Telugu language


Telugu is a Dravidian language native to the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where it is also the official language. Spoken by about 96 million people, Telugu is the most widely spoken member of the Dravidian language family, and one of the twenty-two scheduled languages of the Republic of India. It is one of the few languages that has primary official status in more than one Indian state, alongside Hindi and Bengali. Telugu is one of the languages designated as a classical language by the Government of India. It is the fourteenth most spoken native language in the world. Modern Standard Telugu is based on the accent and dialect of erstwhile Krishna, Guntur, East Godavari and West Godavari districts of Coastal Andhra.
Telugu is also spoken in the states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and the union territories of Puducherry and Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Although it is not a main language in those states, and only a minority speaks them. It is also spoken by members of the Telugu diaspora spread across countries like the United States, Australia, Malaysia, Mauritius, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and others. Telugu is the fastest-growing language in the United States. It is also a protected language in South Africa and is offered as an optional third language in schools in KwaZulu-Natal province.
According to Mikhail S. Andronov, Telugu split from the Proto-Dravidian language around 1000 BCE. The earliest Telugu words appear in Prakrit inscriptions dating to, found in Bhattiprolu, Andhra Pradesh. Telugu label inscriptions and Prakrit inscriptions containing Telugu words have been dated to the era of Emperor Ashoka, as well as to the Satavahana and Vishnukundina periods. The first long inscription entirely in Telugu, dated to 575 CE, is attributed to the Renati Choda king Dhanunjaya and found in the Kadapa district. Inscriptions in the Old Telugu script were found as far away as Indonesia and Myanmar. Telugu has been used as an official language for over 1,500 years. It served as the court language for several dynasties in southern and eastern India, including the Telugu Chodas, Eastern Chalukyas, Eastern Gangas, Kakatiyas, Vijayanagara Empire, Qutb Shahis, Madurai Nayaks, and Thanjavur Nayaks. Notably, it was also adopted as an official language outside its homeland, even by non-Telugu dynasties, such as the Thanjavur Marathas in Tamil Nadu.
Telugu has an unbroken, prolific, and diverse literary tradition of over a thousand years. Pavuluri Mallana's Sāra Sangraha Ganitamu is the first scientific treatise on mathematics in any Dravidian language. Avadhānaṃ, a literary performance that requires immense memory power and an in-depth knowledge of literature and prosody, originated and was specially cultivated among Telugu poets for over five centuries. Roughly 10,000 pre-colonial inscriptions exist in Telugu.
In the precolonial era, Telugu became the language of high culture throughout South India. Vijaya Ramaswamy compared it to the overwhelming dominance of French as the cultural language of Europe during roughly the same era. Telugu also predominates in the evolution of Carnatic music, one of two main subgenres of Indian classical music and is widely taught in music colleges focusing on Carnatic tradition. Over the centuries, many non-Telugu speakers have praised the natural musicality of Telugu speech, referring to it as a mellifluous and euphonious language.

Etymology

Speakers of Telugu refer to it as simply Telugu or Telugoo. Older forms of the name include Teluṅgu and Tenuṅgu. Tenugu is derived from the Proto-Dravidian word *ten to mean "the people who lived in the south/southern direction". The name Telugu, then, is a result of an "n" to "l" alternation established in Telugu.
The popular belief holds that Telugu is derived from Trilinga of Trilinga Kshetras being the land bounded by the three Lingas which is Telugu homeland. P. Chenchiah and Bhujanga Rao note that Atharvana Acharya in the 13th century wrote a grammar of Telugu, calling it the Trilinga Śabdānusāsana ''. However, most scholars note that Atharvana's grammar was titled Atharvana Karikavali. Appa Kavi in the 17th century explicitly wrote that Telugu was derived from Trilinga. Scholar C. P. Brown made a comment that it was a "strange notion" since the predecessors of Appa Kavi had no knowledge of such a derivation.
George Abraham Grierson and other linguists doubt this derivation, holding rather that Telugu was the older term and Trilinga must be the later Sanskritisation of it. If so the derivation itself must have been quite ancient because Triglyphum, Trilingum and Modogalingam are attested in ancient Greek sources, the last of which can be interpreted as a Telugu rendition of "Trilinga".

