Telugu Script – Italian of the East
| Telugu is a language, which is said to be musical to the ears. The obscure origin of this language has led to it's not being delved upon. This article gives you an insight into the origin of the language; it's script and also just skims over the structure of the letters in the script of this language. |
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Introduction India is a treasure cove of languages, each language a gem in it's own right. Every single province probably has its own dialect and probably even it's own language. Hindi is the official language of the country. There are many languages other than Hindi, which do dominate the speech of Indians, as their mother tongue. Tamil, Kannada, Punjabi, Telugu are to name a few. Telugu is the most spoken language as a mother tongue in India, right after Hindi. Listening to people speak Telugu is supposed to sound like a melody. This might probably be attributed to the fact that most of the words in Telugu end with a vowel. This fact even led to the language being called the "Italian of the East" by the English during the 19th century. |
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The History of Telugu The history of the Telugu script is quite fascinating. Its origin itself is quite uncertain. 7th century AD is about the time when the first clear inscriptions in Telugu appeared. Nannaya's Telugu Mahabharata marks the milestone for the start of literature. The Telugu Mahabharata, also called the Andhra Mahabharata made it's debut in the 11th century. It has been proclaimed to be the earliest as well as the best manuscript in the language. |
| Let us categorize the Indian languages into the two main families for our convenience. The Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian. Telugu has its lineage traceable on the Dravidian family tree. As a matter of fact most south Indian languages, expect Konkani, have their roots from the Dravidian family. It's been claimed that the seals of Indus, found in Mohenjodaro and Harappa represent the Dravidian style. This civilization thrived along the Sindh River in the north and extended up to the Saraswati River basin in Pakistan and India. The script found there was pretty well developed, having more than four hundred symbols. Even with the lack of any direct evidence to the state of this language during the later centuries, analyses have led to the conclusion that this language fractioned into Northern, Central and Southern sub-families. It is believed that Telugu is one of the languages that the Central Dravidian sub-family evolved into. It is probable that the Telugu speaking tribes were the older Dravidians who immigrated from the north, inhabiting the land along the rivers Godavari and Krishna. |
| The present day Telugu script has descended from the Brahmee script (The Brahmee script is said to have been inspired by the Aramaic and other western scripts). The ancient Saatavahana dynasty brought the Brahmee script to the Telugu and even Kannada provinces. The similarity in the scripts of Telugu and Kannada can hardly be missed. Thus, Telugu, along with most of the south Indian languages, has developed from the Dravidian family of languages and has its script descended from the Brahmee script.The Kannada–Telugu script is also based on Calukya (6th century) inscriptions, the Grantha script, used in Tamil Nadu for Sanskrit since the 6th century. |
| Even though the Telugu script seems to have descended from the "old Kannada" script, it does not mean that the language itself has descended from Kannada. It is just that Kannada and Telugu scripts started taking form at the same period of time. But Kannada script evolved earlier. For example, Telugu and Kannada poetry, both have their early appearances dated back to the eight century. Telugu writers took a couple of more years than the Kannada writers to produce major poetic works. Literary works by the Kannada writers were available by the ninth century. The scripts developing at the same period and also due the similarity in the script has led to their origin being combined into the "old Kannada" script. The Telugu writers were busy creating literary works in Prakrit and Sanskrit during the eight century, which explains the delay in the production first full-fledged literary works in Telugu. |
| Ancient Sanskrit, Persian and Urdu influences are very noticeable in Telugu. Prakrut had its influence on the language during its earlier ages, but the succeeding Sanskrit influence for around 500-600 years was also quite strong. The Urdu influence is justified as a large portion of the lands was under the Mughal rulers around the 14th century. The 16th century has been considered as the 'Golden Age' for Telugu, patronized by Krishna Deva Raya, the then ruler of the Vijayanagar Empire. |
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Anatomy of Telugu All the letters of the Telugu script are cursive in their form. The letters and their modifiers look like they are parts of or combinationations of small circles. The letters of Telugu script can support the entire diaspora of words from all the Indian languages and almost all languages of the world. Each letter represents a unique syllable. Officially, this script has eighteen vowels, thirty six consonants and three othe letters called dual symbols. But of these, only thirteen vowels and thirty fie consonants are seen in the normal usage. 'NakAra pollu' and 'valapala gilaka' are two alternate symbols used for the consonants 'n' and 'r', respectively. Though rarely used, the letter 'zh' from Tamil script has been incorporated into the Telugu script. The letter 'F' is not a part of this script. But the phonetic 'Pha' has been modified to compensate for the letter. |
| There have been some features, which are very noticeable in the Telugu script:When using the Telugu script, it's noted that a consonant needs to have an inherent vowel. Some of the consonant-vowel pairs, which were used in old manuscripts, are rarely in use now. Like the vowel 'o', can be used in more than one way. |
| Vowels are used as independent letters, when they are present at the beginning of a syllable. Conjunct symbols, representing a combined form of essential parts of consonants, are used when any two consonants need to occur together. The derived form of each consonant bears a close resemblance to its primary form. The derived form is written generally below the consonant, which precedes it. The vowel, in this case, is attached to the first consonant. The similarity between the actual letter and it's derived form is hard to miss. But there are instances where the derived forms have nothing in common with the actual consonant. This is present with respect to only eight forms. |
| The characters of the Telugu script can be easily distinguished from one other, when they are typed out or in the printed form. But there are certain characters, which can easily be mistaken for another, when the text is handwritten, as in manuscripts. This might be due to the circular form of the letters, due to which some of the letters tend to look similar. The numerals of the Telugu script are also similar to the Kannada numerals. Telugu uses the Hindu-Arabic system of numerals for its decimal system. |
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