The Kannada script (IAST: Kannaḍa lipi; obsolete: Kanarese or Canarese script in English) is an abugida of the Brahmic family,[4] used to write Kannada, one of the Dravidian languages of South India especially in the state of Karnataka.

Several minor languages, such as Tulu, Konkani, Kodava, Beary and Sanketi also use alphabets based on the Kannada script.

Letters representing consonants are combined to form digraphs (ಒತ್ತಕ್ಷರ ottakṣara) when there is no intervening vowel.

The letters are classified into three categories: ಸ್ವರ svara (vowels), ವ್ಯಂಜನ vyañjana (consonants), and ಯೋಗವಾಹಕ yōgavāhaka (semiconsonants).

Each letter has its own form (ಆಕಾರ ākāra) and sound (ಶಬ್ದ śabda), providing the visible and audible representations, respectively.

The Kannada script is an abugida, where when a vowel follows a consonant, it is written with a diacritic rather than as a separate letter.

A consonant without a vowel is marked with a 'killer' stroke, such as ಕ್ k. This silencing diacritic and process is known as ಹಲಂತ halanta, whereas the resulting letter is called an ಅರ್ಧಾಕ್ಷರ ardhākshara (lit.

[21] There are two yōgavāha (part-vowel, part consonant) letters, known as ardhavisarga, used in modern Kannada and two others used in Sanskrit transcription.

The unstructured consonants are consonants that do not fall into any of the above structures: Kannada literary works employed the letters ಱ (transliterated 'ṟ' or 'rh') and ೞ (transliterated 'ḻ', 'lh' or 'zh'), whose manner of articulation most plausibly could be akin to those in present-day Malayalam and Tamil.

The decimal numerals in the script are: Several transliteration schemes/tools are used to type Kannada characters using a standard keyboard.

Nudi, the Government of Karnataka's standard for Kannada Input, is a phonetic layout loosely based on transliteration.