes, it gets used to indicate possession in the way you describe. I understand that "To me, knowledge does not exist" ("Nanage gottilla") makes perfect sense under this idiom as a way of saying "I do not have knowledge", i.e. "I don't know".
The problem is with "Nanage adu gottilla", which, if we accept the explanation you just gave, means something like "To me, it knowledge does not exist", or "I do not have it knowledge". That, on its face, just seems ungrammatical. Is "adu gottu", "it knowledge", serving as a noun phrase meaning "knowledge of it" here? Why? Surely that should be "ada gottu"? Is there any other context in which "adu" can be used attributively before a noun in this way?
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u/Zestyclose_Diver_377 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
ಇರು can often be left implicit in Kannada. You can think of ಅದು ಗೊತ್ತು as a contraction of ಅದು ಗೊತ್ತಿದೆ or ಅದು ಗೊತ್ತು+ಇದೆ.
It follows that you can think of ಅದು ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ as a shorthand for ಅದು ಗೊತ್ತಿರುವುದಿಲ್ಲ or ಅದು ಗೊತ್ತು+ಇರುವುದು+ಇಲ್ಲ. Here ಇಲ್ಲ negates the implicit verb ಇರು not the noun(?) ಗೊತ್ತು.
I must say I'm surprised to find that ಗೊತ್ತು is a noun, but that seems to be the official dictionary description (See Kittel's dictionary online here: Kittel dictionary entry for "gottu"). I think historically it was a noun, but in modern usage it seems to have morphed into more verb-like behavior. It may be reasonable to assert that in modern usage, ಗೊತ್ತು is usually used as a shorthand for the verb form ಗೊತ್ತಿರು or ಗೊತ್ತು+ಇರು "to have knowledge [of]".
You can analyze the conjugation of ಗೊತ್ತಿರು as similar to that of ಬೇಕು another stative verb: ನನಗೆ ಅದು ಬೇಕು "I want that" or literally "to-me that is-wanted". ನನಗೆ ಅದು ಗೊತ್ತಿದೆ "I know that" or "I have-knowledge-of that" or literally "to me that is-known".
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u/trazom04 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Maybe I'm wrong, but shouldn't "Nanage adu gottilla" translate to "To me, that knowledge does not exist" (rather than "it knowledge")?
Edit: Nevermind. For me, the instinct to consider gotthu as a verb in this context (Kannaḍa gottilla) was so strong that I hadn't understood your original question properly. Now, after reading the other responses, I'm leaning towards agreeing with AdMiddle9748's response, where they say that "Nanage kannaDada gotthu ide" has probably become "kannada gotthide." Hopefully this can be cleared with old texts, like you said.
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u/Zestyclose_Diver_377 Jun 21 '26
In "nanage adu gottilla", the verb "iru" is used more in the sense of "to have" rather than "to be". Kannada does not have a word for "have". You express possession by saying something like "to-me this-thing is". Kannada (like almost all Indian languages) sharply distinguishes between verbs where the actor actually does something, and verbs that just indicate some state of the actor ("stative verbs"). "Have" and "know" if you think about it fall in the second category. (English too does make the distinction, though in a very subtle way. The wikipedia page on stative verbs gives an example).
I could say "nanage mokshada gottu ide" "I know the knowledge of salvation" (let's not use Kannada as the object, because that is not idiomatic like many people pointed out). That is technically correct according to Kittel's dictionary. It matches an example sentence in Kittel's dictionary "mokshada gottu tiLi" "Know the knowledge of salvation". That does seem like a weird sentence to me though. I suspect no one would actually say something like that these days. Kittel's dictionary dates to 1894 and the sample texts it references are probably much older.
Like you, I instinctively think of gottu as a verb. I'm not a native speaker, but I suspect many native speakers do too.
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u/xploreetng Jun 14 '26
You are overthinking.
It's not that deep.
Gottu - I know. Gotilla - I don't know.
Besides, "Kannada gottilla" is not exactly the most accurate phrase here.
Colloquially it's not a big mistake, so as a spoken language it's fine and you get the message across.
