Remember Kiliki, the language of the Kaalakeya tribe in Rajamouli’s superhit film Baahubali ? Now, an effort is on to popularise it.
Marking International Mother Language Day on February 21, the filmmaker and Madhan Karky, the man behind the language, launched a website to help anyone learn the “world’s easiest language”. The website ( www.kiliki.in ) has a 3,000-word English-Kiliki-English dictionary, a tool to convert names, videos and vocabulary games.
“After the release of Baahubali , a lot of people appreciated the language we developed for the film,” Mr. Karky told The Hindu .
A press release states that the Karky Research Foundation is also working towards creating job opportunities for those who learn Kiliki and hopes that the Kiliki language will spread across, connecting the world as one beyond barriers of caste, religion, race or country.
“In schools and colleges, students would ask me to speak a few lines in Kiliki. I saw that as an opportunity to develop it,” he said. Part of the project was challenging himself: could he develop the world’s easiest language? “I wanted this to be as simple as possible, without any complications. We dread learning new languages because of the many complications that come along with it, in terms of writing style and pronunciation,” he says.
22 symbols
The lyricist-dialogue writer created symbols for numerals and alphabets. After two years of work, he had a system to learn the entire alphabet in an hour through 22 easy-to-recall symbols.
Explaining the rationale behind a new language, Mr. Karky says, “It expands your thinking ability. Also, all languages in the world are associated with a race, community or caste. I want Kiliki to be a language that has the potential to connect the world without any barriers.”
Mr. Karky, who is now working on the dialogues of Rajamouli’s upcoming RRR and director Vijay’s Thalaivi , also plans to create job opportunities and evolve new art forms based on Kiliki. Plans to release new songs, comics and grammar books are in the works. “We want to create a new world around this language. Someday in the future, we might even see an entire film in which characters speak only Kiliki.”
