Talk:Telugu language

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[edit] Telugu is NOT the second most widely spoken Indian language

The statement : "the second most spoken language in India after Hindi/Urdu", should be removed as it is Bengali with 230 million speakers which qualifies for this position as it surpasses Telugu by leaps and bounds. --68.197.142.117 09:20, 12 February 2007 (UTC) Srini Rao

Corrected.--(Sumanth|Talk) 04:21, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


The majority of 230 million Bengalis live in Bangladesh. We are taking about india and indian Telugus and indian bengalis. The Bengali population in india is around 80 millions it is not 230 millions.

according to 1991 census The telugu population in tamilnadu 7.12% = 4 million The telugu population in karnataka 7.39% = 3.1 million The telugu population in Maharastra 1.5% = 1 million The telugu population in orissa 2.2% = 1 million [1]

See Languages in Descending Order of Strength (census of India, 1991) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sumanthk (talk • contribs) 08:20, 7 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Comparison with Sanskrit

Seeing the importance of Sanskrit to all languages of India, I think there should be a portion where the scripts are compared. At least, I feel that it should be said that the Telugu script is 1 to 1 with Sanskrit unlike a few other languages closely associated with it.

[edit] Population

I am sure that the population of Telugu Speakers is at least 80 million.

[edit] Desabhashalandu Telugu lessa

This statement by Kishnadevaraya should be in this article. It is also a fact that the Englishmen who called Telugu the "Italian of the East" called it that because of its mellifluous nature. That needs to be mentioned more so.

[edit] Images

It is noticed that the article is presently void of any images. It is better to add images like that of ancient palm leaf manuscripts written in Telugu.

[edit] "Lessa" means "it is superior"

This article is very nice except "lessa" in Krishnadevaraya's statement has been transiterated into an english "less" with a telugu suffix "a" meaning "is it?". Actually "lessa" means "shreshtamu" or "top quality" or "best".

[edit] Telugu origins

I would like to know why my input towards history of Telugu language has been deleted. Who has done this without permission. I have provided a reliable reference from where i got this input. Please dont do this again!! If anyone wants to have a discussion on this matter, I am open to it. Don't delete the content without proof!!

Dinesh Kannambadi


Any comments on the dialect used by Telugu speaking people of Tanjavur and other parts of Tamil Nadu (e.g., "lessaa ujnu" = "baagunnindi")

[edit] Telugu Names

There needs to be some kind of a standard way of writing Telugu names in English. Rao, Reddy, Sastri, Chowdhury, Naidu etc. All of these are written and spoken as a part of First name or Given Name in Telugu. Why are they separated in to a different word in English?

Most of the names with these "suffixes" (mosly derived derived from our caste system) have a different Last name or Family name. I think we should create some kind of a standard to eliminate this confusion atleast for Wikipedia.

chinni September 5 2005


I apologize for making changes without enough discussion. Also, at Wikipedia, I realize that we're trying to create article names as the they're most commonly known as - in English language. So, people like P V Narasimha Rao may have to be written like this (Rao). In other cases like Yellapragada Subbarao, I cannot imagine splitting it up in to Subba Rao.

We should probably go by the most common way of writing these names and put the alternatives in the introduction in the articles. But, we need to come up with a standard way of wrting Telugu people's names in English, esp. when writing about people who were seldom known before in English.

chinni September 5 2005

[edit] Wikipedia is a not an Advertising site

Please donot add irrelevant external links. External links section is not an opportunity to promote your blogs or drive traffic to your websites. I observed that few links are present in every page remotely connected to Telugu or Andhra people. --Vyzasatya 08:03, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] External links

How come these links are in any page remotely related to telugu. They are in Tirupati, Telugu Language, Andhra Pradesh, Annamacharya, TTD?? these would be appropriate in only one article Annamayya thats about it.

--Vyzasatya 05:07, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

the sumati satakam belongs in telugu language and nowhere else.. right? - pranathi

[edit] Shyama Shastri article

I have seen this article before on commercial websites. I am just concerned about the legality of copy -pasting from some other website. Is the contributor the original creator of this write-up?

[edit] Shatavahanas and Telugu

The Shatavahanas were not Telugu speaking. Their official language was Prakrit. Just because a few telugu words appear in King Hala's poems does not make their language was telugu, just as a few Kannada words appearing in Emperor Ashokas 230BC Bhramahgiri edit (from Chitradurga) does make Kannada the official language of the Gupta dynasty. Please try to see history from real historical sense. I have seen many web sites trying to confuse people and relate the Early Andhras to Telugu. The firts record of Telugu Language is from 633 AD i believe and that too in Old Kannada script (Guntur inscription?).