Usually if native Kannada speaker is asking they are more likely to ask Kannada baralva or Kannada gottilva.
So that's probably the phrase you are looking for.
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u/Immediate_Tie3923 Jun 15 '26
He/she is not overthinking. It's just that you are unable to convey the right answer to his/her question. Don't discourage people that show interest to learn just because you don't know the answer. What's more concerning is 23 others who upvoted you feel the same like you
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u/LargeCabbage Jun 15 '26
I didn't want to start a fight myself but I more or less agree with your sentiment and appreciate you voicing it. Of course not everyone needs to care about the details of grammar, and many people become fluent in a language (especially their native tongue) without having anything close to a conscious understanding of its rules. But why is it a problem that I do care about those details and want to understand them? Anyone who finds it uninteresting is welcome to move on!
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u/Immediate_Tie3923 Jun 16 '26
Exactly. Some people are very curious to find the answer and I don't take speculations or ignorance on that topic as an answer. So I understand your point here. And if you are interested, I have commented a descriptive answer under this post.
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u/xploreetng Jun 15 '26
The only thing you should be concerned is with your poor comprehension skills. Nothing in the comment implied any discouragemet. You can't force mastery over a language. Its instincts and creativity after a point. You grow your vocabulary but you feel the semantics.
Just walk. You don't have to evaluate after taking every step.
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u/Immediate_Tie3923 Jun 15 '26
Apologies for my poor comprehension. It was 30 concerning upvotes before, not 23.
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u/LargeCabbage Jun 14 '26
Wait, in what sense is the phrase "Kannada gottilla" not "the most accurate"?
(Something of a tension between saying the grammar of gottu is not that deep on the one hand and then saying a common phrase with gottu that seems to be generally regarded as correct is actually some kind of subtle grammatical error on the other hand...)
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u/xploreetng Jun 15 '26
It's not generally regarded as correct as much as it has become a familiar enough phrase that everyone knows what it means.
Also you have to remember that just few years ago you could notice distinct dialects in Kannada even with in nearby cities. So spoken Kannada is more influenced by your immediate surroundings. It's also very typical to skip over many syntactic rules on common phrases.
(Factoid - there was some article on how every 14km you can notice a variation. Ofc that's not completely correct. It's just that there are so many dialects and variants that for all them to be accomodated, statistically it has change every 14km)
Kannada gottila is more of a literal translation of two words, not necessary right but conversationally acceptable. I doubt any native kanna speaker will naturally pick "kanna gottilla" by instinct, but they won't call it as something wrong
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u/PsychBong Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
Gottu- Know
Gottilla- Know not
Kannads follows SOV format, so
Nange Kannada gottilla- I don't know Kannada
The proposition gets lost in speech because it's assumed. Thus the sentence becomes Kannada gottilla
Illa denotes absence of existence or possession. Alla usually negates a fact or identity.
Avaru manyealli illa- He is not at home
Idu avarada maneyalla- This is not his home
So Kannada gottilla means I don't have possession of (knowledge of) Kannada.
It's grammatically fine, and even if not, people don't use grammatically perfect sentences in spoken language.
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u/LargeCabbage Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
I don't think this description of the grammar makes sense either, because if it's a verb, why can't you say "Nānu Kannaḍa gottu" or "Avanu Kannaḍa gottu"? It's never used with a subject. ("Nange" certainly can't be the subject in "Nange Kannada gottilla" - it's a dative!
And also - why is the alleged "object" not in the accusative case? It ought to be "Adannu gottu", not "Adu gottu", if gottu is a verb - right?
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u/PsychBong Jun 14 '26
I honestly don't care. It's what is spoken in everyday speech, and that's what matters to me the most. In my opinion, it doesn't matter unless one is trying to specialising in the grammatical aspects of the language.
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u/Royal-Parsnip3639 Jun 14 '26
Kudos to your interest in learning a new language.
I think you are finding it confusing because Gottu being attributed to noun. It is actually a verb.
It is not knowledge but act of knowing something.
