Telugu Language Guide

Official language in
India
Script
Telugu

Where it's spoken

India's constitution does not name one official language for the whole country: instead it lets the legislature of a state adopt by law any language or languages in use in that state as the official language or languages to be used for that state's own official purposes. Andhra Pradesh's state legislature used this power, and the state's Official Language Act, as later amended, declares that the Telugu language is to be the official language in the whole of the state. Telugu's official status in India is therefore a state-level one, resting on this law rather than on any single official language shared by the whole Union.

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Script & pronunciation

Telugu is written in its own script, an abugida in which most symbols stand for a consonant plus an inherent vowel. Telugu's script, like Tamil's, Kannada's, and Malayalam's, also descends from the ancient Brahmi script, and the South Indian scripts are described as sharing many structural characteristics with each other as a result; their letters also took on a shape distinct from the scripts of North India, which some scholars attribute partly to the effect writing materials such as palm leaves had on the way letters were written. Vowels other than the inherent one are written with a vowel sign attached to the consonant, and when a consonant carries no vowel at all, a virama-type sign marks its absence. This app's card మీరు ఎక్కడ నుండి వచ్చారు? (Mīru ekkaḍa nuṇḍi vaccāru?, "Where have you come from?") romanizes long vowels and retroflex consonants with diacritics.

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Grammar essentials

Telugu's basic word order is subject–object–verb, and instead of English-style prepositions, it marks a noun's role in the sentence with case suffixes or postpositions attached to the noun itself. This app's card నాకు వికలాంగుల సౌకర్యాలు గల గది కావాలి. ("I need a room with accessibility features") expresses the need by putting "to me" in the dative case, నాకు, with కావాలి ("is needed") as the predicate; the same dative-subject pattern appears with verbs of ability and knowledge, as in నాకు తెలుగు రాదు ("I don't know Telugu"), where the dative నాకు is paired with రాదు, the negative of the verb meaning "to come." Other postpositions mark other roles: నుండి marks a source in మీరు ఎక్కడ నుండి వచ్చారు? ("Where have you come from?"), and -లో marks a location in దయచేసి ఇంగ్లీష్‌లో మాట్లాడగలరా? ("Could you please speak in English?"). This app's cards mark negation on the verb itself rather than with a separate word: నేను మాంసం తినలేను. ("I can't eat meat") adds the suffix -లేను to the verb stem, and the negative participle లేని, from లేదు ("not exist"), precedes the noun it modifies, as in ఇక్కడ ర్యాంప్ లేదా మెట్లు లేని ప్రవేశద్వారం ఉందా? ("Is there a ramp or step-free entrance?"), where మెట్లు లేని ("without steps") comes before ప్రవేశద్వారం ("entrance").

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Politeness & etiquette

Telugu marks politeness through pronoun choice: its plural second-person pronoun, used together with a plural verb, was already described in the nineteenth century as the form used to address "a person of respectability," in contrast with the singular form used only to address "a low person." This app's cards make the same distinction for today's learners: its card మీకు ఇంగ్లీష్ వచ్చా? ("Do you speak English?") notes to use మీరు (meeru) with strangers and నువ్వు only with people you know well, and its own card for మీరు translates it as "You (polite)." The verb agrees with this polite pronoun in a matching honorific form, as in మీరు ఎలా ఉన్నారు? ("How are you? (polite)"), where ఉన్నారు is the honorific plural verb form that goes with మీరు. The same politeness carries into commands: a suffix, -andi, added to the bare verb stem forms a polite imperative used toward strangers, as in దయచేసి కొంచెం మెల్లగా చేయండి. (Dayacēsi konceṃ mellagā cēyaṇḍi, "Please take it a bit easier"), whose own note explains that this suffix makes the imperative polite, while the bare stem is used only with people one knows well.

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