Telugu

Writing system

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The famous Muslim historian and scholar of 10th century, Al-Biruni referred to Telugu language and script as "Andhri".

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 “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 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 viramam”) or a double bar || (“deergha viramam”). Traditionally, in handwriting, Telugu words were not separated by spaces. Modern punctuation (commas, semicolon, etc.) were introduced with the advent of print.

There is a set of symbols for numerals, though Arabic numbers are typically used.

Telugu is assigned Unicode code points: 0C00-0C7F (3072–3199).

Alphabet

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Onamaalu, or the Telugu alphabet consist of 60 symbols - 16 vowels, 3 vowel modifiers, and 41 consonants. Sanskrit and Telugu alphabets are similar and exhibit one-one correspondence. Telugu has complete set of letters which follows scientific system to express sounds. Some of them are introduced to express fine shades of difference in sounds.

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

Telugu has .CH and .JH which are not represented in Sanskrit, and S, SH, and KSH which are not found in Tamil.

Telugu script can reproduce the full range of Sanskrit phonetics without losing any of the text's originality. Telugu has made its letters expressive of all the sounds and hence it has to deal with significant borrowings from Sanskrit, Tamil and Hindustani.

Telugu

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Telugu is a Central Dravidian language primarily spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, where it is an official language. It is also spoken in the neighboring states of Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu. According to the 2001 Census of India, Telugu is the language with the third largest number of native speakers in India (74 million) and thirteenth in the Ethnologue list of most-spoken languages worldwide. It is one of the twenty-two scheduled languages of the Republic of India and one of the four classical languages.

Telugu is the only literary Central Dravidian language, and it was heavily influenced by Sanskrit and Prakrit. It has also been influenced by Urdu around Hyderabad. Telugu borrowed several features of Sanskrit that have subsequently been lost in Sanskrit's daughter languages such as Hindi and Bengali, especially in terms of the pronunciation of some vowels and consonants.