When the Americans came and bunked down in Mandya and Hubli in the 1960s, ND Krishnamurthy had only one mandate. Teach the Peace Corp volunteers enough Kannada so they could train villagers in home science and horticulture.

Krishnamurthy , the local language co-ordinator for the iconic American volunteer organisation, shot off an urgent missive to his ex-col gent missive to hi league UP Upadhyaya asking him to help with the lesson plans. “He had taught language be taught language before and I was into linguistics,“ says Upadhyaya.

But this was a tougher assignment as the Americans had to talk to villagers about anything from bee keeping to poultry development. “It all depended on their knowledge of native language and English grammar,“ says Upadhyaya. For instance, the impact of gender on verbs stumped the volunteers. “They wouldn't understand the difference between `avanu madtane' (he does) and `avalu madtale' as it isn't there in English,“ he says. So the duo did a comparative study of English and Kannada, and adapted the conversational method of language training so the Americans could teach school students home economics and update farmers about the new fertilisers in town. Special exercises were created to highlight the linguistic peculiarities.

The intrepid linguistteachers didn't stop there.Krishnamurthy and Upadhyaya turned their care fully crafted teaching material into a book in 1973, much before YouTube tutorials and mobile apps came to the rescue of the current set of English-speaking mi grants seeking to lear n Kannada.Forty two years, 12 editions and several reprints later, eral reprints later, Conversational Kannada: A Micro-wave Approach (in pic below) still finds buyers, much to the surprise of its octogenarian authors.

“It exhausted 1,000 copies in the first year. It was reprinted almost every two years and is a wonder to us,“ says 83-year-old Upadhyaya, who leads a quiet life in Udupi.Krishnamurthy , the driving force behind not just the Kannada version but similar books for Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, is bedridden now. Darla Saiman, an American who is settled in Karnataka, says the reason isn't hard to find. She picked up her copy in 2006 from a bookstore in Bengaluru. She was holidaying and wanted to master the basics: `I am from America' and `Where is the bus stop'.Much to her surprise, the book that is divided into smaller units (micro-text approach) to tackle various components, improved her grasp of the language. “Each chapter had a goal and that helped as I knew what I was supposed to learn,“ says Saiman. But her own goal changed once she decided to marry a Kannadiga and settle down in Badami. She called up Krishnamurthy's training institute in 2014 and signed up for lessons over Skype. “I couldn't understand grammatical concepts behind verb changes. Though I knew the words, I couldn't construct sentences correctly,“ says Saiman, who was intent on “sounding smart and speaking properly .“

Senior doctor AM Kuttappa also found that books only go so far. “I can now speak to patients better and have also learnt to read after a two-month class,“ says the professor of anaesthesia and head of surgical ICU at St John's Medical College. Though he is from Karnataka, he has been living in the city only for the past seven years. The classes at Kannada Language Learning School in Koramang ala involve mock drills on how to talk to the autorickshaw driver or order a meal at a restaurant.Plus, home work can be done online. “The Learn Kannada books make sense now,“ laughs Dr Kuttappa.

Though one-to-one classes are the main draw, the Kannada Language Learning School has been using more of Facebook and Twit ter in the last two years to draw in a variety of learners. An app is also in the works. Learners are a mixed bunch now. “People who come from other states and have been staying here for 10-20 years now want to be part of the mainstream,“ says Raghavendra Prasad of the School. Apart from teaching 10 batches in the last four years, the school has also taken classes at various housing societies in Koramangala, Whitefield, Bellandur and Marathahalli recently. This year, special classes were held for employees of three corporates.

N Rudraprasad , co founder of Kannade Baruthe website, says its eponymous app has had 20,000 downloads ever since it was launched two years a go.“Many of my colleagues used to say that despite making an effort to learn, people made fun of their pronunciation. So we have audio files as well,“ says Rudraprasad. The site gets visitors from the US, Canada, Australia and UAE, he says.

Upadhyaya is excited about the rise in demand.“People lear n language based on their needs. If a north Indian businessman comes here, he will learn the local language to talk to his clients,“ he says. The same goes for teachers, doctors and those in simi lar professions. But lan guage has a bigger role.“It improves our commu nication skills and helps us in having good rela tions with others. Then it becomes easy to bridge cultures, reli gions and peo ple,“ he says.

The Amer icans would agree.