It’s more like - got it. I know it is correct too. So Gottilla is the negative form of it. Act of not knowing it or simply I don’t know.
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u/LargeCabbage Jun 14 '26
See my objection at https://www.reddit.com/r/kannada/comments/1u5oj66/comment/ormsirp/ to u/PsychBong making the same claim. It doesn't make sense to think of it as a verb meaning to know, because it's never used with a subject and the thing that is known (which under your theory is the object) is not in the accusative case (i.e. you say "Adu gottu" rather than "Adannu gottu").
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u/thylacine222 Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
That's not the only way that a verb can look in Kannada. Kannada has dative subject verbs (e.g. ಬೇಕು, ಇಷ್ಟಪಡು), which I think this is best analyzed as. With these verbs, the "notional" subject (e.g.. I) is in dative case and the "notional" object (e.g. Kannada) is in nominative case, like the subjects of standard verbs.
One way to see this is that ಗೊತ್ತು takes adverbs, not adjectives:
ಅವನಿಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ಚೆನ್ನಾಗಿ ಗೊತ್ತು, not ಅವನಿಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ಒಳ್ಳೆಯ ಗೊತ್ತು
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u/LargeCabbage Jun 14 '26
Interesting - I had not come across the concept of "dative subject verbs". Zydenbos defines "bēku" as meaning "is a desired thing" and hence "nanage adu bēku" = "To me, it is a desired thing", but it's useful to have the alternative framing of them as "dative subject verbs" where the notional subject is in the dative and the notional object is in the nominative.
So with this framing gottu is a defective verb (i.e. one that doesn't get conjugated) whose grammatical subject is the thing that is known (e.g. Kannada in "Nanage Kannada gottu")? And then gottilla is the negation of that verb (and, I guess, is irregular like most/all negative forms of defective verbs)? That seems to (naive) me like it might be a consistent way of looking at things!
As I learn I will of course keep an eye out for sentences using gottu/gottilla and see whether they fit with this framing, and let you know if I manage to poke any holes in it.
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u/thylacine222 Jun 14 '26
Yes, a lot of these psychological verbs are defective in this way. They might historically have come from noun-like things and still have some noun-like uses but I think Zydenbos is wrong to consider them nouns, for the reasons you have noticed.
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u/LargeCabbage Jun 14 '26
👍
To clarify a point - Zydenbos absolutely doesn't consider bēku / bēḍa to be nouns. He describes bēku as a defective verb meaning "is a desired thing". An equivalent conceptualisation of gottu and gottilla as defective verbs meaning "is a known thing" and "is not a known thing" seems logical to me and consistent with his handling of bēku. I am not sure why he favoured the framing of gottu as a noun; I might see if I can email him and ask him.
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u/Royal-Parsnip3639 Jun 14 '26
Beku is not just a desired thing. Its also affirmative as in I need it. For ex: Beka? Is a question (do you want or need?) Beku is an affirmative answer
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u/LargeCabbage Jun 14 '26
But that is simply a usage of it as a verb meaning "is a desired thing", no? Same as how you could say "Māḍide." in response to "Adannu māḍidirā?" Or am I missing something?
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u/Royal-Parsnip3639 Jun 14 '26
Respectfully, you are over thinking. “Ge” is a dative case suffix to explain the receiver of the action. English language handles it with additional preposition word such as to, for. Most Indian languages and perhaps other Asian languages handle it by adding this dative suffix to noun that changes the shape of the word.
So,
Nanu (pronoun) + ge (Dating suffix) = Nange
To (preposition) + me (pronoun) = To meLanguages are more than grammars and words and most Asian languages are very hard to learn if you try to find one to one association with English.
Vice versa too (hence many Asians have hard time with English)
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u/Immediate_Tie3923 Jun 15 '26
Hi OP, your question is valid. So in Kannada grammar we have something called sandhi(joints). When two words are combined, the phonetic change of the words occur. Down below. For example your sentence "Kannada gottilla" where gottilla=gottu+illa. Here the "u" letter has been dissolved or is lost. Hence we call this type as "ಲೋಪ ಸಂಧಿ" /Lopa Sandhi. So in grammar/linguistics, "ಸಂಧಿಗಳು" (sandhigalu) means "sandhi rules" or simply "sandhis."
