Bengaluru: Professor G Venkatasubbaiah, the grand old man of Kannada language, died in Bengaluru early today. He was 107.
GV, as he is popularly known in Kannada literary field, was a lexicographer, grammarian and literary critic. He has compiled 12 dictionaries. His works cover various forms of Kannada literature, including grammar, poetry, translation and essays.
Born into a family of scholars in Ganjam village in Srirangapatna (Mandya district) on August 23, 1913, Venkatasubbaiah was a university topper (master of arts in Kannada). He began his career as a teacher at a municipal school in Mandya, taught at a high school in Davanagere and Maharaja’s College, Mysuru, before joining the Vijaya College in Bengaluru as a lecturer. He retired as the principal in 1973.
Venkatasubbaiah’s dictionaries, include an eight-volume Kannada-Kannada Nighantu (Dictionary). The compilation of his column Igo Kannada, published in Prajavani, emerged as a four-volume sociolinguistic dictionary. People from various walks of life have condoled his death.