Telugu language
Language
name=Telugu | nativename=తెలుగు | familycolor=Dravidian | states=India | region=Andhra Pradesh and neighboring states | speakers=66 million native, 80 million total | rank=13"17 (native); in a near tie with Korean, Vietnamese, Marathi and Tamil | fam2=Central | fam3=Telugu | nation=India | iso2=tel|iso3=tel|notice=Indic}}
Telugu (తెలుగు) (also "Telegu") is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, where it is the official language. It is the Dravidian language with the largest number of speakers (including non-native speakers), the second-largest spoken language in India after Hindi, and one of the 22 national languages of India.Telugu words appear in the Maharashtri Prakrit anthology of poems (the Gathasaptashathi) collected by the first century BC Satavahana King Hala( Popularly beleived to be collected by GUNADHYA). Telugu speakers were probably the oldest peoples inhabiting the land between the Krishna and Godavari rivers.
The land of Andhra was originally called as "Trilingadesa" which means the land surrounded by three lingas (Srisailam, Kaleeshwaram and Draksharamam). Hence the language spoken in this region was called as "Trilingamu" or "Trilinga Bhasa" or "Telungu" which later transformed as Telugu.
Andhra society is one of the ancient societies of India, and the name Andhra has remained unchanged since antiquity. This is confirmed by the tales about Andhras in epics like Mahabharatam and Ramayanam, in great puranas, and in Buddhist Jataka Tales. The first clear historical inscriptions in Telugu appear about the 7th century AD and known literature starts with Nannaya writing the Andhra Mahabharata in the 11th century AD. There has been prolific literature ever since, but the golden age is considered by many to be the 16th century, under the patronage of the Vijayanagar Emperor Krishna Deva Raya. Though Krishna Deva Raya was a Kanarese, he was so much impressed by Telugu that he praised, "Of all the languages spoken in the country, Telugu is the best" (Desa bhaashalandu Telugu lessa). However this statement has also been attributed to the Telugu poet Srinatha. The poet Ravindranath Tagore is said to have stated that Telugu is the sweetest language. The famous Tamil poet Subramania Bharati has also sung thus "Sundara Telunginil Pattisaithu" which literally means "Sing in beautiful Telugu"
However, the purest form of Telugu was spoken under the reign of the Kakatiyas. One of the greatest Telugu poets, Pothanna, hailed from this region too.
The western portion of the Telugu speaking lands came under the influence of Mughal rulers during and after the 14th century, and most recently by the Nizams of Hyderabad. Ancient Sanskrit, Persian and Hindi influences show most in the Telugu dialect from these regions. In 1956, 10 Nizam districts and four districts of Rayalaseema were merged to the so-called Northern Circar districts forming the modern Telugu vernacular state of Andhra Pradesh.
The Telugu and Kannada had same script till around 220 AD. One can see the common script carved on stone in Delhi National Museum. Old Kannada or HaleGannada is essentially the continuation of the Kadamba script. The Kadamba script itself evolved from Brahmic script. It was used to write South Indian languages of Kannada and Telugu. In fact, Old Kannada is also known as the Kannada-Telugu script.
Differentiation of the Old Kannada script into the modern scripts of Kannada and Telugu began as early as the 13th century CE, but the process did not finish until the early 19th century CE with the arrival of printing. Even so, the Telugu and Kannada scripts have remained extremely similar.[1] [2]ClassificationTelugu is a Dravidian language, related to Kannada, Malayalam, and Tamil, all of which are national languages of India. Other closely-related Dravidian languages are Chenchu, Savara, and Waddar. Like all Dravidian languages, there has been substantial historical borrowing of words from Indo-European languages, particularly Sanskrit.Telugu is mainly spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh and a bit in the neighboring states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa, and Chhattisgarh in India, but it is also spoken in Bahrain, Fiji, Malaysia, Mauritius and the United Arab Emirates where there are large numbers of Telugu-speaking expatriates.Official statusTelugu is one of the official languages of India. It is the official language of the state of Andhra Pradesh.DialectsThe dialects of Telugu identified by Ethnologue are Berad, Dasari, Dommara, Golari, Kamathi, Komtao, Konda-Reddi, Madiga Salewari, padmasali, Telangana, Telugu, Vadaga, Vadari, Srikakulam, Visakhapatnam, East Godavari, Rayalaseema, Nellore and Guntur. In Tamil Nadu the Telugu dialect is classified into Salem, Coimbatore, Chennai Telugu dialects. It is also widely spoken in Virudhunagar, Tuticorin, Madurai and Thanjavur districts.