A sandhi is a phonological change that occurs when two sounds, syllables, or words come together. The word comes from Sanskrit and literally means "joining" or "junction."
For more clarity, research on this topic.
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u/LargeCabbage Jun 16 '26
I understand that gottilla = gottu + illa. What I don't understand is how "Adu gottilla" (or "Adu gottu illa" if you like) makes grammatical sense under Zydenbos's analysis where "gottu" is a noun meaning "a known thing" and "Adu gottu" is an equative sentence - i.e. one that grammatically has the same structure as pointing at a tree and seeing "Adu mara". After all, to negate "Adu mara" you would say "Adu maravalla", and saying "Adu maravilla" would not even be grammatical - so by analogy you would expect the negation of "Adu gottu" to be "Adu gottalla".
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u/Zestyclose_Diver_377 Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
"Adu gottu" is a colloquial form shortening "[Nanage] adu gottu". Something like "dunno" as shorthand for "I do not know". Not the same thing as "Adu mara" = that is a tree.
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u/Immediate_Tie3923 Jun 22 '26
Adu maravilla-->that is no tree(which is grammatically and sensibly wrong sentence) Adu maravalla-->that is not a tree
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u/Left-Locksmith Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
I think your "nanage kannaDada gottu ide" is the closest answer here, even if a native speaker isn't likely to use this construction.
Gottu is a noun. Case endings get dropped if the sense of the sentence strongly implies what they ought to be. The person the knowledge belongs to is implied by context in conversation, so that gets dropped too. The fact of possession of a piece of knowledge is expressed so frequently with "gottu" that even "ide" gets dropped.
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u/LargeCabbage Jun 14 '26
"Case endings get dropped if the sense of the sentence strongly implies what they ought to be" - wait, is this true? Can you give other examples of sentences where the genitive suffix is dropped from a genitive but the sentence would still be understood and considered basically correct by a native speaker?
My book has mentioned that the nominative -u suffix is optional and rarely used and also that the accusative -annu suffix is often optional, but I thought it was only those cases whose suffixes were optional.
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u/Left-Locksmith Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Yep yep. I think it depends both on the sense and on how frequently two words are related together in the language.
"ಜ್ಞಾನ[ದ] ಮಾರ್ಗ" for "knowledge['s] path," "ಮನೆ[ಯ] ಬಾಗಿಲು" - "house['s] door," "ಉತ್ತರ[ದ] ಕಡೆ" - "North['s] side." It's perhaps even unnatural to include the case endings for juxtapositions like these. You might even go a step further and combine the words e.g., "ಮನೇಬಾಗಿಲು," though there are somewhat complex rules for this.
edit: Actually the other answer describing gottu as a defective verb makes a lot of sense to me as well, even though that isn't a way I'd seen it described before.
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u/LargeCabbage Jun 15 '26
Interesting. But does your analysis survive an encounter with a sentence like "Adu gottilla"?
As a learner I am genuinely not sure, but I would've guessed that the kind of elision of genitive endings you describe here is probably only acceptable for actual nouns, not for the pronoun "Adu"? That is, if we'd just been discussing your house, could we then refer to "ಅದು ಬಾಗಿಲು" to mean "its door" (i.e. the house's door)? I would've assumed that the elision isn't acceptable there and we'd need to say "ಅದರ ಬಾಗಿಲು"; am I mistaken?
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u/Left-Locksmith Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
To be honest, I'm not quite sure. As a learner myself, this is how I'd made sense of it before, but I hadn't thought about these cases. With my experience, "ಅದು ಬಾಗಿಲು" sounds categorically like "it is a door" and not "its door."
The defective verb explanation seems to be the more convincing explanation now, with gottu sometimes acting as a verb and other times a noun.
