How to say ‘how are you?’ in your hyper-local lingo?

Bengaluru A person in Bengaluru might be stumped if someone asked “Ganagadira?” This dialectal variant in Kannada for the more common “Chennagidira?” (How are you) in Bengaluru and Mysuru is typically used in Hosanagara taluk of Shivamogga district. Ganagadira? is the tile of K. Sripathi Halagunda’s book, documenting 300 hyperlocal words from Hosanagara, yet to be published by the Kannada Development Authority (KDA). The book documents words such as “Are Iski” (an exclamation) and “Ande Pirki” (a mad cap), among others, which may not be intelligible to people from other regions of Karnataka. While these words are part of everyday conversations in the Malenadu region, they rarely find their way into written forms. According to the KDA, Karnataka has 290 language variants, comprising both dialects of Kannada and independent languages spoken in the State.