Telugu Lessons/As Second Language

Preface

This book is aimed at people who wish to learn Telugu as a second language. The students are expected to have a decent command of English and English grammar as the instruction takes place via English medium. These notes evolved when I had taught Telugu to freshman students at the University of California, Davis.

An Brief Introduction to Telugu

Telugu is the language of the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Well over 73 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 Afghanistan.

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 had been the highly formal “literary style.” It is only in the twentieth century that colloquial spoken language began to earn the literary mantle. Nowadays the language in the media (print, radio, television, movies) has been 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 watered by the Godavari and Krishna rivers.

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 a liberal sprinkling of 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. For 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, do not hesitate to use the English verb and 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 stands for the “join” operation. 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.” Until the student understands the process of analyzing this operation, it is best to avoid this operation, if at all possible. Understanding this operation is important not only for a mastery of the language but also a mastery of native fluency. Therefore, it is treated extensively in one of the later chapters.

Like many things Indian, there has never been a serious effort to standardize Telugu. 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-lettered 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 choose 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.

Chapter 1. The Sounds and Shapes of Simplified Telugu

The best and fastest way to learn the sounds is to seek help from a native Telugu speaker. The next best thing is to find a source of recorded voices such as an audio recording. Telugu alphabet is introduced below using simple analogies to English sounds.

Vowels (అచ్చులు, acculu)

In simplified Telugu, there are five short vowels, five long vowels; they are arranged as pairs. There is one special symbol. In the table below all traditional vowels are arranged in their traditional order. Out of these four are no longer found in modern Telugu writing. A new student can ignore them with no lasting damage to their learning experience. Two other vowels in the list can be conveniently replaced by pairs of other vowels and many modern writers do use the replacement versions.

Vowels

Vowel	RTSTransliteration	IPA pronunciation	Pronunciation as in (English approximation)
అ	a	/a/	Short vowel. Similar to the first de-stressed vowel in subject, or to the vowel in but or son. This is simply an utterance from the expanded throat
ఆ	aa or A	/ɑː/	Long vowel. Similar to the first vowel in English father..
ఇ	i	/ɪ/	Short vowel. Like the vowel in English sit.
ఈ	I or ee	/iː/	Long vowel. Like the vowel sound in seat, eat or sleep.
ఉ	u	/u/	Short vowel. Like the vowel in English put or bull.
ఊ	U or oo	/uː/	Long vowel. Like the two vowels in English food or oo in tool.
ఋ	R	/ru/	Like ru in rude. This character is being phased out and will not be used in this grammar book
ౠ	Ru	/ruː/	This character is being phased out and will not be used in this grammar book
ఌ	-	/lu/	This character is being phased out and will not be used in this grammar book
ౡ	-	/luː/	This character is being phased out and will not be used in this grammar book
ఎ	e	/e/	Short vowel. Similar to the vowel in they or the vowel a in May.
ఏ	E	/eː/	Long vowel. Like the first vowel in angel, or like the vowel a in ancient.
ఐ	ai	/ai/	Like i in fight. This character is being replaced with అయి (ai) without much criticism
ఒ	o	/o/	Short vowel. Like the vowel in go.
ఓ	O	/oː/	Like the vowel o in hole.
ఔ	ou (depends on transliterator)	/au/	Like ou in vouch. This character is being replaced with అవు (avu) without much criticism
అం	am or aM (depends on transliterator)	/oː/	Like un (or an) in under or um in umbrella (depending on the consonant preceding it).
అః	-	/aha/	Like aha! used for exclamation purpose in English. This character is being phased out and will not be used in this grammar book

RTS Transliteration

RTS is a transliteration scheme developed to facilitate writing Telugu characters using English alphabet appearing on a standard keyboard. That is, all Telugu characters can be represented (for typing convenience) using upper and lower case letters and some of the special characters (&, ^, @). There are software tools (Padma and Lekhini) that can take a text file created using the RTS scheme as input and produce correctly rendered Telugu text file, which can then be stored as a Word document.

Sounds of Vowels

అ, a

Short vowel. Sound similar to the first de-stressed vowel in the English word subject, or to the vowel in English but or son. This is simply an utterance from the expanded throat. There is no corresponding semi-vowel for this.

RTS Transliteration: For transliteration purposes, the lower case “a” will be used as the Roman equivalent for this short vowel. (We use the RTS, Rice University’s Transliteration System, throughout this book. This system is explained in detail in a separate chapter.

ఆ, A

Long vowel. Sound similar to the first vowel in English father.

RTS Transliteration: The upper case “A” or "aa".

ఇ, i

Short vowel. Like the vowel in English sit.

RTS Transliteration: The lower case “i”.

ఈ, I

Long vowel. Like the vowel in English seat.

