zaabaa fen!

More than 50,000 of you have tried to convert your names and your friend’s names in KiLiKi using our Image It tool. Most of you have got it right.

‘rita’ ‘Rita’ ‘reeta’ & ‘reetaa’ are all totally different sounds and characters in KiLiKi. Here is a quick guide for you to get your name right.

KiLiKi Keyboard Mapping

KiLiKi is a strictly phonetic language. This means that there is only one correct way to pronounce what you write and there is only one way to produce a certain sound. As you can see in the images below KiLiKi is case sensitive when we use an English keyboard.

Key ‘a’ produces the character representing the short vowel ‘a’ the sound of the vowel in the English word ‘cut’. Similarly key ‘A’ produces the character representing the long vowel ‘aa’ the sound of the vowel in the English word ‘card’

Key ‘X’ produces the sound representing the long vowel ‘Á’ the sound of the vowel in ‘apple’

Similarly for consonants you can press the key ‘b’ to get the soft consonant sound ‘b’ as in English word ‘bat’ and press the key ‘S’ or keys ‘sh’ to produce the character that represents the soft consonant sound ‘sh’ as in the word ‘share’

Note the alternate keys. We can type ‘c’ or ‘ch’ or ‘C’ to produce the symbol that represents the hard consonant sound ‘ch’ as in the English word ‘chip’.

The stressed ‘L’ sound is part of a few languages around the world. When we want to stress the ‘l’ sound we can press the upper case ‘L’ key to produce a hard consonant with sound ‘L’. Note the name KiLiKi is pronounced with a stressed version of ‘L’.

Mono consonants have pretty much an easy correlation with the keys and sounds they produce. We have to note here that both lower case ‘m’ and upper case ‘M’ produce the same character representing the mono consonant sound ‘m’ as in English word ‘moon’. Whereas, the lower case ‘r’ is used to produce the ‘r’ sound as in English word ‘ram’ but the upper case ‘R’ is reserved for the click sound ‘*rrr’. You can listen to the audio of how these sounds will be uttered in our Learn KiLiKi Alphabet page.

As we will not be needing click sounds for your name we will ignore them in this article. If you are planning to name your kids with click sounds, that will make an interesting story by itself.

If you pronounce your name as ‘reetaa’ with all long vowels, you can type ‘reetaa’ in the imageit tool to convert it phonetically in KiLiKi. In case you pronounce ‘ritaa’ with a short ‘i’ sound and long ‘aa’ in the end, you can type and convert ‘ritaa’. Please note do not use upper case ‘R’ as ‘Rita’ will produce a click sound R followed by ‘ita’ which is incorrect.

In the above example, for the name ‘alladin’ there are many spellings possible. ‘allaadheen’ ‘alaadhin’ and many other variant. Decide if the name must be pronounced with a ‘din’ ending or a ‘dhin’ ending. If you use ‘Alladin’ with a upper case ‘A’ you end up getting a name that must be pronounced with a long vowel ‘aa lla din’.

To write ‘Harry Potter’ we type ‘hXri pAtar’. This is the right way to write his name in KiLiKi. Because, ‘if we type the keys ‘harry potter’ it will produce a different sound as the consonant ‘y’ takes the sound ‘y’ as in the english word ‘you’.

If we pronounce ‘abdhul’ instead of ‘abdul’ it is better to type ‘abdhul’ to get the sound right in KiLiKi. Similarly if we are used to writing ‘kalam’ but we pronounce it as ‘kalaam’ it is correct to type in ‘kalaam’ to get the sound right in KiLiKi.

KiLiKi does not have the vowels ‘ou’ that is available in many languages. So, to get the ‘ou’ sound as in the word ‘about’ we can key in ‘abavt’ to get the same sound. In short, ‘ou’ will be replaced by ‘av’ to produce the same sound. That is the reason we see that the popular name ‘Rajamouli’ is typed in as ‘raajamavli’ to get the sound right in KiLiKi.

Similarly, KiLiKi does not have the vowel ‘ai’ that is present in many languages. Instead, we key in ‘ay’ to replace the ‘ai’ sound that we get in words like ‘haiku’. So we key in ‘hayku’ to get the sound right in KiLiKi.

