Telugu language

Telugu (; , ) is a Dravidian language native to the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where it is also the official language. Telugu is a classical language with a recorded history of at least 2,000 years. Spoken by about 100 million people, Telugu is the most widely spoken member of the Dravidian language family, and one of the twenty-two scheduled languages of the Republic of India.

thumb|A yellow and green bicolour used informally on social media to represent Telugu identity.

It is one of the few languages that has primary official status in more than one Indian state, alongside Hindi and Bengali. Telugu is one of the languages designated as a classical language by the Government of India. It is the fourteenth most spoken native language in the world.

Telugu is also spoken in the states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and the union territories of Puducherry and Andaman and Nicobar Islands, although it is not a main language in those states and only a minority speaks them. It is also spoken by members of the Telugu diaspora spread across countries like the United States, Australia, Malaysia, Mauritius, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and others. Telugu is the fastest-growing language in the United States. It is also a protected language in South Africa and is offered as an optional third language in schools in KwaZulu-Natal province.

According to Mikhail S. Andronov, Telugu split from the Proto-Dravidian language around 1000 BCE. The earliest Telugu words appear in Prakrit inscriptions dating to , found in Bhattiprolu, Andhra Pradesh. Telugu label inscriptions and Prakrit inscriptions containing Telugu words have been dated to the era of Emperor Ashoka (257 BCE), as well as to the Satavahana and Vishnukundina periods.. Earlier Telugu label inscription “tolacuvānḍru,” found near Keesaragutta Temple, dates to the Vishnukundina Period (c. 400 CE) and Historians from Telangana claim that the ‘Toluchuvandru’ inscription of Keesaragutta temple in Medchal-Malkajgiri district is about a century older than the Kalamalla inscription, which was inscribed in 575 AD. Inscriptions in the Old Telugu script were found as far away as Indonesia and Myanmar. Telugu has been used as an official language for over 1,500 years. Notably, it was also adopted as an official language outside its homeland, even by non-Telugu dynasties, such as the Thanjavur Marathas in Tamil Nadu.

Telugu has an unbroken, prolific, and diverse literary tradition of over a thousand years. Pavuluri Mallana's Sāra Sangraha Ganitamu () is the first scientific treatise on mathematics in any Dravidian language. Avadhānaṃ, a literary performance that requires immense memory power and an in-depth knowledge of literature and prosody, originated and was specially cultivated among Telugu poets for over five centuries. Roughly 10,000 pre-colonial inscriptions exist in Telugu.

In the precolonial era, Telugu became the language of high culture throughout South India. Vijaya Ramaswamy compared it to the overwhelming dominance of French as the cultural language of Europe during roughly the same era. Over the centuries, many non-Telugu speakers have praised the natural musicality of Telugu speech, referring to it as a mellifluous and euphonious language.

Etymology

Speakers of Telugu refer to it as simply Telugu or Telugoo. Older forms of the name include Teluṅgu and Tenuṅgu. Tenugu is derived from the Proto-Dravidian word *ten ('south') to mean 'the people who lived in the south/southern direction' (relative to Sanskrit- and Prakrit-speaking peoples). The name Telugu, then, is a result of an "n" to "l" alternation established in Telugu.

The popular belief holds that Telugu is derived from Trilinga of Trilinga Kshetras being the land bounded by the three Lingas which is Telugu homeland. P. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao note that Atharvana Acharya in the 13th century wrote a grammar of Telugu, calling it the Trilinga Śabdānusāsana (or Trilinga Grammar). However, most scholars note that Atharvana's grammar was titled Atharvana Karikavali. Appa Kavi in the 17th century explicitly wrote that Telugu was derived from Trilinga. Scholar C. P. Brown made a comment that it was a "strange notion" since the predecessors of Appa Kavi had no knowledge of such a derivation.

George Abraham Grierson and other linguists doubt this derivation, holding rather that Telugu was the older term and Trilinga must be the later Sanskritisation of it. If so the derivation itself must have been quite ancient because Triglyphum, Trilingum and Modogalingam are attested in ancient Greek sources, the last of which can be interpreted as a Telugu rendition of "Trilinga".

History

Telugu, as a Dravidian language, descends from Proto-Dravidian, a proto-language. Linguistic reconstruction suggests that Proto-Dravidian was spoken around the fourth millennium BCE. Comparative linguistics confirms that Telugu belongs to the South Dravidian-II (also called South-Central Dravidian) sub-group, which also includes the non-literary languages like Gondi, Kuvi, Koya, Pengo, Konda and Manda.

