Telugu language

“ The words are Sanscrit: but in some Telugu words the letter ఁ called the half sunna, or semicircle is used by some grammarians, but in common use the circle alone is used: though it sometimes is pronounced full N as in the English word son, and elsewhere as half N as in the French word son.
In the ancient pronunciation of Telugu, which the rustic and uncultivated classes still retain, the nasal sound was very prevalent in Telugu: as it is to this day among the rural population of England. But in each country the educated classes have laid aside this disagreeable accent. ”

“ J. Ramayya Pantulu and his school. It is credited with a desire to “abolish by a single stroke of the pen the current literary language which is the result of the growth of centuries and to install in its place numerous colloquial dialects” (page 10 of the Defence) . Nothing can be farther from truth. The modern school advocates the teaching of polite spoken Telugu in schools, especially elementary schools, and its employment for literary purposes, especially for the creation of a Modern Prose. We take the Telugu of the Godavary and Krishna Districts as the standard. ”

“ Admirers of classical Telugu evidently believe that in the twelfth century when Nannaya translated the Sanskrit Mahabharata into Telugu, the vernacular language had reached the acme of perfection and then formed a sort of crystallized linguistic machine with all its parts elaborated and finished; and that succeeding writers have been merely setting it in motion in order to produce their literary works. We know that such beliefs however eminent the persons who hold them may be, are founded on erroneous notions regarding the nature and growth of language. ”

“ I have given a short account of the Telugu literature, comprizing the names of the more celebrated poems. Probably many of these favourite volumes will be as unavailable to a foreigner as Shakspeare or Milton would be to a bramin, for no one can read the higher Telugu poems with pleasure, unless he possesses a familiar acquaintance with Sanscrit literature, and with the braminical mythology. It therefore becomes necessary (see page 246–7) to substitute a different course of study; less aspiring but more profitable ”

“ In the English words art, part, short, hard, curl, girl, pearl we do not pronounce the R because followed by another consonant. But in the languages of India the R in such places must be distinctly enunciated, (in the Scoth manner) or natives will not understand what we say. Example:— కర్త​ carta, lord కర్మం carmam deed, (Telugu characters) purn'a full సర్పం sarpam a serpent (Telugu characters) archacudu a priest.
Some ancient Telugu grammarians wish to exclude the sign (Telugu characters) for R, or desire to confine it to Sanscrit words alone. ”

“ The mark of accent is rarely used in rough writing: thus the short forms (ఎ and ె) are used in most places instead of the long form. In writing Sanscrit the sounds of e and o are invariably long, but the accent is not used. Telugu alone requires that distinction as it uses both forms. ”

“ Having been employed by Government for several years the Telugu countries I soon perceived the necessity of studying the language: then, with a view to acquire the vernacular idiom, I was encouraged to read and translate Vemana, and a few others of the less learned but more popular authors. Experience daily proved to me that the grammar is best studied in metrical compositions. This we know to be the case in Greek, Sanscrit and French; and it is equally true as regards the modern languages of India wherein we are constantly obliged to transact business. ”

“ The reason why the term became thus specifically applied to the Telugu people is probably because, when the Portuguese arrived, the Telugu monarchy of Vijayanagara, or Bijanagar (see BISNAGAR, NARSINGA) was dominant over great part of the Peninsula. The officials were chiefly of Telugu race, and thus the people of this race, as the most important section of the Hindūs, were par excellence the Gentiles, and their language the Gentile language. ”

“ We should, therefore, welcome ídiomatic renderings in real Telugu of good English, French or other originals and original experiments in living prose, tales of current life handled freely and with an imagination untrammelled by stereotyped Lakshana, recondite allusions and stale conventional figures and images.
We desire discussion on the art of writing; thus, How may the living tongue be made an artistic medium? What devices in harmony with the genius of the language can we adopt and adapt from English or other writers, whereby variety, emphasis, lucidity, and strength may be attained? ”

“ Dr Pope, however, believed Tamil to be a corruption of tenmoli, southern speech, in contradistinction to vaḍugu, the northern, i.e., Telugu language. As in the case of the Kafir, Turkish, Tagala and other typical languages, the term Tamulic or Tamulian has occasionally been employed as the designation of the whole class of Dravidian peoples and languages, of which it is only the most prominent member. The present article deals with Tamil in its restricted sense only. The Tamils proper are smaller and of weaker build than Europeans, though graceful in shape. ”

“ Let us try to realize what exactly is this spoken language with which the majority of the Sub-Committee have shown a solicitude to harmonize the literary dialect-this spoken language which is used in the Telugu Country as a whole and is not the speech either confined to any particular area or to particular clan or tribe. Here Mr. Lakshmana Row’s memorandum must again come to our help. It says, “the contention that all the gramya (nongrammatical, dialectal and slang) forms are to be found current in every part of the country seems to be a gross exaggeration. ”

“ For the sake of uniformity in the dictionary, the monosyllable forms of AI and AU are used. Thus, for the words పయిట​ pa-yi-ta (a woman's veil) and కవుజు ca-vu-zu (a partridge) we must use the spelling పైట and కౌజు. Sanscrit words invariably use the monosyllabic forms: Telugu words use these or the dissyllabic forms at pleasure. Poets adopt whichever form suits the metre. ”

“ A study of Modern Telugu will prove the best training for a proper study of the language of the poets. A scientific study of Telugu can begin only with the spoken vernacular, and without such a study, a study of the poetic dialect would continue to be irrational and blind. ”

“ This certainly tries the eye-sight; but the first type founders have imitated this old mode and accordingly all the printed letters are formed of hair strokes. This certainly ought to be remedied, and then Telugu type will no more strain the eyes than English printing does.
It is not the custom to separate the words. ”