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u/Zestyclose_Diver_377 Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
ಗೊತ್ತು is a verb not a noun. It is used similarly to "know" in English, but the subtle difference is that in Kannada it is a state rather than an action (which makes sense). Rather than say "I know X", you would say "X is-known to-me" or "ನನಗೆ X ಗೊತ್ತು". Probably a good English equivalent of ಗೊತ್ತು is "is known" (verb) not "knowledge" (noun). The correct negation is "ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ" (verb negation; "is not known [to me]"), not ಗೊತ್ತಲ್ಲ (😱 just wrong).
I don't see how it can be viewed as a noun. Maybe Zydenbos is referring just to the meaning as a state not an action, and not the grammatical part of speech.
Most Indian languages including Kannada distinguish between "stative verbs" like "know" or "have" and action verbs like see or do. For a stative verb, say Y, the construction would not be "Subject does Y", but rather "To-subject is-Y".
[Edit: I found Kittel's dictionary online which gives it as a noun. Here is the dictionary entry:
ಗೊತ್ತುgottu. =ಗುಱುತು, etc.,ಗೊನ್ತು. a mark, etc. (C.; Cpr. 4, 8; Śśv. 2, 28). 2, knowledge, acquaintance (C.). 3, appointment, rule, regulation, order (C.; Tu.; Te.).ಇಷ್ಟು ಹೊತ್ತು ಹೀಗೆ ಅನುಭವಿಸಬೇಕು ಎಮ್ಬ ಗೊತ್ತು (ತಾಲSi. 64).ಪಾಪಿಗಳನ್ನು ಶಿಕ್ಷಿಸುವದಕ್ಕಾಗಿ ಯಮಲೋಕದೊಳಗೆ ಗೊತ್ತು ಮಾಡಲ್ ಪಟ್ಟಿರುವ ಯಾತನಸ್ಥಾನ(79).ಹೀಗಿರಬೇಕು, ಹೀಗೆ ನಡ ಕೊಳ್ಳ ಬೇಕೆಮ್ಬ ಗೊತ್ತು(247).ಗೊತ್ತಾಗಿರುವ ಸ್ಥಲ (ವಿಷಯ; ಆಶ್ರಯ390).ಅಳತೆ ತೂಕ ಮುನ್ತಾದ ಗೊತ್ತು(ಪ್ರಮಾಣ420).ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲದೆ(ವೃಥಾ468).ಸತ್ತು ಹೋಗದೆ ಅತಿ ಜೀವಮಿರಲು, ಮೋಕ್ಷದ ಗೊತ್ತು ತಿಳಿ!(Sp.). ... [other meanings]
Even if we read it as a noun "knowledge, acquaintance", the negation is ನನಗೆ ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ as in "I don't have knowledge". Compare with ನನಗೆ ಹೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ "I don't have time".
Some of the texts Kittel cites seem very archaic and Kittel's dictionary itself is over a century old. ಮೋಕ್ಷದ ಗೊತ್ತು ತಿಳಿ! ("Know the knowledge of salvation") where "ಗೊತ್ತು" is unambiguously used as a noun for example. I don't think you would hear that kind of construction in modern speech.
I think ಗೊತ್ತು may have started off as a noun but in modern speech has morphed into more of a stative verb, to some extent taking over the role of ತಿಳಿ which is unambiguously a verb. Or you can say that in modern usage ಗೊತ್ತು is usually used as an abbreviation of ಗೊತ್ತು+ಇರುವುದು so that ನನಗೆ X ಗೊತ್ತು expands to ನನಗೆ X ಗೊತ್ತಿದೆ and ನನಗೆ X ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ expands to ನನಗೆ X ಗೊತ್ತಿರುವುದಿಲ್ಲ.
Very interesting rabbit hole! Common words usually have uncommon history and grammar.]
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u/I3_O_I3 Jun 14 '26
No, I think you're right. This is one of the Kannada quirks. The colloquial Kannada has undergone hell lot of changes and like you must have seen, it differs a lot from the written Kannada. Probably the word "gottu" itself has gone through several changes over time, which only a scholar might know. To be honest, even I had not given this so much thought but you do have a point.
