Kannada is spoken by about 50 million people, mainly in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, where it is an official language. As part of the Dravidian language family, it uses the Kannada script, a distinctive abugida. Its agglutinative grammar includes eight cases and a subject-object-verb (SOV) word order. Kannada boasts a classical literature tradition, including poetry and prose dating back to the 9th century, alongside a vibrant modern literary and cinematic culture.