Proto-Telugu is the reconstructed linguistic ancestor of all the dialects and registers of Telugu. Russian linguist Mikhail S. Andronov, places the split of Telugu at 1000 BCE. They are also found in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh. According to recent estimates by ASI (Archaeological Survey of India) the number of inscriptions in the Telugu language goes up to 14,000. Adilabad, Medak, Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Ranga Reddy, Hyderabad, Mahbubnagar, Anantapur, Chittoor and Srikakulam produced only a handful of Telugu inscriptions in the Kakatiya era between 1135 CE and 1324 CE.

Geographical influence

Telugu region boundaries

Andhra is characterised as having its own mother tongue, and its territory has been equated with the extent of the Telugu language. The equivalence between the Telugu linguistic sphere and the geographical boundaries of Andhra is also brought out in an eleventh-century description of Andhra boundaries. Andhra, according to this text, was bounded in north by Mahendra mountain in the modern Ganjam district in Odisha and to the south by Srikalahasteeswara temple in Tirupati district. However, Andhra extended westwards as far as Srisailam in Nandyal district, about halfway across the modern state. According to other sources in the early sixteenth century, the northern boundary is Simhachalam and the southern limit is Tirumala of the Telugu nation.

Telugu Place Names

Telugu place names are present all around Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Common suffixes are -ooru, -pudi, -padu, -peta, -pattanam, -wada, -gallu, -cherla, -seema, -gudem, -palle, -palem, -konda, -veedu, -valasa, -pakam, -paka, -prolu, -wolu, -waka, -ili, -kunta, -parru, -villi, -gadda, -kallu, -eru, -varam,-puram,-pedu and -palli. Examples that use this nomenclature are Nellore, Tadepalligudem, Guntur, Chintalapudi, Yerpedu, Narasaraopeta, Sattenapalle, Visakapatnam, Vizianagaram, Ananthagiri, Vijayawada, Vuyyuru, Macherla, Poranki, Ramagundam, Warangal, Mancherial, Peddapalli, Siddipet, Pithapuram, Banswada, and Miryalaguda.

Dialects and Teluguoid languages

thumb|Andhra Pradesh before [[Bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh|bifurcation (1956–2014)]]

There are four regional dialects in Telugu:

Northern: Telangana
Southern: Rayalaseema
Central: Coastal Andhra
Eastern: North Andhra

Colloquially, Telangana, Rayalaseema and Coastal Andhra dialects are considered the three Telugu dialects and regions.

Waddar, Chenchu, Mukha-Dora, and Manna-Dora are all closely related to Telugu. Other dialects of Telugu are Berad, Dasari, Dommara, Golari, Kamathi, Komtao, Konda-Reddi, Salewari, Vadaga, Vadari Bangalore, and Yanadi.

Phonology

thumb|A man speaking Telugu.The Roman transliteration used for transcribing the Telugu script is the National Library at Kolkata romanisation.

Telugu words generally end in vowels. In Classical Telugu, this was absolute; in the modern language m, n, y, w may end a word. Sanskrit loans have introduced aspirated and murmured consonants in the literary register while their occurrence in colloquial dialects remains minimal.

Telugu does not have contrastive stress, and speakers vary on where they perceive stress. Most place it on the penultimate or final syllable, depending on word and vowel length.

Consonants

The table below lists the consonant phonemes of Telugu, along with the symbols used in the transliteration of the Telugu script used here (where different from IPA).

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center"

|+Telugu consonants

! colspan="2" rowspan="2" |

! rowspan="2" |Labial

! colspan="2" |Denti- alveolar

! rowspan="2" |Retroflex

! rowspan="2" |Post-alv./ Palatal

! rowspan="2" |Velar

! rowspan="2" |Glottal

!plain

!sibilant

! colspan="2" |Nasal

| m

| n

| ṇ

! rowspan="4" |Plosive/ Affricate

!unaspirated

| p

| t

| ts

| ṭ

| c

| k

!voiced

| b

| d

| dz

| ḍ

| j

| g

!aspirated*

| ph

| th

| ṭh

| ch

| kh

!breathy voiced*

| bh

| dh

| ḍh

| jh

| gh

! colspan="2" |Fricative*

| f

| s

| ṣ

| ś

| h

! colspan="2" |Approximant

| v

| l

| ḷ

| y

! colspan="2" |Tap

| r

The aspirated and breathy-voiced consonants occur mostly in Sanskrit and Prakrit loanwords, additionally /tʰ/ is used to substitute /θ/ in English loans, the only aspirate which occurs natively is /dʱ/ which occurs only in a few compound numbers e.g. /pɐddʱenimidi/ "18" likely a result of the proto Dravidian laryngeal */H/ there is also an unaspirated /pɐddenimidi/ version which is used more commonly. All of the fricatives except for native also only occurs in loanwords. Also, if the second vowel is open (i.e., or ), then the first vowel is more open and centralised (e.g., 'goat', as opposed to 'nail'). Telugu words also have vowels in inflectional suffixes that are harmonised with the vowels of the preceding syllable.