Along with the most standard forms of Indian languages like Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, and Hindi, Standard Telugu is often called a Suddha Bhaasha ("pure language").Derived languagesThe dialect spoken in the area between Guntur (Guntur) and Rajahmundry (East Godavari; Rajamahendri in ancient times) where the first Telugu scholar Nannaya Bhattaraka first wrote the script and other important works is considered the standard dialect. Nannaya has given Telugu a character and the form of language.19th century Englishmen called Telugu the Italian of the East as all words in Telugu end with a vowel sound, but it is believed that Italian explorer Niccolò Da Conti coined the phrase in the 15th Century. Possibly because of its high use of open syllables (consonant+vowel), Telugu is sometimes also nicknamed "Tenugu", which means "as sweet as honey".Vowelsఅ ఆ ఇ ఈ ఉ ఊ ఋ ౠ ఌ ౡ ఎ ఏ ఐ ' " " అం అఃConsonantsక ఖ గ ఘ ఙ
చ ఛ జ ఝ ఞ
ట ఠ డ ఢ ణ
త థ ద ధ న
ప ఫ బ భ మ
య ర ల వ శ ష స హ ళ క్ష ఱ
PhonologyHistorical sound changesIn Telugu, Karta కర్త (nominative case or the doer), Karma కర్మ (object of the verb) and Kriya క్రియ (action or the verb) follow a sequence. Telugu also has the Vibhakthi విభక్తి (preposition) tradition.Ramudu) బంతి (bantini) కొట్టు (kottadu)>| Literally - | Rama ball hit | | Reformatting it - | "Rama hit the ball" | Telugu is often considered an agglutinative language, where certain syllables are added to the end of a noun in order to denote its case:These agglutinations apply to all nouns generally in the singular and plural.
Here is how other cases are manifested in Telugu:LocationMotionMorphosyntactic alignment| Case | Usage | English Example | Telugu Example |
|---|
| Oblique case | all-round case; any situation except nominative | ఇంటిగురించి | |
RelationPolyagglutinationWhile the examples given above are single agglutinations, Telugu allows for polyagglutination, the unique feature of being able to add multiple suffixes to words to denote more complex features:
For example, one can affix both "నించి; ninchi - from" and "లో; lo - in" to a noun to denote from within. An example of this: "రాములోనించి; ramuloninchi - from within Ramu"
Here is an example of a triple agglutination: "వాటిమధ్యలోనించి; vaTimadhyaloninchi - from in between them"Vowel HarmonyInclusive/Exclusive PronounsTelugu exhibits one of the rare features that Dravidian languages share with few others: the inclusive and exclusive we. The bifurcation of the First Person Plural pronoun (we in English) into inclusive (మనము; manamu) and exclusive (మేము; memu) versions can also be found in Tamil and Malayalam, although it is not used in modern Kannada.Like all Dravidian languages, Telugu has a base (or lexicon) of words which are essentially Dravidian in origin. Words that describe objects or actions associated with common or everyday life: like తల; 'tala' (head), పులి; 'puli' (tiger), ఊరు; 'Uru' (town/city) have cognates in other Dravidian languages and are indigenous to the Dravidian language family.
However, Telugu is also largely Sanskritized, that is, it has a wide variety of words of Sanskrit/Prakrit origin. This large Sanskrit influence can be attributed to many factors. One major influence was the rule of the Satavahana kings, who extensively used Prakrit as the official language of courts and government, whereas their subjects spoke Dravidian Telugu. Further, cultural exchange between the Aryan peoples and the Dravidians was very common since ancient times. As is the case with most Indian languages, the vocabulary of what is referred to as 'pure' Telugu is almost exclusively based on Sanskrit.
Telugu pronouns follow the systems for gender and respect also found in other Indian languages. The second person plural 'miru' is used in addressing someone with respect, and there are also respectful third personal pronouns pertaining to both genders. A specialty of the Telugu language, however, is that the third person non-respectful feminine is used to refer to objects, and there is no special 'neuter' gender that is used.
