An Introduction to Telugu

(Reproduced from a forthcoming book by Prof. Vemuri)

Telugu is the language of the southern Indian state of Andhra
Pradesh. Well over 75 million people, the world over, speak Telugu,
and it stands second only to Hindi in India as to the number of native
speakers. According to linguists, Telugu is a Dravidian language. That
is to say, it does not belong to the Indo-Aryan family to which Hindi,
Sanskrit, Latin and Greek belong. Linguists also determined that the
four major southern Indian languages, namely Telugu, Tamil,
Kannada and Malayalam belong to the Dravidian family of languages.
If someone is counting, there are some twenty one Dravidian
languages in the Indian subcontinent. Some of these are still being
spoken in remote parts of Pakistan and Afganistan.
Although the roots of proto-Dravidian languages can be traced back
to several millennia before Christ, Telugu itself has a recorded history
from the 6th century A. D. and a fine literary record dating back to
the 11th century A. D. Much of the Telugu written literature, up to
the end of the nineteenth century was in highly formal “literary
style.” It is only in the twentieth century that colloquial spoken
language began to earn the literary mantle. Nowadays almost all the
language used in the media (print, radio, television, movies) is the
colloquial style. This book attempted only to capture this colloquial
style.
Telugu accepts foreign words with comfort and ease. Sanskrit and its
vocabulary heavily influenced Telugu literature; no other language
has as much of an influence on Telugu as Sanskrit has. Indeed a large
fraction of the characters of the Telugu alphabet – such as many of
the aspirated consonants - were created especially to facilitate the
writing and pronunciation of Sanskrit words. It is, therefore no
exaggeration to boast that some of the best Sanskrit pronunciation
can be heard from scholars residing in the coastal districts of Andhra
Pradesh. Just as Sanskrit found a permanent niche for itself in Telugu
literary circles, Arabic, Persian and Urdu words also found their way
into the administrative jargon of Telugu. With the advent of British
rule and the technology revolution sweeping the globe, it is no
surprise to see, nowadays, that a Telugu person cannot conduct a
conversation with another Telugu person for no more than a minute
before switching to English or sprinkling the conversation with
English words. No wonder J. B. S. Haldane, the well-known British
geneticist, once remarked that Telugu fills the bill as the most
suitable one to serve as India's national language.
In spite of this love affair between the Telugu-speaking people and
the English language, linguistically, culturally and grammatically,
Telugu and English are as far apart as two languages can be. In a
Telugu sentence the subject, object and verb come in that order,
whereas in English the normal order is subject-verb-object. For an
English speaking person the word order in Telugu appears inverted.
There are other subtle differences – especially when it comes to past
perfect tense.
In spite of these differences, Telugu is a very expressive and one of
the most regular languages of the world. Its grammar is simple and
structurally neat. Because of its vowel ending sounds, it has been the
language of choice for lyrical compositions in Karnatic music – one of
the two musical schools of India. Due to this reason, nineteenth
century Europeans dubbed this language, “the Italian of the East.”
In Telugu pronouns and verbs play a key role. The more you learn
about verbs and the declensions of pronouns, the better your
command will be. If you cannot recall the correct verb form for a
thought you have in mind, do not hesitate to use the English verb
and the chances are the other person will understand. In fact, Telugu
is so forgiving and accommodating that you can insert entire English
phrases in the middle of a Telugu sentence and it will pass as Telugu.
Many Telugu people you interact with use more English than Telugu
when they talk to their grand mother!
Another special feature of Telugu, as well as other Indian languages,
is the grammatical operation of sandhi, which literally means
“junction” or “union.” When two words are pronounced in rapid
succession, under some special circumstances, these words are fused
together into a new word with the resulting morphing of the words
at the point of fusion. In some circumstances, this fusing operation is
mandatory and in other circumstances it is optional. A rare example
from English is the morphing of “no one” into “none.” (Can you think
of any other examples?) Until the student understands the process
of analyzing this operation, it is best to avoid this operation, if at all
possible. As understanding of this is important for the mastery of the
language, it is treated extensively in one of the later chapters of this
book.
Like many things Indian, there has never been a serious effort to
standardize the language. Indians are truly the world’s freedom-
loving people; they like to do the things their own way. Variations in
the language from region to region often lead to slight variations in
spelling. Unless you are reading a highly standardized book, there is
no guarantee that the spelling you see is standard spelling. Added to
these variations, proofreading, it appears, is a job toward which no
one seems to pay any attention. This makes it difficult to assess
whether an apparent spelling error is real or merely a variation in
dialect. So is the situation with pronunciation. Variations in
pronunciation from region to region and from the educated urbanite
to the un-educated villager are so much that people are used to
listening and understanding non-standard Telugu. For the beginner,
this fluidity indeed is a blessing. Any errors you make are likely to be
accepted as a variation from the standard. So do not be afraid to
speak. And speaking is the best way to learn a new language. This
book is only a prop, treat it as such.
You made a wise decision to buy this book in order to learn Telugu.
Modern brain research points toward the possibility that people with
bi-lingual or multi-lingual talents are less likely to fall victim to
debilitating brain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s. There is also
anecdotal evidence that people who learn a second language are less
likely to be dyslexic – a learning disorder. Just like we keep our
physical body fit by exercising, so can we keep our mental faculties
fit by constantly challenging them. Learning to speak another
language is being touted as one such exercise.