Let us check out a few popular names and how to type them in KiLiKi.

Try writing your name and post it to your friends and family. Change your DP with your name in KiLiKi. Post your doubts in comments or connect to us on twitter @kilikiworld.

bazaa!

by Nandini Karky

Language – What do these words, letters and sounds mean to us? Why do we fiercely fight for it at times and completely ignore it at others? Was emotion always attached to language? Charles Eisenstein in his book ‘The Ascent of Humanity’ says that language is the first technology invented by man and perhaps the first invention that alienated man from nature. When living could be abstracted in the form of lines and symbols, we may have lost out on our intimacy with nature but it was inevitable for what will be, will be and nothing can stop the progress of where the human mind can take us. The distance a language will travel seems to be intertwined with the ambition of the culture that speaks it!

Like many Indians, my mother tongue is one language but the language I’m most comfortable expressing is in another language. The medium of instruction is English in this multi-cultural pot of languages called India. Hence over the years, one’s proficiency in the ‘other’ language grows and academic types like me, end up even thinking in the language. But thankfully, the love for my mother-tongue Tamil was always alive within and after years of meandering, I have returned to that place between two languages, and through my podcast Sangam Lit, I get to appreciate what an ancient language and culture has to say and interpret it in the voice of this modern language that has the fortune to have spread across the world. 

I have always been drawn to the power of the written word. From an early age, I fell in love with books and these opened worlds many to me. Society insisted that my academic proficiency meant that I was to pursue engineering. The unguided teenager I was, I simply followed that pointing finger. After stints as electronics and communication student and a software engineer, I found my identity in subtitling. Here, you are in the midst of two languages, trying to extract the essence of one into another and squeeze a giant within the tight borders of both space and time. Only when I gazed at language this close, I was able to see its glories and flaws too. How words can change the world at moments and how words can be completely inadequate to express all that’s felt within! 

And yet, who doesn’t delight in the well-written word! Today, my passion project involves translation from two thousand year old verse into a modern language using the twenty-first century technology of a podcast. When you love something and when you want to do something, somehow we will find the way to learn things we consider alien to us. For instance, to build a website, you need to understand the language of the machine and even this, something that I was not too fond of, I was willing to learn so that I could do what I dreamt of doing. 

Being in limbo between two languages makes me confused at times. Should I speak that language or this? Constantly, there’s a switch between one language and the other. But, that’s not a bad thing, I read. It’s something that keeps our brains active! Want to keep away age-related decline? Then, learn languages, they say! 

Looking at the fierce fights around languages, I wonder if they are necessary. One need not look at languages as one’s love, the one to whom one’s sworn! I think we can see our language as a mother. There’s a tradition among many cultures in India and perhaps in other countries too, of seeing many as mothers. We call the aunty next door, our friend’s mother and a kind old lady as ‘amma’, though they did not give birth to us. Likewise, other languages can be seen as these mothers. Although we may not have come from that mother’s womb, we can always respect these other mothers all around us!

Speaking of other languages, have you caught the sparkle in someone’s eye when you speak in their language? A powerful tool to touch hearts with your minds! Languages need not be fences that separate the world but a thing of pride that unites us all of us, for that is evidence of the extraordinary power of human creativity. The power that makes a few dashes and curves conquer this universe entire! 

by Dr. Madhan Karky

When I was learning Mandarin in University of Queensland, I was fascinated by the way the sound ‘ma’ was changed to make four different words and meanings just by varying the tone. When my teacher told me that my straight line stroke was wrong because I started it from left to right instead of right to left, I was puzzled. I was scared when I looked at a single character that had more than 100 strokes; cried in joy when I first ordered my lunch completely in Mandarin in a Chinese restaurant; felt like a prince when I bargained in Chinese in a street-market in Malaysia. Learning a new language does so much for you. It opens new doors in the real world and also in your mind. It makes this world a smaller place. You erase a tiny pixel from a huge line that divides ‘us’ and ‘them’. KiLiKi is different because there is no ‘us’ and ‘them’. The language does not belong to anyone. It does not have religion, caste, race or country associated with it. In other words, it belongs to everyone. 

