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.