THE TELUGU STUDIES INITIATIVE

The Telugu Studies Initiative supports instruction in Telugu language
and literature at Berkeley. With nearly 73 million Telugu speakers in,
India, Telugu is the most widely spoken Dravidian language and the
second-most spoken language in India. As of June 2014, there are
two Telugu-speaking states in India: Andhra Pradesh and Telangana
State. Its rich literary heritage includes famous writers such as
Kandukuri Viresalingam Pantulu and Guarajada Apparao.

The Telugu language program at Berkeley currently:

Enables young Indian Americans to appreciate and participate in

Telugu culture
Ensures that the Telugu language and its rich heritage are studied by
future generations of scholars from all backgrounds
Creates new and innovative materials to enhance the study of Telugu
Increases Berkeley’s library holdings in Telugu literature
Raises funds to bring Telugu scholars, artists and performers to the
Bay Area
Fall 2016 Establishment of the Telugu Society of America (TELSA)
Summer Studies Research Award
Spring 2014 Words in Action (a performance by UC Berkeley
Telugu language students)
August 2008 Two Telugu courses appear in UC Berkeley catalog
July 2008 $300,000 milestone reached
August 2007 First Telugu class started at UC Berkeley with 12
students
July 2007 Temporary Telugu Instructor Hired
December 2006 $20,000 milestone reached
June 2006 Town Hall Meeting in Milpitas

Goal of the Telugu Studies Initiative

In the future, we would like to recruit a full-time lecturer to offer

beginning, intermediate, and advanced Telugu courses on a
permanent basis; support an annual public lecture on Telugu
language, literature, or society; and hire an advanced graduate
student part-time to catalogue the growing number of Telugu
manuscripts coming to the library from India.

Also, critical to Telugu Studies is the culture of the Telangana region.

Our hope for the initiative is that it will in the future include a
program on Telangana culture, literature, perhaps even studies on
the Telangana dialect.

IMPORTANCE OF ANDHRA PRADESH MOTHER TONGUE–A STUDY ON

TELUGU LANGUAGE
M. Venkatalakshmamma, N. Munirathnamma

Abstract :
Telugu is the most widely spoken language amongst those using the
Brahmi script. These comprise the languages of south India (Tamil,
Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Tulu and others such as Sinhala
(spoken in Sri Lanka)and languages spoken in South East Asia such as
Burmese, Thai and Cambodian) In terms of population, Telugu ranks
second to Hindi among the Indian languages. The main languages
spoken in Andhra Pradesh are Telugu, Urdu, Hindi, Banjara, and
English followed by Tamil, Kannada, Marathi and Oriya. Telugu is the
principal and official language of the State. It was also referred to as
`Tenugu in the past. `Andhra is the name given to it since the
medieval times. Some argued that `Telugu was a corruption of
`Trilinga (Sanskrit meaning three `lingas). Its vocabulary is very much
influenced by Sanskrit. In the course of time, some Sanskrit
expressions used in Telugu got so naturalized that people regarded
them as pure Telugu words.