“ Since the days of the early grammarians no study of the language of the Telugu Country has been made. In recent years the purpose of gammatical study has changed; it has been affected by the ideas of such sciences as biology and anthropology; it no longer prescribes rules regarding language as fixed unalterably but as ever slightly subject to flux, being modified in sound and idiom from generation to generation; the grammar of one age is not that of the next; and in any one age a language may exhibit many different grammars according to class or caste or dialect ”

“ Uniformity is no virtue unless it is accompanied by ease in acquisition. Sanskrit is uniform in the whole of India, but like literary Telugu it has to be acquired with great effort. The vernacular on the other hand, is acquired naturally.
214. Mr. J. Ramayya Pantulu opines that if Modern Telugu is cultivated, it will acquire fixity and deviate from speech. He quotes Lounsbury to show that the changes in English during the last five hundred years were ‘insignificant’. Why should then the language of a conversative oriental people like the Telugus change more? ”

“ To aid them in English has been one of my principle objects in writing this grammar. It may be worth while to remark that household servants at Madras talk a broken English with fluency; but the learner will find it profitable to employ only those domesticks who will speak to him in the language he is studying; such are always to be had. Our initiatory native instructors also speak English: but we should as soon as possible lay aside such aid and employ a teacher who speaks Telugu alone. ”

“ The letter (Telugu characters) is used in writing; but in printing it is more convenient to use the more ancient form (Telugu characters) which we may observe in some ancient inscriptions on temples.
The letter that stands on the line is first pronounced, then the one, or two, under it. Then the vowel above. Thus ప్ర​ is pra: and స్త్రీ strī, a women, also written (Telugu characters) that is sitr
Sometimes a consonant is marked as “silent” as no vowel is attached to it. The silent mark is (Telugu characters) or ్ added to the top of the letter instead of a vowel. ”

“ If an approximation be necessary, they say, it may as well be brought about by inducing people to speak the literary language as by permitting people to write as they speak; besides, the ancient literary language would thereby be conserved and the spoken dialect purified and ennobled. They contend that all the English men and English women that speak good English do so because they have carefully studied the grammar of the language as well as literaturate and that colloquial English which is spoken at home is as vulgar and as ungrammatical as colloquial Telugu. ”

“ The consonants also are multiplied and have such a variety of forms, because they use a separate shape for each variety of sound. T has one form, and Th another (as in Greek) so K has one form and kh another. And this likewise happens in the Greek alphabet.
The spelling is easy as the letters when correctly pronounced never deviate from the sound given in the alphabet.
When a letter is written under the line it is larger than if written on the line.
When written, like English, with a pen, the Telugu letters have (what writing masters call) body strokes and hair strokes. ”

“ They seem to think that the only condition which a literary language need fulfil is intelligibility. They think that intelligible prose can be written in the Kavya dialect if it is divested of learned Sanskrit and very obsolete Telugu. They forget that it is not easy, to reproduce an archaic dialect in composition, and that few writers have succeeded in writing fairly intelligible prose in the Kavya dialect with correctness or with elegance. ”

“ Organic growth or orderly development of languages is a metaphor and like most metaphors — introduced into serious discussions, it is misleading. Living languages change sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. The forces which are in operation in a living language and the process of operation are very different from the few changes, mostly mechanical, which occur in an archaic literary dialect. Telugu poets made a few deviations from literary usage but these were mostly due to metrical exigencies and did not, except in rare cases, receive general acceptance. ”

“ A Pandit whose conception of the nature of language is derived from his acquaintance with Sanskrit, devotes his life to the study of old Telugu and attempts to reproduce the older forms in his writings; he therefore inculcates the belief that a literary language ought to be as uniform as Sanskrit for all time. That some of the graduates of the modern universities follow the doctrines of the Pandit indicates that the study of the science of language is not what it ought to be. ”

“ Where nomadic tribes approach to a political organization, their language, though Turanian, may approach to the system of political or traditional languages, such as Sanskrit or Hebrew. This is indeed the case with the most advanced members of the Turanian family, the Hungarian, the Finnish, the Tamil, Telugu, &c. Many of their grammatical terminations have suffered by phonetic corruption, but they have not been replaced by new and more expressive words. The termination of the plural is lu in Telugu, and this is probably a mere corruption of gaḷ., the termination of the plural in Tamil. ”

“ It is precisely such principles that are lacking in the shapeless prose of the Neo-Kavya school. This movement was never strong in western scholarship, and the vagaries of writers who were generally poor scholars, were not controlled by the literary critic and the scientific student of language. Even to-day there is no literary criticism in Telugu and a scientific study of the language has only just begun. ”

“ Literary cultivation of Modern Telugu necessitates a study of it, and the study of a refined living vernacular has great cultural value.
“Command of a noble vernacular involves the most valuable discipline and culture that a man is capable of receiving. It conditions all other discipline and culture. Reference is not now made to its scientific study, to its history and phonology, its lexical and grammatical elements; what is meant rather is the man’s growing up in the language, so to speak, and using it for all the purposes of his mental life.” ”

“ But they seldom reflect that much which is quite easy to them, is disheartening to a foreigner who is far from familiar with the Sanscrit dialect, who does not understand the mythology, and who cannot enter into the beauties of mysticism. The wild superstitious fables which delight the taste of a Hindu often excite unmingled disgust in the minds of our countrymen: and as all aliment to be nutritious must be in a measure agreeable, I have in the present list, first recommended those popular poems which may most agreeably conduct us to the higher portions of Telugu literature. ”