   With so much linguistic diversity on the Indian subcontinent,
commonalities like these are striking. Hindi and Kannada, for
example, share an entire sound catalog. The structure of the two
languages’ alphabets is nearly identical, even while the scripts
are different. Their vowels and consonants are mapped onto a
grid based on how they are formed in the mouth. The grid is
organised the same way in Hindi (Devanagari script) and Kannada.
Retroflex consonants form one row of this grid.   These
similarities obscure a more complex relationship. Strictly
speaking, Hindi and Kannada aren't related. Hindi is an Indo-
European language, part of a family that stretches from
Bangladesh to Ireland. Gujarati, Punjabi, Marathi, and Bengali,
spoken in northern India, are in the same family. The Dravidian
languages, which include Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam,
are mostly limited to southern India. Dravidian grammar is
unrelated to Indo-European grammar. Retroflex consonants aren’t
generally found in Indo-European l