Colloquial speech

Source:

In some colloquial speech ṇ, ḷ might completely merge with n, l except in clusters with retroflex plosives.
In Standard Telugu and most dialects ś is pronounced as s, while Telanganan dialects merge ś to ṣ. eg. iṣṭam, dēśam > istaw̃, dēsaw̃/dēṣaw̃.
Non initial and particularly final m tends to be [w̃].
Initial kṣ tend to be kś before front vowels and kṣ/ṭṣ before other in educated speech, ch for uneducated speech; medially tts(h) for all.
Cluster simplification, eg. viplavam, amlam, raktam, anyāyam > yipalavaw̃, āw̃alaw̃, rattaw̃, annēyaw̃.
va, vā becomes (w)o, {ā, ō} initially, eg. vāḍu > āḍu/ōḍu. Before front vowels the v becomes y, eg. vennela > yennela.
Some aspirates might be debuccalized to a h while previous actual h's might be deleted, eg. mukham, mahā > muhaw̃/mugaw̃, mā.
Telanganan speech tend to have less aspirated consonants.
Palatalization, eg. madhyāhnam > majjhānaw̃/majjhēnaw̃.
ph, ts, dz > f, s, j.
Differences in suffixing, eg. kannu-lu > Coastal kaḷḷu, Rayalseema kaṇḍḷu/kaṇḷu, Telangana kanlu.
Sri Lankan Telugu too lacks ṇ, ḷ, merges c with s and has vowel alternations like i instead of final -u, perhaps due to Tamil and Sinhalese influence.

Grammar

The traditional study of Telugu Grammar is known as vyākaraṇam (వ్యాకరణం). The first treatise on Telugu grammar, the Āndhra Śabda Cintāmaṇi, was written in Sanskrit by Nannayya, considered the first Telugu poet and translator, in the 12th century CE. This grammar followed patterns described in grammatical treatises such as Aṣṭādhyāyī and Vālmīkivyākaranam, but unlike Pāṇini, Nannayya divided his work into five chapters, covering samjnā, sandhi, ajanta, halanta and kriya.

In the 19th century, Chinnaya Suri wrote a condensed work on Telugu grammar called Bāla Vyākaraṇam, borrowing concepts and ideas from Nannayya's grammar.

Morphosyntax

Relations between participants in an event are coded in Telugu words through suffixation; there are no prefixes or infixes in the language.

Word order

The basic word order in Telugu is subject-object-verb (SOV).

Noun classes (gender)

As with other Dravidian languages, gender in Telugu follows a semantic system, in the sense that it is mostly the meaning of the word which defines the noun class to which it belongs. There are three noun classes: masculine (human males, he-gender), feminine (human females, she-gender), and neuter (all non-humans, it-gender). The gender of most nouns is encoded through agreement/indexation in pronominal suffixes rather than overtly on the noun.

Demonstratives

There is a wide variety of demonstrative pronouns in Telugu, whose forms depend on both proximity to the speaker and the level of formality. The formal demonstratives may also be used as formal personal pronoun, that is, the polite forms for this woman or this man and that woman or that man can also simply mean she and he in more formal contexts.

In the singular, there are four levels of formality when speaking about males and females, although the most formal/polite form is the same for both human genders. In both singular and plural, Telugu distinguishes two levels of distance from speaker (like in English), basically this and that, and these and those.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

! rowspan="2" |

! colspan="6" |Singular

! colspan="3" |Proximal

(close to speaker, "this")

! colspan="3" |Distal

(far from speaker, "that")

|Gender/Formality

|Feminine

|Masculine

|Neuter

|Feminine

|Masculine

|Neuter

|very informal

|idi

|vīḍu

| rowspan="4" |idi

|adi

|vāḍu

| rowspan="4" |adi

|informal

|īme

|itanu

|āme

|atanu

|formal

|īviḍa

|īyana

|āviḍa

|āyana

|very formal

| colspan="2" |vīru

| colspan="2" |vāru

In the plural, there are no distinctions between formality levels, but once again masculine and feminine forms are the same, while the neuter demonstratives are different.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

! colspan="6" |Plural

! colspan="3" |Proximal

(close to speaker, "these")

