Telugu ( ; తెలుగు, Telugu pronunciation: [ˈt̪eluɡu] ) is a Dravidian language native to the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where it is also the official language. Telugu is a classical language with a recorded history of at least 2,000 years. Spoken by about 100 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. Telugu is also spoken in the states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, 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 c. 4th century BCE, found in Bhattiprolu, Andhra Pradesh. Telugu label inscriptions and Prakrit inscriptions containing Telugu words have been dated to the era of Emperor Ashoka (257 BCE), as well as to the Satavahana and Vishnukundina periods.. Earlier Telugu label inscription "tolacuvānḍru," found near Keesaragutta Temple, dates to the Vishnukundina Period (c. 400 CE) and Historians from Telangana claim that the ‘Toluchuvandru’ inscription of Keesaragutta temple in Medchal-Malkajgiri district is about a century older than the Kalamalla inscription, which was inscribed in 575 AD. 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 Vishnukundina, 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 (c. 11th century) 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 ('south') to mean 'the people who lived in the south/southern direction' (relative to Sanskrit- and Prakrit-speaking peoples). 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 (or Trilinga Grammar). 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 (also called South-Central Dravidian) 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 c.1000 BCE. The linguistic history of Telugu is periodised as follows:
Pre-historic Telugu (c. 600 BCE–200 BCE) Old Telugu (200 BCE–1000 CE) Middle Telugu (1000 CE–1600 CE) Modern Telugu (1600 CE–present)
Linguistics of 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.
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