Telugu language

Telugu (తెలుగు) (also "Telegu") belongs to the Dravidian language family but with ample influence from the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family and is the official language of the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. It is the Dravidian language with the greatest number of speakers (including non-native speakers), the second largest spoken language in India after Hindi and one of the 22 official national languages of India. Telugu (the only Dravidian language to be heavily Sanskritized), along with the most higher forms of Indian vernacular languages like Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi and Hindi, is often called "Suddha Bhaasha" (Pure language). 19th century Englishmen called it 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.

History

Telugu words appear in the Maharashtri Prakrit anthology of poems (the Gathasaptashathi) collected by the first century BC Satavahana King Hala. 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.

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. [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/kannada.htm

Classification

Telugu 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 Sanskrit.

Geographic distribution

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. Recent controversial findings and research claim that Telugu is of Mesopotamian origin and was earlier spoken in the regions of Tigris and Euphrates and the Indus Valley. This is evident as a relationship is found between Telugu and Brahui, the language which is spoken in these regions. But this fact still has to be proven.

Official status

Telugu is one of the official languages of India. It is the official language of the state of Andhra Pradesh

Dialects

The 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.

Derived languages

The 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.

Sounds

Telugu is mellifluous in its approach. Telugu is regarded as a very sweet language because of its pronunciation with many open syllables (consonant+vowel). Telugu is sometimes also nicknamed "Tenugu", which means "as sweet as honey". Although some lament the influence English has had on modern Telugu, this has largely been confined to the lexicon: the grammar and phonology of Telugu have been little affected by English or other foreign languages, such as Urdu.

Vowels

అ ఆ ఇ ఈ ఉ ఊ ఋ ౠ ఌ ౡ ఎ ఏ ఐ ఒ ఓ ఔ అం అః

Consonants

క 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

Phonology

Historical sound changes

Grammar

In Telugu, Karta కర్త (nominative case or the doer), Karma కర్మ (object of the verb) and Kriya క్రియ (action or the verb) follow a sequence. This is one of the several reasons why Linguists classify Telugu as a Dravidian Language — this pattern is found in other Dravidian languages (as well as Sanskrit and other Indo-Aryan languages). Telugu also has the Vibhakthi విభక్తి (preposition) tradition.

Telugu -	Ramudu bantini kottadu రాముడు బంతిని కొట్టాడు
Literally -	రాముడు (Rama) బంతి (ball) కొట్టు(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:

Instrumental:	Ramunito	రామునితో	(తో; to)
Dative:	Ramuniki	రామునికి	(కి; ki)
Ablative:	Ramudininchi	రాముడినించి	(నించి; ninchi)
Genitive:	Ramuni	రాముని	(ని; ni)

These agglutinations apply to all nouns generally in the singular and plural.

Here is how other cases are manifested in Telugu:

Location

Case	Usage	English Example	Telugu Example
Adessive case	adjacent location	near/at/by the house	ఇంటిపక్క
Inessive case	inside something	inside the house	ఇంట్లో
Locative case	location	at/on/in the house	ఇంటిదగ్గర
Superessive case	on the surface	on (top of) the house	ఇంటిపై

Motion

Case	Usage	English Example	Telugu Example
Allative case	movement to (the adjacency of) something	to the house	ఇంటికి, ఇంటివైపు
Delative case	movement from the surface	from (the top of) the house	ఇంటిపైనించి
Egressive case	marking the beginning of a movement or time	beginning from the house	ఇంటినించి (ఇంటికెల్లి in some dialects)
Elative case	out of something	out of the house	ఇంటిలోనించి (ఇంట్లకెల్లి in some dialects)
Illative case	movement into something	into the house	ఇంటిలోనికి (ఇంట్లోకి)
Prosecutive case	across or along	along the road	రోడ్డుపోంటి
Sublative case	movement onto the surface	on(to) the house	ఇంటిపైకి
Terminative case	marking the end of a movement or time	as far as the house	ఇంటివరకు

Morphosyntactic alignment

Case	Usage	English Example	Telugu Example
Oblique case	all-round case; any situation except nominative	concerning the house	ఇంటిగురించి

Relation

Case	Usage	English Example	Telugu Example
Benefactive case	for, for the benefit of, intended for	for the house	ఇంటికోసం (ఇంటికొఱకు)
Causal case	because, because of	because of the house	ఇంటివలన
Comitative case	in company of something	with the house	ఇంటితో
Possessive case	direct possession of something	owned by the house	ఇంటియొక్క

Polyagglutination

While 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 Harmony

Inclusive/Exclusive Pronouns

Telugu 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.

Vocabulary

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.

Writing system

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).

Vocabulary examples

Telugu	English
ఒకటి	one
రెండు	two
మూడు	three
అమ్మ	mother
ఆవు	cow
ఇల్లు	house
ఈగ	housefly

Literature in Telugu

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.

External links

Dravidian languages | Languages of India | Vowel harmony languages | Andhra Pradesh | Languages_used_in_Tamil_Nadu

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