Telugu also bifurcates the first personal pronoun into inclusive and exclusive.Main article: Telugu script The Telugu (తెలుగు) script is believed to descend from the Brahmi script of the Ashokan era. Merchants took the Eastern Chalukyan Script to Southeast Asia where it parented the scripts of Mon, Burmese, Thai, Khmer, C"am, Javanese and Balinese languages. Their similarities to Telugu script can be discerned even today. Its appearance is quite similar to the Kannada script, its closest cousin.
Telugu script is written from left to right and consists of sequences of simple and/or complex characters. The script is largely syllabic in nature - the basic units of writing are syllables. Since the number of possible syllables is very large, syllables are composed of more basic units such as vowels ("achchu" or "swar") and consonants ("hallu" or "vyanjan"). Consonants in consonant clusters take shapes which are very different from the shapes they take elsewhere. Consonants are presumed to be 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 "maatras". The shapes of vowel "maatras" are also very different from the shapes of the corresponding vowels.
The overall pattern consists of 60 symbols, of which 16 are vowels, 3 vowel modifiers, and 41 consonants. Spaces are used between words as word separators.
The sentence ends with either a single ("purna virama") or a double bar ("deergha virama").
They also have a set of symbols for numerals, though Arabic numbers are typically used.
Telugu is assigned Unicode codepoints: 0C00-0C7F (3072-3199).|Telugu| English | |'కటి| one | |రెండు| two | |మూడు| three | |అమ్మ| mother | |ఆవు| cow | |ఇల్లు| house | |ఈగ| housefly |
Main article: Telugu literature The famous Indian literary epic, the Mahabharatha, was translated into Telugu over a period of a few centuries by Nannaya, Tikkana and Yerrapragada. Nannaya is also credited with formalizing Telugu grammar. Pothana wrote the Bhagavatam that focuses on devotion to Mahavishnu and his avatars (incarnations). Vemana wrote moral and social poems that are still popular in common man's usage. Also the list of illustrious Telugu writers include Srinathudu, Molla etc.,
The Vijayanagara dynasty produced a very prolific set of poets during the reign of Sri Krishnadevaraya. Allasani Peddana, Nandi Timmana, Maayadagari Mallana, Ayyalaraju Ramabhadrudu, Tenali Ramakrishna, Dhoorjati and Pingali Soorana were Krishnadevaraya's court poets.
Sri Pothuluri Veerabrahmendra Swami (like his western counterpart Nostradamus) composed "Kalagnanam", the records of the past, present, and future.
A number of famous luminaries in classical Indian music called "Carnatic Music" wrote their works in Telugu. Thyagaraja,Syama Sastri , Annamacharya, Kshethrayya and Badrachala Ramadasu are among a large number of contributors. Modern composers like Mysore Vasudevachari also chose Telugu as their medium of composition. Even though poets like Annamacharya also composed in other South Indian languages, a great amount of their work was in Telugu.* Telugu cinema
* List of Telugu films
* List of Telugu language television channels
* Languages of India
* List of national languages of India
* List of Indian languages by total speakers
* Telugu Cholas Instrumental in the flowering of the language
* Andhra Pradesh
* Telugu Literature, Telugu Kids Stories, Telugu Culture,and Telugu Traditions
* Telugu Language & Literature
* Vignanam - Learn Something Today
* Wordanywhere.com Hindi/Telugu/English translator
* TELUGU...a language sweeter than honey
* Telugus Abroad
* Ethnologue report for Telugu
* On-line English-Telugu Dictionaries (C. P. Brown's and V. Rao Vemuri's)
* On-line Telugu-English Dictionary(C.P.Brown)
* Telugu Language resources
* Useful Telugu phrases in English and other Indian languages.
* Telugu organizations in the USA.
* Romanised to Unicode Telugu transliterator
* Telugu Women Writers of the last millennium
* Padma - Mozilla extension for automatic transform to Unicode for Telugu web sites using dynamic fonts like Eenadu, Tikkana, Vaartha, Hemalatha, Andhra Jyothy, Andhra Prabha, Telugu Lipi etc.
* Padma - Unicode Transformer for Telugu Text in RTS, fonts like Eenadu, Tikkana, Vaartha, Hemalatha, Andhra Jyothy, Andhra Prabha etc.
*Telmun language Telugu : the Untold Legacy
*http://www.bloglines.com/public/telugublogs Telugu blogs
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