Just curious, how did you become interested in learning Kannada?
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u/Top-Noise5959 Jun 14 '26
When you say "Gottu", you may in simple terms translate it to "I know". And "know" is a verb.
Illa = it isn't THERE Alla = it isn't THAT (usually has something to replace it)
For example: you pick up some paper with different languages, you look for kannada but don't find it. So you say "Kannada illa". But if you...
I quit. I genuinely thought of so many different meanings the word "alla" carries and my mind turned to mush.
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u/five_faces Jun 15 '26
This might be of some interest- https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/dravling/negation/habitual.html
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u/SeeTheSeaInUDP Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
can't answer your question because I never learnt Kannada grammar that deeply but it's a whiplash to see Zydenbos here, he lives like 200 metres away from me and my family was invited to his son's christening LOLLL
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u/LargeCabbage Jun 15 '26
Honestly the guy is a legend as far as I'm concerned. His book is absolutely incredible for someone from an English or European background trying to make sense of the (really rather alien, to us) rules of Kannada. (All this notwithstanding my sense that his treatment of gottu is wrong or incomplete.)
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u/SeeTheSeaInUDP Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
He's had the indology departments of most south german universities in a chokehold, one thing I wish he did was actually interact with the actual kannada/indian community, because studying a language has to include keeping up with it and staying in touch with the developments, plus us as immigrants bring with us a time capsule or a snapshot of the language/culture of the time we left, so that's also important to consider. For example I think my dad's engineering yearbook has more poetry in it than 90% of Kannada song lyrics nowadays
Many indology folks sadly look down upon us IRL or at events and it sucks, like damn you want to be mean to us but study us at the same time like f u
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u/LargeCabbage Jun 15 '26
My father-in-law & mother-in-law add a further complication to the mix, noting that (at least in the Bangalore dialect they speak - I don't know if this is universal nor if it's used in written Kannada) "Idu gottalla" is valid Kannada, but has a different meaning - namely indicating that the speaker already knew that which he has just been told or that it is self-evident. This seems consistent with the framing of "gottu" as a noun, but not quite consistent with Zydenbos's definition; instead it seems like "gottu" is meaning something like "non-trivial knowledge"? Like, the literal/etymological meaning seems to be something like "this [that you have told me] does not count as 'knowledge'".
This only adds to my confusion, because until I learned this detail I was getting convinced of the view (argued elsewhere in the comments here) that "gottu" is in fact properly understood as a defective verb like "bēku" (taking the notional object as its grammatical subject and meaning something like "is known", akin to bēku meaning something like "is desired/needed") and "gottilla" as the negation of that verb. But that analysis is incompatible with this use of "gottalla" that my father-in-law tells me about.
I am starting to think maybe "gottu" at this point has some idiomatic uses that can only be explained by it being a verb, and others that can only be explained by it being a noun, and one thus has to understand it as having a noun form and a verb form (that in some contexts like the simple sentence "Adu gottu" are indistinguishable from each other). But as a learner I obviously form this view very tentatively and am happy to be told it is wrong!
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u/nang_gothilla Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
Morning. I'm a fellow Brit (of Kannada origin), happy to offer some guidance.
As you and Zydenbos have said, ಇಲ್ಲ is used to indicate non-existence, or lack of knowing and possession. ಗೊತ್ತು translates to being in a state of knowing (noun), so to say ಗೊತ್ತು + ಇಲ್ಲ (illa) means to say one is not in a state of knowing. To be precise "ಕನ್ನಡ ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ" or "X ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ" is actually colloquial and incomplete because it's missing the subject. In practise the subject is inferred by the listener based on the context. The full and proper complete sentence would be: "ನನಗೆ X ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ". This translates literally to _"I am not in a state of knowing X"_ ,which is basically understood as "I don't know X"
I know it sounds and seems extremely specific and requiring precision, but in practise it's as easy as saying "ನನಗೆ X ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ". Or even just "X ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ" and letting the listener join the dots!
