Telugu

Telugu is an old written language; its oldest monuments date back to the end of VI - beginning of the VII century BC. e. Telugu literature was formed later than in other Dravidian languages. The beginning of the Telugu literary tradition (earlier monuments of Jain literature of the 9th - 11th centuries were destroyed after the establishment of Hinduism in Andhra) was laid by the poets who worked in the 11th (Nannaya Bhatta) and the 13th century ( Tikkang , Yerapragada ); they transferred the classical ancient Indian epic of Mahabharata to Telugu (the result of this arrangement was called Andhra Mahabharata, where Andhra is the name of the Telugu-speaking people and the country where he lives; occasionally this term is also used as another name for the Telugu language). Original works appeared in the XIV century , and the norms of the literary language were formed in the XV - XVI centuries under the influence of Sanskrit and Prakrit - Central Indian literary languages ​​that inherited Sanskrit.

As in other ancient Dravidian languages, the classical literary and colloquial variants of Telugu are very different. However, in the poetry of the preachers of the bhakti movement (in the XII-XIII centuries, and then in the XV century), spoken language was used, and in the XIX century a movement emerged, the leader of which was the writer G. Apparato , who set as his goal the creation of a new, close to spoken literary language . In the 20th century, a new literary language occupied a dominant position in fiction and the media. Since 1968, the Telugu Academy has been operating, developing normative grammar of a new literary language (“Vyavaharika”); the old book language ("granthika") is preserved only in limited areas - in particular, in poetry.

The first Telugu grammar of Shabdachintamani (“The Talisman of Words”) was compiled by Nannaya Bhatta in the 11th century; the modern stage in the study of Telugu began in the 19th century (the grammar of C.P. Brown and other works). In 1832, the Pedda Balashiksha Encyclopedia was compiled for children, containing basic information about Telugu writing and phonology. In addition to European scholars, Telugu is studied by Indian scholars at universities in the cities of Hyderabad, Tirupati and Visakhapattanam.

Classification

• Dravidian family
  • Southeast group
    • Telugu

Language Structure

Structurally, Telugu is close to the "common Dravidian standard." Phonetically, it is similar to the language of Kannada (in ancient times, their similarity was even greater). In morphology, Telugu is characterized by the absence of feminine nouns (singular distinguishes between masculine and non-masculine; in the plural, “epicene” for names of individuals and average for all other nouns); in this Telugu is similar to the northern Dravidian languages ​​- kurukh and malt . Already in ancient Telugu, in comparison with other Dravidian languages, the case system is simplified (four cases versus an average of six). In the subsystem of pronouns, as in most Dravidian languages, the inclusive (“we are with you”) and exclusive (“we are without you”) forms of the first person are distinguished. numbers. In the indicative mood of positive conjugation, only two species-time forms are opposed - the present-future and the simple past; the number of moods (indicative, imperative, potential, and conditional), in contrast, is slightly larger than in most Dravidian languages. The syntax is typically Dravidian.

Writing

The Telugu syllabic alphabet is used.

• Telugu-Russian practical transcription
• Telugu people
• Acchulu
• Telugu Cinema (Tollywood)

• Zenit S. Ya. , Petrunicheva Z. N. , Gurov N.V. Telugu-Russian Dictionary. - M .: "Soviet Encyclopedia", 1972. - 744 p.
• Telugu-English online dictionary