Growing up in a lakeside town in West Michigan, Varun spoke both Kodava-thakk and English at home. It was only during the later years of his high school career that he began to truly appreciate the importance of his ancestral tongue.
During his four years at Cornell University, he acquired a strong interest in language and Linguistics. Having grown up outside of Kodagu, he realized that there was a need for a much more thorough knowledge base of Kodava-thakk. As his sister-in-law did not speak the language, he decided to make an informal series of lessons to improve her fluency in the language. This project quietly evolved into a much more serious endeavor, eventually forming the rudiments of this project. In addition to learning about languages and the worlds that they construct, Varun is an avid violist and writer. |