History

Telugu, as a Dravidian language, descends from Proto-Dravidian, a proto-language. Linguistic reconstruction suggests that Proto-Dravidian was spoken around the fourth millennium BCE. Comparative linguistics confirms that Telugu belongs to the South Dravidian-II sub-group, which also includes the non-literary languages like Gondi, Kuvi, Koya, Pengo, Konda and Manda.
Proto-Telugu is the reconstructed linguistic ancestor of all the dialects and registers of Telugu. Russian linguist Mikhail S. Andronov, places the split of Telugu at 1000 BCE.
The linguistic history of Telugu is periodised as follows:
  • Pre-historic Telugu
  • Old Telugu
  • Middle Telugu
  • Modern Telugu

    Pre-historic Telugu (c. 600 BCE – 200 BCE)

Pre-historic Telugu is identified with the period around 600 BCE or even earlier. Pre-historic Telugu is considered one of the most conservative languages of the Dravidian family based on its linguistic features.
  • Plural Markers: One notable feature is the presence of contrast in plural markers, such as -r, -ḷ and -nkkVḷ, which was lost in the earliest forms of many other Dravidian languages. Examples include pū-ḷ, ā-ḷ, distinct from kolan-kuḷ, and ī-gaḷ. By the time of early writings, -kVḷ marker underwent back-stem formation with the root words, losing its status as a distinct plural marker, eg. mrā̃-kulu, later getting analyzed as mrā̃ku-lu, creating a root mrā̃ku. Other examples include goḍugu, ciluka, eluka, īga.
  • Nominative Markers: The nominative markers were -nḏu and -aṁbu, which continued to appear in early inscriptions.
  • Phonemic Retention: The early language displayed high phonemic retention, with characteristic phonemes like the voiced retroflex approximant and the voiced alveolar plosive, which evolved into the alveolar trill in different positions. Both /d/ and /r/ are evidenced as distinct phonemes in early epigraphic records.
  • Tenses: Tenses were structured as "past vs non-past," and gender was categorized as "masculine vs non-masculine."
  • Demonstratives: Three demonstratives were in use: ā, ī, and ū.
  • Non-Palatalized Initials: Non-palatalized initials are identified in words like kēsiri, found in inscriptions up until the 8th century CE.
  • Word Endings: Words typically ended in vowels, though some had consonant endings with sonorants like -y, -r, -m, -n, -l, -ḷ, -ḻ, and -w. Classical Telugu developed an epenthetic -u that vowelized the final consonant, a feature that has been partly retained in Modern Telugu.
  • Place Name Suffixes: Archaic place name suffixes include -puḻōl, -ūr, -paḷḷiya, -pāḷiyam, -paṟṟu, -konḏa, -pūṇḍi, -paṭṭaṇa, pāḻu, paṟiti, and pāka.
  • Apical Displacement: Apical displacement was underway for certain words.
  • Conjunctive Marker: The conjunctive marker -um had various structural applications.

    Earliest records

One of the earliest Telugu words, nāgabu, found at the Amaravati Stupa, is dated to around 200 BCE. This word was further analyzed by Iravatham Mahadevan in his attempts to decipher the Indus script. Several Telugu words, primarily personal and place names, were identified at Amaravati, Nagarjunakonda, Krishna river basin, Ballari, Eluru, Ongole and Nellore between 200 BCE and 500 CE.
The Ghantasala Brahmin inscription and the pillar inscription of Vijaya Satakarni at Vijayapuri, Nagarjunakonda, and other locations date to the first century CE. Additionally, the Tummalagudem inscription of the Vishnukundinas dates to the 5th century CE. Telugu place names in Prakrit inscriptions are attested from the 2nd century CE onwards.
A number of Telugu words were found in the Sanskrit and Prakrit inscriptions of the Satavahana dynasty, Vishnukundina dynasty, and Andhra Ikshvakus. The coin legends of the Satavahanas, in all areas and all periods, used a Prakrit dialect without exception. Some reverse coin legends are in Telugu and Tamil languages.

Post-Ikshvaku period

The period from the 4th century CE to 1022 CE marks the second phase of Telugu history, following the Andhra Ikshvaku period. The first long inscription entirely in Telugu, dated to 575 CE, is attributed to the Renati Choda king Dhanunjaya and found in the Kadapa district.
An early Telugu label inscription, "tolacuvānḍru", is found on one of the rock-cut caves around the Keesaragutta temple, 35 kilometers from Hyderabad. This inscription is dated to the Vishnukundina period of around 400 CE and is the earliest known short Telugu inscription from the Telangana region.
Several titles of Mahendravarman I in Telugu language, dated to, were inscribed on cave-inscriptions in Tamil Nadu.
From the 6th century onwards, complete Telugu inscriptions began to appear in districts neighbouring Kadapa such as Prakasam and Palnadu. Metrically composed Telugu inscriptions and those with ornamental or literary prose appear from 630 CE. The Madras Museum plates of Balliya Choda dated to the mid-ninth century CE, are the earliest copper plate grants in the Telugu language.
During this period, Telugu was heavily influenced by Sanskrit and Prakrit, corresponding to the advent of Telugu literature. Initially, Telugu literature appeared in inscriptions and poetry in the courts of rulers, and later in written works, such as Nannayya's Andhra Mahabharatam.