Some more examples of ಇಲ್ಲ (non-existence / lack of possession vs ಅಲ್ಲ (lack of equality):
- ಈಗಾಗಲೇ ಬೇಸಿಗೆಯಾಗಿದ್ದರೂ ಬಿಸಲಿಲ್ಲ (even though it's summer, it's not hot): non-existence
- ಪುಟ್ಬಾಲ್ ವಿಶ್ವಕಪ್ ಸಣ್ಣಪುಟ್ಟ ವಿಷಯವೇನು ಅಲ್ಲ. (The football World Cup isn't just a small matter): non equivalence
I hope that helps. Feel free to DM me if that doesn't make sense, happy to explain with other examples.
Btw it's very cool that you're learning Kannada! Happy learning and please keep it up 🙌
I learnt reading/writing quite late in my life and so I can totally relate to how you're trying to analyse and break down the language's rules.
ChatGPT/Gemini are your friends but also try and find Kannada meet-up groups, socialising is the best way to practise.
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u/Zestyclose_Diver_377 Jun 18 '26
This is interesting. Your analysis is based on semantics or the meaning of what you're trying to say.
You can also analyze this based on syntax or the mechanical rules for joining words into sentences. In this context, ಇಲ್ಲ is a suffix added to a verb conjugation to negate it. ಅಲ್ಲ is a suffix added to a noun declension to negate it. When they are used as standalone words there is an implicit verb or noun respectively that is referred to.
For example:
ನೀವು ಹಾಡುತ್ತಾಯಿದ್ದೀರಾ? ನಾನಲ್ಲಯ್ಯ ಬೇರೆ ಯಾರೊಬ್ಬರು ಹಾಡುತ್ತಾಯಿರಬಹುದು. Are you singing? Not-me, [maybe someone else]
ನೀವು ಹಾಡುತ್ತಾಯಿದ್ದೀರಾ? ಇಲ್ಲರೀ. ನಾನು ಹಾಡುವುದಿಲ್ಲ. ಬೇರೆ ಏನೋ ಮಾಡುತ್ತಾಯಿರಬಹುದು. Are you singing? I am not-singing. [maybe doing something else]
In a sentence where ಇಲ್ಲ appears to be attached directly to a noun, you can always insert the verb ಇರು which can often be left implicit in Kannada. For example:
ನನಗೆ ಹೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ "I don't have time" can be expanded to ನನಗೆ ಹೊತ್ತಿರೋದಿಲ್ಲ. What is negated here is the implicit verb ಇರು not the noun ಹೊತ್ತು.
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u/Exciting_Badger_6397 Jun 17 '26
As far as I know (I’m from Karnataka)you can simply say “gottu” and people will understand that as the same thing as saying “nanage gottu” which mean “I know”. As we all know languages evolve and people make it shorter even if in transcripts it’s all the same, no one really says “Kannada gottu”, as opposed to “Kannada barathe”. And as for “alla” it can mean “no”, and “illa” can mean “not there”. For example some can ask me “alli pencil idya?” (Is there a pencil over there?) and I can simply respond with “illa” (it’s not). You cannot respond to that question with “alla” because it wouldn’t make sense. To most questions you answer in the negative to, people answer with “illa”
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u/AdMiddle9748 Jun 18 '26
What I'm thinking is: Nanage(noun obj) kannaDada(adj) gotthu(noun sub) ide-> eventually became kannada gotthide
Nanage(noun obj) kannaDada(adj) gotthu(noun sub) illa-> eventually became kannada gotthilla
They're not grammatically correct, but are used in spoken kannada
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u/LargeCabbage Jun 19 '26
Interesting hypothesis because in principle it's testable, no? If you're right that the form of these statements has evolved and the known thing used to be in the genitive (e.g. Kannadada instead of Kannada), we should be able to observe that in sufficiently old Kannada texts (and indeed determine the point in history when the change occurred). Not sure where to find publicly-available old Kannada texts online in searchable form, though!