RTS Transliteration: The upper case “I” or "ee" or "ii"

ఉ, u

Short vowel. Like the vowel in English put.

RTS Transliteration: The lower case “u”

ఊ, U

Long vowel. Like the two vowels in English food or the first vowel in the word rule.

RTS Transliteration: The upper case “U” or "uu" or "oo"

This completes the vowel sets that come in groups of two: short and long versions.

Note 1. The #a# and #A# are the dominant vowel sounds of the language, being about twice as many as all the other vowel sounds combined. The #i# and #I# are, in turn, twice as numerous as the #u# and #U#. Although no carefully conducted research results are available, it is suspected that in each of the three vowel groups identified here, the short vowel sounds are perhaps twice as numerous as the long vowel sounds.

ఎ, e

Short vowel. Sound similar to the vowel in they.

RTS Transliteration: The lower case “e” .

ఏ, E

Long vowel. Like the first vowel in English angel.

RTS Transliteration: The upper case “E” or "ea"

ఐ, ai

?? Long vowel. Like the first vowel in English angel.

RTS Transliteration: The combination “ai”

ఒ, o

Short vowel. Like the vowel in English go.

RTS Transliteration: The lower case “o”

ఓ, O

Long vowel. Like the vowel in German Sohn .

RTS Transliteration: The upper case “O” is the RTS symbol for this long vowel.

ఔ, au

Long vowel. Like the first sound in owl

RTS Transliteration: The combination “ou” or "au"

అం, aM

This is a very important and often occurring support syllable in Telugu. This is not a stand-alone symbol; it always occurs in conjunction with a preceding vowel. For this reason, this symbol can be thought of as a suffix to a vowel. Many spoken Telugu words end with this sound. This is represented in writing by a ‘o’ after a vowel or a consonant-vowel pair. For example, if this is written with the first vowel, it looks like అం and is pronounced as “am.” If this is written with the vowel ఇ then it looks like ఇం and is pronounced "iM." However, when this occurs in the middle of a word, the native speaker pronounces this more like “an” than “am.” More on this later.

RTS Transliteration: The upper case M is the RTS equivalent of this symbol.

అః, a@h

This rarely occurring syllable can be eliminated from Telugu. This is not a stand-alone symbol; it always occurs in conjunction with a preceding vowel. This symbol and associated sound are useful in Sanskrit. This is represented in writing by two o's one below the other, like the punctuation symbol, colon.

RTS Transliteration: a@h

Consonants (హల్లులు hallulu)

The consonants of Telugu are listed below in the traditional alphabetic order, in small groups, followed by their IAST characters and by the RTS notation. Not all of these consonants are in widespread use. For example the last consonant in the first row almost never occurs in Telugu. The last consonant in the second row occurs only in combination with జ to produce the character, జ్ఞ, which is used two or three words. Many Telugu people cannot even pronounce this character! Similarly the last character (ఱ) in the last row is not being used now-a-days although it does produce a distinct sound.; it is being replaced by ర. Finally, the penultimate character in the last row is not a character of the Telugu alphabet; it has been borrowed, erroneously, from Sanskrit and Hindi alphabets. It's sound can be produced by a combination of క and ష. So in Simplified Telugu these characters will not be used.

Consonant	IAST character	in RTS
క ఖ గ ఘ ఙ	k kh g gh ṅ	ka, kha, ga, gha, ~m
చ ఛ జ ఝ ఞ	c ch j jh ñ	ca, cha, ja, jha, ~n
ట ఠ డ ఢ ణ	ṭ ṭh ḍ ḍh ṇ	Ta, Tha, Da, Dha, Na
త థ ద ధ న	t th d dh n	ta, tha, da, dha, na
ప ఫ బ భ మ	p ph b bh m	pa, pha, ba, bha, ma
య ర ల వ	y r l w (v)	ya, ra, la, va
శ ష స హ	ś ṣ s h	Sa, sha, sa, ha
ళ క్ష ఱ	ḷa kṣa ṛa	La, ksha, ~r

Sounds of Consonants

By definition, a consonant cannot be pronounced without the help of a vowel. Therefore, the vowel #a# (a) is used as the default vowel that goes with consonants shown on many alphabet charts.

Consonants are now introduced below in phonetic groupings, not in the traditional alphabetical order, shown above, from left to right reading order. The phoenetic order is from top to bottom.

క, ka

Similar to k in skin .

చ, ca

The closest English equivalent is ch in church .

ట, Ta

The closest English equivalent is the t in steam, stop , etc. The tongue tip is retroflexed so that its underside touches the roof of the mouth, usually further back than in the case of English t (in which case the tongue tip touches the ridge behind the teeth).