! colspan="3" |Distal

(far from speaker, "those")

|Feminine

|Masculine

|Neuter

|Feminine

|Masculine

|Neuter

| colspan="2" |vīỊỊu/vīru

|ivi

| colspan="2" |vāỊỊu/vāru

|avi

Case system

The nominative case (karta), the object of a verb (karma), and the verb are somewhat in a sequence in Telugu sentence construction. "Vibhakti" (case of a noun) and "pratyāyamulu" (an affix to roots and words forming derivatives and inflections) depict the ancient nature and progression of the language. The "Vibhaktis" of Telugu language " డు [ɖu], ము [mu], వు [vu], లు [lu]", etc., are different from those in Sanskrit and have been in use for a long time.

Lexicon

Majority of the lexicon in Telugu is inherited from Proto-Dravidian language, a reconstructed hypothetical language of third millennium BCE. Telugu retained some of the most archaic words, markers and morphemes of the Dravidian origin. It shares its cognates with its closest South-Dravidian-II languages like Gondi, Kuwi and also with other Dravidian languages such as Tamil and Kannada.

The lexicon of Classical Telugu works shows a pervasive influence of Sanskrit; there is also evidence suggesting an earlier influence even before Nannaya. During the period 1000–1100 CE, Nannaya's re-writing of the Mahābhārata in Telugu (మహాభారతము) established the liberal borrowing of Sanskrit words.

Literature in Accatelugu (అచ్చతెలుగు), Mēlimitelugu (మేలిమితెలుగు), or Jānutelugu (జానుతెలుగు) by poets like Adibhatla Narayana Dasu and Ponneganti Telaganna emphasised the importance of native lexicon of Dravidian origin, in contrast to the extensive borrowings from Sanskrit and Prakrit.

English

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Telugu

Romanisation (ISO 15919)

IPA

Writing system

{| class="wikitable" align=right style="margin-left:1em"

|+Consonants –

Telugu script is an abugida comprising 60 symbols – 16 vowels, 3 vowel modifiers, and 41 consonants. Telugu has a complete set of letters that follow a system to express sounds. The script is derived from the Brahmi script like those of many other Indian languages. Telugu script is written from left to right and comprises sequences of both simple and complex characters. It is syllabic in nature – the basic units of writing are syllables. Inasmuch as the number of possible syllables is very large, syllables are composed of more basic units such as vowels ("acchu" or "swaram") and consonants ("hallu" or "vyanjanam"). Consonants in consonant clusters take shapes that are very different from the shapes they take elsewhere. Consonants are presumed pure consonants, that is, without any vowel sound in them. However, it is traditional to write and read consonants with an implied "a" vowel sound. When consonants combine with other vowel signs, the vowel part is indicated orthographically using signs known as vowel "mātras". The shapes of vowel "mātras" are also very different from the shapes of the corresponding vowels.

Historically, a sentence used to end with either a single bar। ("pūrna virāmam") or a double bar॥ ("dīrgha virāmam"); in handwriting, Telugu words were not separated by spaces. However, in modern times, English punctuation (commas, semicolon, etc.) has virtually replaced the old method of punctuation.

Telugu has full-zero ("anusvāra" or "sunna" ) ( ం ), half-zero ("arthanusvāra" or "candrabindu" or "ara-sunna" ) (ఁ) and visarga ( ః ) to convey various shades of nasal sounds. [la] and [La], [ra] and [Ra] are differentiated.

Literature

Ancient Telugu Writings Period (300 BC 500 CE)

Amaravati Stupa

Amarāvati Stupa is a ruined Buddhist stūpa at the village of Amaravathi, Palnadu district, Andhra Pradesh, India, probably built in phases between the third century BCE and about 250 CE. The word "nagabu" was one of the first Telugu words that was written on the Amaravati Stupa.

Vipparla and Lakshmipuram Writings

Vipparla Inscription of Jayasimha I and the Lakshmipuram inscription of the Mangi yuvaraja were the earliest Telugu inscriptions of Eastern chalukyas found in the 7th century AD.

thumb

Addanki Poem

Addanki inscription also known as the Pandaranga inscription belongs to 848AD, excavated near the Thousand Pillar Temple of Addanki. It is testimony to a flourishing Telugu literature much before the available literary texts. Locals believe that this is the first poem ever to be written in Telugu, also called the first Padya Sasanam(Poetic inscription) with (dvipada, with Yati and Prasa; style taruvoja)Staying with the Boya campaign, Pandaranga got victories in all military campaigns of his master Gunaga Vijayaditya III. The inscription spoke about the donation of land by the king to him for his successful military exploits.

