Meet 103-year-old Professor G Venkatasubbaiah, the man behind the Kannada dictionary, who is receiving Padma Shri this year

Kannadigas owe it big time to Ganjam Venkatasubbiah, who will be receiving a Padma Shri for literature and education this year.

Born on August 23 1913, Venkatasubbiah spent most of his 103 years in compiling dictionaries, authoring four seminal works on dictionary science in Kannada, etc.

Meet Venkatasubbiah, whose contribution to the world of Kannada Lexicography is vast.

Venkatasubbiah is renowned for his work on Kannada dictionary science-‘Kannada Nighantu Shastra Parichaya’- which was released 100 years after the first Kannada dictionary was authored by the German priest and Indologist Reverend Ferdinand Kittel in 1894.

Not only this, Venkatasubbiah’s dictionary has also been translated in Braille language by the Braille Transcription Centre of the Canara Bank Relief and Welfare Society.

"I first began work on it 50 years ago. About 80 to 90 people started collecting words and we organised in alphabetical order. It took 10 years to put the Kannada words in alphabetical order. I worked for 25 to 30 years on this dictionary... eight volumes. 10 000 pages. No other language in India has a dictionary like this,” he told NDTV.