Twenty questions across the vocabulary you should have after working through the beginner pages. Answer aloud before checking — producing the word is the test, recognising it is not. The scoring guide at the end tells you honestly where you are and what to revise.
Round One — Everyday Words
Say the Kannada for each of these before reading the answer card.
- Water, milk, meal, rice (cooked)
- House, room, door, shop
- Mother, father, elder sister, younger brother
- Today, tomorrow, yesterday, now
- Good, big, small, new
Note the trap in the first line. ಅನ್ನ is cooked rice; ಅಕ್ಕಿ is the uncooked grain. Asking for ಅಕ್ಕಿ at a meal means you want a bag of raw rice.
Round Two — Family and Numbers
Two questions worth checking yourself on: what is the difference between ಚಿಕ್ಕಪ್ಪ and ಮಾವ, and why is there no single word for ‘brother’? If you cannot answer both, revisit the family vocabulary page.
Bonus: say 21, 35 and 68. If you had to think for more than two seconds, drill the tens.
Round Three — The Tricky Pairs
These are the ones that actually cause misunderstandings. Say each pair aloud and make sure they sound different.
If any of these four pairs sound identical when you say them, that is your revision priority. They are the difference between being understood and being politely asked to repeat.
Round Four — Use It, Do Not Just Name It
Produce a full sentence for each. Answers vary; the point is fluency, not matching.
- Say that you want coffee without sugar.
- Ask how much something costs, per kilo.
- Say you did not understand and ask for it slowly.
- Refuse more food politely at a meal.
- Say you are going home tomorrow.
A fifth round worth doing on your own: the reverse test. Everything above went from English to Kannada, which is the harder and more useful direction. Now open any Kannada page on this site, cover the English, and see how much you can read cold. Recognition and production are separate skills and most learners are far stronger at the first than they realise.
Finally, test yourself on the words you use rather than the words you studied. Spend sixty seconds describing your morning aloud in Kannada — what you ate, where you went, who you spoke to. Every word you reach for and cannot find belongs on your revision list, and that list will be far more useful than any pre-made vocabulary set, because it is built from your own life rather than from a textbook’s idea of it.
A fifth round worth doing on your own: the reverse test. Everything above went from English to Kannada, which is the harder and more useful direction. Now open any Kannada page on this site, cover the English, and see how much you can read cold. Recognition and production are separate skills and most learners are far stronger at the first than they realise.
Finally, test yourself on the words you use rather than the words you studied. Spend sixty seconds describing your morning aloud in Kannada — what you ate, where you went, who you spoke to. Every word you reach for and cannot find belongs on your revision list, and that list will be far more useful than any pre-made vocabulary set, because it is built from your own life rather than from a textbook’s idea of it.
Common Mistakes This Quiz Reveals
- Recognising instead of producing. If you read the answer card first, you tested nothing.
- Confusing ಅನ್ನ and ಅಕ್ಕಿ. Cooked rice versus raw grain.
- Mixing ಚಿಕ್ಕಪ್ಪ and ಮಾವ. Father’s younger brother versus mother’s brother.
- Letting the round three pairs sound identical. That is a pronunciation problem, not a vocabulary one.
- Knowing nouns but failing round four. Vocabulary without sentence-building is not usable Kannada.
Practice and Scoring Yourself
- Under 10 of 20 in rounds one and two: go back to the vocabulary pages and work with the word-of-the-day method.
- 10 to 15: solid beginner. Focus on round three’s minimal pairs and start speaking daily.
- 16 to 20 but round four was hard: you have vocabulary without fluency. Switch to the phrase-of-the-day method.
- Full marks including round four: move to the grammar and conversation pages.
- Any pair in round three sounding identical: pronunciation practice comes before anything else.
Pronunciation Tips
- Check every answer for retroflex ಳ, ಣ or ಟ.
- Hold doubled consonants in ಅಮ್ಮ, ಹಣ್ಣು, ಇಪ್ಪತ್ತು.
- Keep the final ಉ light throughout.
- ಊಟ needs a long oo. Short and it is not a word.
- Say answers at conversational speed rather than carefully.