Overview
Dr. Haribal is a chemical ecologist and evolutionary biologist. Recently, she is fascinated by the languages of the world and how they have evolved. Her mother tongue is Kannada. She has studied Kannada continuously for 13 years, and has studied advanced grammar and literature of Kannada including HaLegannaDa (old Kannada of more than 500 years old), which is substantially different from modern Kannada.
She has studied Indian languages (Marathi, Hindi and Sanskrit), and also knows Gujrati and Tamil as a spoken language. Other world languages she studied are English and basics of German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese. She has recently been learning Indonesian, enough for basic communication. She is fascinated by the way some words and practices are common to many languages and cultures. As an evolutionary biologist, she is interested in learning how they came to be as they are. She has traveled around the world and has learned how skills of basic communications lead to meaningful conversation with locals and its importance as a survival skill.
Dr. Haribal has been teaching Kannada 1100 at Cornell since 2018 for students wishing to study abroad in Karnataka or who want to learn as their family members speak the language. She enjoys teaching travelers how different languages, cultures and words have some commonalities and to pique their interest in learning languages.