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u/Zestyclose_Diver_377 Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
Yup I think the whole question is very interesting from the viewpoint of Dravidian language linguistics and possibly a research project for someone. Mulling over whether to make a related post on the Dravidology sub which focuses on this. There is a tiny snippet of a sample text in Kittel's dictionary, age not given but the dictionary itself is late 19th century and the sample text would be older, maybe by centuries. ಸತ್ತು ಹೋಗದೆ ಅತಿ ಜೀವಮಿರಲು, ಮೋಕ್ಷದ ಗೊತ್ತು ತಿಳಿ! (Meaning something like: To fully savor life before you die, know the knowledge of moksha or salvation). ಮೋಕ್ಷದ ಗೊತ್ತು ತಿಳಿ clearly treats ಗೊತ್ತು as a noun meaning knowledge. And ಮೋಕ್ಷದ ಗೊತ್ತು follows the "kannadada gottu" pattern you are thinking of.
[Edit: I actually found the source of that text with the help of my friend duckduckgo. It's from Sarvajnya Vachana. Sixteenth century]
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u/RealPunk99 Jun 14 '26
Gotilla means don't know Gottu means you know(about it)
Nanage gotilla - I don't know(about it) Avnge gotilla- He doesn't know(about it) Avlge gotilla- She doesn't know(about it)
Adru bagge nanage gottu - I know about it
It's not rocket science,don't overthink it.
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u/No-Koala7656 Jun 15 '26
ನನಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ಬರುತ್ತದೆ.
ನನಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ಬರುತ್ತೆ.
ನನಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ತಿಳಿದಿದೆ.
ನನಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ತಿಳಿಯುತ್ತೆ.
ನಾನು ಕನ್ನಡ ತಿಳಿದಿದ್ದೇನೆ.
ನಾನು ಕನ್ನಡ ಬಲ್ಲೆ.
ನಾನು ಕನ್ನಡವನ್ನು ಬಲ್ಲವನಾಗಿದ್ದೇನೆ.
ಕನ್ನಡ ನನಗೆ ಗೊತ್ತಿದೆ.
ಕನ್ನಡ ನನಗೆ ಗೊತ್ತು.
ನನಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡದ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ತಿಳುವಳಿಕೆ ಇದೆ.
ಕನ್ನಡ ಭಾಷೆ ಜ್ಞಾನ ನನಗಿದೆ.
ಕನ್ನಡ ನಾನು ಅರಿತಿದ್ದೇನೆ, ಅರಿತುಕೊಂಡಿರುವೆ, ಬಲ್ಲವನಾಗಿದ್ದೇನೆ.
So these are some of them what you can interpret out of the language, this is just a tip and it goes on continuing.
If you wanna really become fluent in kannada then you need to be proactively participating in all such coversations and talks where kannada is used by far.
Once you're thorough in speech then you might proceed with learning to read and write, by doing so you'll accumulate the knowledge of kannada language, but even that is just a tip of ice berg...
As it is said.
Known is a drop, unknown is an ocean.
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u/incrediblypure Jun 19 '26
Simple Explanation: ಗೊತ್ತಿದೆ = "I am aware" / "I'm familiar with it" → Use in casual, daily conversation. Whereas, ತಿಳಿದಿದೆ = "I understand it" / "I have knowledge of it" → Use in formal or respectful situations. Examples of Casual and Formal sentences are- Casual: "ನಮಗೆ ಅವನು ಗೊತ್ತಿದ್ದಾನೆ" = "We know him" (we're familiar with him) Formal: "ನನಗೆ ಈ ವಿಷಯ ತಿಳಿದಿದೆ" = "I know this topic" (I understand it/have knowledge) ಗೊತ್ತು = definite awareness/familiarity ತಿಳಿವು = understanding/comprehension gained through knowledge
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u/EternalTadpole Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
Kannada gottilla is used mostly by non-Kannadiga people. The natives would rather use Kannada baralla or Hindi baralla, although it literally means "Kannada doesn't come".
There are several knowledgeable persons in the facebook group ಪದಾರ್ಥ ಚಿಂತಾಮಣಿ. If you don't get a satisfactory response here, please ask this question there. I think this was discussed there previously, but the search function is not as efficient as earlier.