Telugu Jain Literature Period (850-1020 CE)

Malliya Rechana

Malliya Rechana composed the first Telugu poetic prosody book Kavijanasrayam (pre-Nannayya chandassu). This was a popular one and referred by many poets. There seems to be even an earlier prosody book by Rechana's guru Vaadindra Chudamani which is not available.

Veturi Prabhakara Sastry in 1900s mentioned the existence of Pre-Nannayya Chandassu in Raja Raja Narendra Pattabhisheka Sanchika. Rechana's work is variously dated from 940 CE to 12th and 13th century. Most scholars date him to post-Nannaya period.

The Pre-Nannaya Period (before 1020 CE)

In the earliest period Telugu literature existed in the form of inscriptions, precisely from 575 CE onward. Metrically composed Telugu inscriptions and those with ornamental or literary prose appear from 630 CE. His novel Rajasekhara Charitamu was inspired by the Vicar of Wakefield. His work marked the beginning of a dynamic of socially conscious Telugu literature and its transition to the modern period, which is also part of the wider literary renaissance that took place in Indian culture during this period. Other prominent literary figures from this period are Gurajada Appa Rao, Viswanatha Satyanarayana, Gurram Jashuva, Rayaprolu Subba Rao, Devulapalli Krishnasastri and Srirangam Srinivasa Rao, popularly known as Mahakavi Sri Sri. Sri Sri was instrumental in popularising free verse in spoken Telugu (vaaduka bhasha), as opposed to the pure form of written Telugu used by several poets in his time. Devulapalli Krishnasastri is often referred to as the Shelley of Telugu literature because of his pioneering works in Telugu Romantic poetry.

Viswanatha Satyanarayana won India's national literary honour, the Jnanpith Award for his magnum opus Ramayana Kalpavrukshamu. C. Narayana Reddy won the Jnanpith Award in 1988 for his poetic work, Viswambara. Ravuri Bharadhwaja won the third Jnanpith Award for Telugu literature in 2013 for Paakudu Raallu, a graphic account of life behind the screen in film industry. Kanyasulkam, the first social play in Telugu by Gurajada Appa Rao, was followed by the progressive movement, the free verse movement and the Digambara style of Telugu verse. Other modern Telugu novelists include Unnava Lakshminarayana (Maalapalli), Bulusu Venkateswarulu (Bharatiya Tatva Sastram), Kodavatiganti Kutumba Rao and Buchi Babu.

Media

Telugu support on digital devices

Telugu input, display, and support were initially provided on the Microsoft Windows platform. Subsequently, various browsers, computer applications, operating systems, and user interfaces were localised in Telugu language for Windows and Linux platforms by vendors and free and open-source software volunteers. Telugu-capable smart phones were also introduced by vendors in 2013.

References

Bibliography

Albert Henry Arden, A Progressive Grammar of the Telugu Language (1873).
Charles Philip Brown, English–Telugu dictionary (1852; revised ed. 1903);
The Linguistic Legacy of Indo-Guyanese The Linguistic Legacy of Indian-Guyanese
Languages of Mauritius Languages of Mauritius – Mauritius Attractions
Charles Philip Brown, A Grammar of the Telugu Language (1857)
P. Percival, Telugu–English dictionary: with the Telugu words printed in the Roman as well as in the Telugu Character (1862, Internet Archive edition)
Gwynn, J. P. L. (John Peter Lucius). A Telugu–English Dictionary Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press (1991; online edition ).
Uwe Gustafsson, An Adiwasi Oriya–Telugu–English dictionary, Central Institute of Indian Languages Dictionary Series, 6. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Language (1989).
Callā Rādhākr̥ṣṇaśarma, Landmarks in Telugu Literature: A Short Survey of Telugu Literature (1975).

External links

Telugu language at Encyclopædia Britannica
Dictionary of mixed Telugu By Charles Philip Brown
Origins of Telugu Script

Etymology

History

Geographical influence

Telugu region boundaries

Telugu Place Names

Dialects and Teluguoid languages

Phonology

Consonants

Colloquial speech

Grammar

Morphosyntax

Word order

Noun classes (gender)

Demonstratives

Case system

Lexicon

English

Telugu

Romanisation (ISO 15919)

IPA

Writing system

Literature

Ancient Telugu Writings Period (300 BC 500 CE)

Amaravati Stupa

Vipparla and Lakshmipuram Writings

Addanki Poem

Telugu Jain Literature Period (850-1020 CE)

Malliya Rechana

The Pre-Nannaya Period (before 1020 CE)

Media

Telugu support on digital devices

See also

References

Bibliography

External links