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Telugu language
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“Telugu” redirects here. For other uses, see Telugu (disambiguation).
Telugu
తెలుగు
Spoken in: India
Region: Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Chattisgarh, Puducherry, Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Total speakers: 70 million native, 75 million total [1]
Ranking: 14 [2]
Language family: Dravidian
South-Central
Telugu
Writing system: Telugu script
Official status
Official language in: India
Regulated by: No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: te
ISO 639-2: tel
ISO 639-3: tel
This page contains Indic text. Without rendering support you may see irregular vowel positioning and a lack of conjuncts. More…
Telugu or Telegu (తెలుగు) is one of the four classical languages of India. It is a South-Central Dravidian language mostly spoken in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, where it is the official language. The Telugu script is derived from the Brāhmī script of the Mauryan Empire. Telugu has been subjected to prolonged, enormous influence from Sanskrit and also from the Prakrits, the spoken Indo-Aryan languages of medieval North India. Consequently, the vocabulary of Telugu is heavily Indo-Aryan.
As Velcheru Narayana Rao states in page 3 of his book “Classical Telugu Poetry”: “every Sanskrit word is potentially a Telugu word as well, and literary texts in Telugu may be lexically Sanskrit or Sanskritized to an enormous extent, perhaps sixty percent or more.” As C.P Brown states in page 266 of his book “A Grammar of the Telugu language”: “Every Telugu rule is laboriously deduced from a Sanskrit canon”. As David Shulman states in page 3 of his book “Classical Telugu Poetry”: “The enlivening presence of Sanskrit is everywhere evident in Andhra civilization, as it is in the Telugu language”. Including non-native speakers it is the most spoken Dravidian language[3] and the most spoken language in India after Hindi and Bengali.[4] It was conferred the status of a Classical language by the Government of India.[5][6]
It is one of the twenty-two official languages of the Republic of India.[7] It is widely spoken in Andhra Pradesh and also spoken in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Orissa, and Puducherry, with major populations in Bengaluru and Chennai; the dialects spoken in these places vary greatly from the standard version of the language. It is also spoken among a diaspora population in the USA, Malaysia, Mauritius, South Africa, Ireland, Fiji, Reunion, Trinidad and the UK among other countries around the world.
Writing system
The name Telugu written in the Telugu script
Main article: Telugu script
The earliest evidence for Brahmi script in South India comes from Bhattiprolu in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh.[19] Bhattiprolu was a great centre of Buddhism since 4th century BCE (Pre-Mauryan time) from where Buddhism spread to east Asia. A variant of Asokan Brahmi script, called Bhattiprolu Script, the progenitor of Old Telugu script, was found on the Buddha’s relic casket.[20]
The famous Muslim historian and scholar of 10th century, Al-Biruni referred to Telugu language and script as “Andhri”.[21]
Telugu script is written from left to right and consists of sequences of simple and/or complex characters. The script is 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 sixty symbols, of which 16 are vowels, three vowel modifiers, and forty-one consonants. Spaces are used between words as word separators.
The sentence ends with either a single bar | (“purna virama”) or a double bar || (“deergha virama”). Traditionally, in handwriting, Telugu words were not separated by spaces. Modern punctuation (commas, semicolon, etc.) were introduced with the advent of print.[22]
There is a set of symbols for numerals, though Arabic numbers are typically used.
Geographic distribution
Telugu is mainly spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh and in the neighboring states of Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa,Chhattisgarh, some parts of Jharkhand and the Kharagpur region of West Bengal in India. It is also spoken in Australia,Bahrain, Canada, Fiji, Malaysia, Singapore,Mauritius,Ireland,South Africa, the United Arab Emirates,the United States and the United Kingdom where there is a considerable Telugu diaspora. Telugu is the third largest spoken language in the country after Hindi and Bangla.[4]
Official status
Telugu is one of the 22 official languages of India. It was declared the official language of Andhra Pradesh when the state was formed in October 1953 on linguistic basis.[11]
Telugu also has official language status in the Yanam District of the Union Territory of Pondicherry.
See also: States of India by Telugu speakers
Dialects
Waddar,[12] Chenchu,[13] Savara,[14] and Manna-Dora[15] are all closely related to Telugu.[16] Dialects of Telugu are Berad, Dasari, Dommara, Golari, Kamathi, Komtao, Konda-Reddi, Salewari, Telangana, Telugu, Vijayawada, Vadaga, Srikakula, Visakhapatnam, Toorpu (East) Godavari, Paschima (West) Godavari, Kandula, Rayalaseema, Nellooru, Prakasam, Guntooru, Tirupati, Vadari and Yanadi (Yenadi).[17]
In Tamil Nadu the Telugu dialect is classified into Salem, Coimbatore, and 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 Tamil, Kannada, Hindi, Bangla, Gujarati, and Marathi, Standard Telugu is often called a Shuddha Bhaasha (”pure language”).
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