EDIT Writing system
Like the scripts for the other Indian languages, Kannada is an abugida, a syllabic alphabet where each consonant has an inherent vowel (a) unless otherwise indicated by diacritics. They are vowel signs that appear as prefixes, suffixes, above or below acharacter. Kannada has 49 Characters that are divided into 15 vowels (swaragalu) and 24 consonants (Vyanjanagalu). The characters can also be combined to form compound characters (ottaksharas).

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EDIT History
Like Telugu, Kannada derived from the old Kadamba and Cālukya scripts, descendents of Brahmi which were used between the 5th and 7th centuries AD. These scripts developed into the Old Kannada script, out of which the Kannada and Telugu script developed around the year 1500.

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EDIT Languages
The script is used to write Kannada or Canarese, spoken in various dialects by about 55 million people in the Indian states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra. It is one of the four main languages of south India. Kannada is the official language of the southern Indian state of Karnataka and one of the 23 official languages of India. It is a Dravidian language like Tamil, Telugu and Kannada are. They are not related to the indoarabic languages. Kannada derived mostly from Tamil which is widely recognised as its mother language.

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