Creating KiLiKi language was one of the best experiences in my life. I vividly remember the moment when Director SS Rajamouli asked me to find a foreign language for the Kalakeya tribes or to create a new one. Rewinding a few years back, when I was teaching English and Tamil languages to a few kids, this random idea of creating a new language popped up. I created a few words together with them and named the language CLIQ. The name was easy on the ears sounding like the ‘click of a mouse’ and also, ‘see I like you’. Along with my young students, I created a few sentences, a horrible song and then forgot about the language. When Director Rajamouli asked me to create a new language, I told him about CLIQ and he asked me to come up with some dialogues. That was the moment when ‘KiLiKi’ was born. I renamed the language as KiLiKi to go well with the Kaalakeya tribe that speaks the language. I started building more words and added a few grammar rules. I ensured the rules and words were simple and easy to remember. When I read out the first dialogue to the director, he was thrilled. He called his team and asked me to repeat the dialogue. I can still sense the excitement in that room.

Director decided he is not going to use subtitles in the movie for this language. He asked me to convey the cruelty in the sounds of the syllables. This threw an interesting challenge to me and made me reflect on the association between pleasantness of sounds in a word and the meaning associated with it. I made many changes to the language, created a few root words and started building other words from these root words. I must thank actor Prabhakar for learning to speak the language and bringing out the terror in his voice. He is the first student of KiLiKi language. Actors Prabhas, Rana, Nasser, Sathyaraj and Ramya Krishnan told me that they were shocked when they first heard the new language in the shooting spot as the camera was rolling. The same experience was shared by many around the world. Though the blockbuster movie released in multiple world languages, KiLiKi dialogues remained in KiLiKi in all versions. Many were asking for the source to learn this language. 

At that time, the language had no script. I was using English alphabet to represent KiLiKi sounds and I used to record the dialogues and send voice notes to actors. I had around 750 words and 40 grammar rules then. I was very hesitant to release that version of grammar and words. I also remember creating a song for the Kaalakeya tribes in KiLiKi with Composer MM Keeravani, but that was not used in the movie. Post the movie release, Singer Smita and Composer Achu came up with an idea to create a song in KiLiKi. We created ‘Baaha KiLiKi’ song and released it on Youtube. The song and its cover crossed 100 million views and people still continue to shower their love for the song and the language. 

In the past two years, I set aside some time to continue my work on the KiLiKi language. I started adding most common words in different categories. I felt that English phonetic notation was not enough to represent certain sounds. I designed vowels, consonants and numerals and started teaching my son. He loved the new symbols and I was surprised when he learned the numerals in 2 minutes and even started doing addition with these symbols. I sent a snapshot of the symbols to my friend Udhayan and he came up with a true-type font for the same in a month’s time. His inputs were valuable from the typography perspective. He added two more KiLiKi font families in no time. You need a crazy team to backup such crazy ideas. LIFO Technologies team made this website and apps from scratch, collaborating with my research foundation. I would like to thank them all for their time, effort and talent in making this possible.

The good and bad thing about craziness is that it does not have a limit to it. I thank Nandini for keeping me grounded and forcing me to take the rest I needed while also not disturbing my dream. I remember talking to her in KiLiKi during one of our date nights and making her go mad. I apologised to her in English as KiLiKi does not have the word for ‘sorry’!

Recently when I was in Hyderabad for a meet with Writer Vijeyendra Prasad for a new project, I showed him the new symbols and told him about the idea for the site. He was thrilled and appreciated the effort. He has been a great inspiration to me as a writer and as a person. I presented Producer Shobu Yarlagadda, the idea to form a development center for Kiliki. He was the person who sowed the idea in me to properly document the language and publish it after the movie released. I would like to thank him, Director SS Rajamouli and the entire Baahubali team for making this possible. 

I do not see KiLiKi as just a language. I dream of it of being much more than that. I see this launch as the beginning of something beautiful for the future. Thank you for being part of this crazy dream.

moovaa,
Madhan Karky