Actor Kiccha Sudeep wins hearts win ‘Madam, it’s not Kannad, it's Kannada..' statement

The debate over Kannada language has erupted on Twitter again after actor Kiccha Sudeep corrected a journalist's pronunciation in an interview.

The debate over language and Hindi imposition in the southern states has sparked anew after Kannada actor Kiccha Sudeep corrected a journalist's pronunciation in a recent interview while speaking about his latest film -Vikrant Rona - which released last week.

Kiccha Sudeep was talking about his film Vikrant Rona and language barriers in Indian cinema.

“You call it Hindi, not Hind, the same way, it's Kannada, not Kannad,” he said.

This statement garnered much appreciation from the pro-Kannada fraternity, who lauded the actor for correcting the common mispronunciation.

“Forget learning the whole language, first please learn the name of the language,” Sudeep told the journalist.

“You pronounce the names of other south Indian languages like Tamil and Telugu correctly, but mispronounce only Kannada by calling it ‘Kannad’."

The Makkhi star made headlines in April when he sparred with Bollywood actor Ajay Devgn on social media over Hindi and its status as the ‘national language’.

Read: Kiccha Sudeep responds to Ajay Devgn’s tweet on his Hindi comment: ‘What if my response was typed in Kannada’

Search engine Google too had the Hindi pronunciation for Kannada as ‘Kannad’ till recently, after which it corrected the translation, with Twitter user Arun Virupaksha saying, "Happy to share, the pronunciation of "Kannada" in Hindi language is corrected by @Google @GoogleIndia in their website. It is sad that we Kannadigas need to ask for everything. #ItsKannada #NotKannad"

Bengaluru Twitter has had several debates on the importance of the regional language, with locals accused of being ‘discriminating’ towards non-Kannadigas.

Read: Do non-Kannadigas in Bengaluru face discrimination? Debate brews on Twitter

Incidentally, the Karnataka Congress and language activists spotted that the ‘Sankalp se Siddhi’ conference by the Confederation of the Indian Industries' (CII) attended on Thursday by Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai and union home minister Amit Shah, among other senior leaders of the BJP, had no banners in Kannada.

“BJP, which is going to impose a single language and a single culture, seems to be betting on ending India's diversity. There is neither tri-lingualism nor bilingualism in the program organized by the Ministry of 'Culture' in Bangalore. Hindi is all! @BJP4Karnataka has cut out Kannada itself in 'Kannada Nadu',” Karnataka Congress tweeted.

Arun Javgal, a member of the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike (KRV), a pro-Kannada organisation, took a dig at BJP's Tejasvi Surya.

“Many people including @Tejasvi_Surya had said during the #nammaMetroHindi‌Beda campaign that if there was only Hindi and no Kannada boards, they will be the first to protest. However, not one person is found today,” he wrote.