Dinesh Kannambadi

[edit] POV sentence in "Derived Languages"

Ok, it was pretty clear when I saw a paragraph containing both "bigot" and "zealot" that a WP:POV revert was in our future. I think it's a pretty clearly accepted contention that Telugu is a Dravidian tongue and certainly not an Indo-European one. --Deville (Talk) 06:27, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Examples

I just wanted to note that nearly all the examples of Telugu are completely useless unless they are accompanied by romanizations. If someone already knows the Telugu script, then they probably also already know enough Telugu that the examples are not edifying, and if someone doesn't know the Telugu script the examples are completely indecipherable. Someone who knows whatever the standard romanization of Telugu is should add romanizations of all the Telugu examples. Nohat 08:36, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

My bad, I've added the IPA transcriptions now. I hope some good soul adds the romanisations soon. IPA is not exactly readable - Rohit Dasari 20:23, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Indic)

Help add input for Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Indic) --Dangerous-Boy 04:43, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Telugu or Telungu

This article mentions Telungu as an older form of the name, but is it never used nowadays? In Malayalam, the word is still Teluṅku. --Grammatical error 16:12, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Telunku or Telungu (used by tamilians) is not used by telugu speaking people. The only terms used are telugu and tenugu (literary). Sumanthk 04:00, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Were either of them used in the past though, or are they just local versions of the word "telugu" adapted so that it would sound like a tamil/malayalam word? --Grammatical error 19:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I suppose those are just the local versions of the word "telugu" (like "tamilam" in telugu). Sumanthk 04:02, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Alright then, thanks for your help. --Grammatical error 04:57, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

Guys, I'm adding a cleanup tag to this article since there's so much work to be done (just compare this with the article on Tamil). Pls don't remove this tag at least until these tasks are done:

  • Standardisation of transcription. Some places we use Romanisation and others IPA. I suggest, we use IPA everywhere.
  • The Phoneme set needs to be in a better form. I've tried tabularising the vowels. The same needs to be done for consonants
  • More volunteer researchers to dig up some info on topics like
    • Historical sound changes
    • Derived Languages
    • Vowel Harmony
  • Adding References. A lot of claims have been made in this article. Unless we add proper references & citations, we risk losing credibility as a wikipedia article.
  • Add Media. Pictures/Photographs of ancient scriptures in the 'Writing' Section.


Please feel free to add to this list, I'm sure I've left out many more action items.

Let's roll up sleeves, people: there's work to be done :) - Rohit Dasari 20:30, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please focus on Telugu, Not Andhra

I see a lot of focus on the word Andhra and its antiquity. One can't focus on the antiquity of the word "Karnata" whose earliest mention goes back to Skandha purana of 1000-500 B.C and call it the anitiquity of Kannada, though these people of Karnataka most defnitely spoke some version of proto Kannada. This is misleading because there is no concrete proof that the two words (Andhra and Telugu) are related right from earliest times. Later Andhras defnitely took up Telugu. The early Andhras used Prakrit as their medium of communication. If one has to prove that the Andhras of Sathavahana times spoke Telugu, one has to produce full length inscriptions, not bits and pieces of Telugu words in Prakrit poetry (King Hala). Just like many Sathavahana inscriptions contained Telugu words, they also contained Kannada words in Kannada regions (Bagalkot, Raichur, Bellary inscriptions), indicating its influence on Sathavahana Prakrit in respective regions.

Dinesh Kannambadi


[edit] Dialects

This sections seems to just list down the major regions and all known caste names. Can someone please check this data? Sumanth 12:31, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Ok. I've corrected this based on Ethnologue Sumanth 03:24, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clean-up of the Telugu_language#Grammar section

I've put tags to show that I'm unsatisfied with the way the grammar section is written. Witjout paying attention to the contents, the defects of the presentation are as follows:

[edit] The terminology

The special terms (like Karta etc.) should be linked correctly to relevant common linguistic notions and terms (probably, subject in this case, and not nominative case).

[edit] The examples

The template:clarifyme tag indicates parts where examples of inflected words are given, but the basic stem of the word is missing! (Or the Nominative form, or, perhaps, some other initial form of the word should be there.) In the current situation the examples are almost useless, since one can't separate the stem and the affixes. (For example, what is the stem/initial form/Nominative of Ramuni? And BTW what does it mean? Same question for `house'.)

Thanks in advance for attention.--Imz 00:37, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Telugu is second most spoken language in india.

Bengali is spoken by 230 millions .But that is 160 millions of Bangladesh bengalis and 80 millions of indian bengalis. in india Telugu is second most spoken language. 80 plus millions in AP +7 milloins in Tamilnadu + 5 Millions in Karnataka + 2 millions in Orissa + 2 millions in Maharastra + 1 million in chattisghar + 2 Millions in other states.

approximately 98 millions people in india spoke Telugu. 70 + millions is indian bengali population.

so telugu is second most spoken language in india. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by VSMS (talk • contribs) 06:54, 7 March 2007 (UTC).

Number of telugu speakers in India as per official sources is 66 million whereas the number of benali speakers within in India is 69.5 million. Please see this link: CIIL --(Sumanth|Talk) 07:12, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


The population of AP as per wikipedia is 76 millions out of these 90 % peoples mother tongue is Telugu i.e 70 millions .20 % of Tamilnadu population is Telugu 15 % of karnatak population is telugu. The CIIL data is very old and it is based on assumption that entire population speaks the official language for the states of AP ,TN,Kerala. please check the fallowing link for general idea. [2]

The figure mentioned in the article in The Hindu cannot be used as reference. Similar argument can be made in favor of bengali stating that the population has increased a lot and so on. We need scientific figures from a reliable source. The figures from CIIL are based on 1991 census. See this link from Census of India. Also see Ethnologue Report (1997). If you find a reliable source please cite that and change the information. --(Sumanth|Talk) 08:05, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
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