త, ta

The closest English equivalent is the first syllable of thirty . Here the tongue tip touches the teeth, not the ridge behind the teeth. It is important that the student should master the pronunciation of t and other dental sounds in Telugu and distinguishes them from the corresponding retroflexes.

ప, pa

Similar to the p in English spin .

(b) ఖ, ఛ, ఠ, థ, ఫ (kha, cha, Tha, tha, pha)

These aspirated consonants correspond to the five un-aspirated consonants in item (a) above. Their pronunciation will give no difficulty to most English speakers. However a special precaution should be observed by making a careful distinction between Tha ( ఠ) and tha (త).

గ, ga

Similar to the consonant sound in English go .

జ, ja

Similar to the sound of the English ja .

డ, Da

Similar in sound to the first syllable of English duck . Comments similar to those used for Ta above are valid here also.

ద, da

Similar in sound to the first syllable of English thus . Comments similar to those used for #ta# ( ta) above are valid here also.

బ, ba

Similar to the sound of the English ba .

(d) ఘ, ఝ, ఢ, ధ, భ (gha, jha, Dha, dha, bha)

These are difficult for non-Indians as well as some native Telugu-speaking people. The difficulty stems from keeping both plosive and aspiration voiced.

ణ, Na

Retroflex nasal. Many people may experience difficulty pronouncing this, particularly distinguishing the sound from the dental nasal n, na. The closest American pronunciation is like the ‘n’ in the English word, turn .

న, na

Dental nasal; as in English nose .

మ, ma

Bilabial nasal; as in English mother .

య, ya

Similar to the y in English yard .

వ, va

While articulating this, the upper teeth just touch the lower lip and the lips are not rounded. This is pronounced rather like the English v in very .

Note 8. Many Telugu speaking people routinely ignore the distinction between the sounds of English ‘v’ and ‘w’, as such va sometimes sounds like wa . That means, "va" is pronounced like "fa" using lower lips and upper teeth (labiodental; and "wa" is pronounced similar to "ya" (as a semi-vowel), but with the back part of the tongue raised toward the soft palate and the lips rounded, just the way South Indians pronounce all "va"s (and hence the reason Srilankans to use spellings like "Weerasekera", "Warnaweera", "Wijayakumara").

ర, ra

Similar to the Scottish rolled r . The tongue tip merely touches the alveolar ridge once toward the end of the articulation..

ల, la

Similar to the l in lick .

ళ, La

There is no equivalent sound in English; the closest sound is like the ‘l’ in English girl .

(h) శ, Sa; ష, sha; స, sa

These three sounds are very similar, yet distinct. The distinction is best understood by listening to a native speaker.

శ, Sa

Similar to English sa in Saxons .

ష, sha

Similar to English sh in shower .

స, sa

Similar to English s in surround .

హ, ha

The closest English sound is h in hall .

Comments

(1) ta (త) is not a common sound in English. More common is tha (థ ), as the th in thud and thunder.

(2) Na (ణ) would be a difficult letter to pronounce as there is no equivalent sound in English; the nearest being the sound of ‘n’ in turn. One way to practice this is to first say the dental nasal na (న) as the first consonant in nose and then utter the na sound again by retroflexing the tongue. The result would be fairly close to Na (ణ).

(3) La (ళ) is also a difficult letter to pronounce as there is no equivalent sound in English; the nearest sound is the sound of ‘l’ in girl The sound La (ళ) is to la (ల) as Na (ణ) is to na (న).

Vocabulary (in progress)

Family

తల్లీ (tallī)

అమ్మ (amma)

తండ్రీ (tanDrī)

నాన్న (nānna)

అక్క (akka)

చెల్లీ (chellī)

అన్న (anna)

తమ్ముడు (tammuDu)

నాన్నమ్మ (nānnamma)

అమ్మమ్మ (ammamma)

తాత (tāta)

తాతమ్మ (tātamma)

మామ్మ (māmma)

బాబై (bābai)

పిన్ని (pinni)

అత్త (atta)

Vocabulary (Alphabetical)

a-mma
a-kka
a-nna
a-tta
a-vva
a-ra-Ti
A-vu
A-ku
i-llu
I-ga
I-Te
u-ppu
U-Da
U-yyA-la
e-ddu
e-lu-ka
E-Du
E-nu-gu
o-ka-Ti
O-Da
O-Tu
AM-ke
i-kka-Da
i-ppu-Du
i-lA
e-kka-Da?
e-ppu-Du?
e-lA?
e-va-ru?
E-mi-Ti?

Exercises

(1) Go back to the section on vowels and read aloud all the vowels. Repeat this at least 5 times and see if you can memorize them. (2) Without looking at the text, write down the RTS equivalent symbols for all the Telugu characters you learned in this lesson.