The Telugu Language - The Italian of the East (Language Profile I)

Today I'm going to talk about my native language!

So let's say you're taking a quiz about languages. You have one answer remaining and you're going through all the obvious ones you might have missed in your head. The time runs out, and you see Telugu, and think, Oh great, one of those obscure Indian languages.

Well apparently this happens a lot because I often see Telugu rank as one of the least guessed answers in language quizzes which makes me very sad 😢.

Maybe it doesn't exactly happen like that, but Telugu isn't a very well known language for how common, yet unique, and beautiful it is. So let's start with some basic information.

How to make a South Indian mad:

"Oh, you're from India, you speak Indian, right? I mean Hindi, that's what it's called right? Oh, you speak Telugu (or another Dravidian language), that must be some dialect of Hindi, right, or it must at least be related, right"

*TRIGGERED*

Please don't say that

Hopefully you know that the many languages of India are very different and not intelligible, sometimes being compared to Chinese languages. I guess the comparison works for North India, since they are different languages from a single family, but the South Indian languages are part of a unique family called the Dravidian Family.

The Dravidian family is a distinct family with no genetic relations to any other families, and it is one of the world's largest language families despite its small size by number of languages and area. It is focused in South India, where the 4 major Dravidian languages are spoken: Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam (Tamil is also spoken in Sri Lanka). There are many smaller Dravidian languages spoken in and out of South India, such as Tulu, spoken by some on the coast of Karnataka, rather than Kannada. Outside of South India, most of the Dravidian languages are tribal languages, such as Gondi and Kurukh. There's even a Dravidian language spoken in Afghanistan! It's called Brahui, and it is spoken in the Balochistan region in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. It has only 3 million speakers and many people are switching to Balochi, making it endangered.

Anyways, the Dravidian languages are split into 4 creatively named branches: South, South-Central, Central, and North. The major ones are South and South-Central. Here's a quick list showing some of the languages in each of them.

As you can see, most of the major ones are in the Southern branch, except for Telugu, which essentially makes it the most different from the other 3. However, Kannada would be the most similar.

Though the Dravidian family is unrelated to other language families, there are some (widely rejected) theories linking it to the extinct Elamite language, the Uralic languages like Hungarian, and Korean and Japanese (which they are actually surprisingly similar to). Although these theories are probably false, it's interesting that they have some similarities. Maybe I'll make another blog about that (every time I post a blog, I get ideas for 5 more).

Okay, enough with statistics and lists, let's talk about Telugu now!

With this context, we can go back to the beginning, with the Proto-Dravidian language. The Proto-Dravidian family originally had 3 branches, South, Central, and North, until the South Branch further split into South and South-Central, the latter of which would become the ancestor of Proto-Telugu. The oldest inscription giving us a clue about Telugu can be found in the village of Bhattiprolu in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh. This is not only important to Telugu, but Indian linguistics as a whole, as the inscription is the first variation of the Brahmi script found in South India, that is also modified adapted to the Dravidian languages. This "Bhattiprolu Script" was the ancestor of the modern scripts of South India including Telugu. The Bhattiprolu script was from somewhere between the 3rd to 1st century BCE, but Telugu remained a primarily spoken language even after this, under empires such as the Satavahana and Andhra Ikshvaku, with no complete Telugu texts until the next discovery, and the first significant breakthrough for the language, in 575. Before this, there were some discoveries, but I won't bore you breaking down minor inscriptions.

In 575, we would have the 1st fully Telugu inscription found in Kadapa district of the Rayalaseema region, in the village of Erragudipadu. Another major achievement was that the Renati Chodas, one of the Telugu Chodas, a group of kingdoms in the Telugu-Speaking regions, first used Telugu consistently in official contexts. Before this, Prakrit was an official language even though Dravidian dialects were spoken in this area. The Satavahanas did use a form of Dravidian on their coins though. The Renatis in particular ruled over the area of Kadapa district. For the next few centuries, once again nothing of major significance changed, but there was still lots of poetry and developments. The period until the 11th century was known as the Jain Literature Period, and Malliya Rechana, a 10th century Jain poet from Telangana, was one of the first Telugu writers. It was during this time that even more Sanskrit vocabulary entered the language, and the literary language started to diverge from the spoken.

Let's talk more about those Chalukyas. If you know a bit about Indian history, you might be familiar with the Western Chalukyas, who were quite powerful and dominated south-central India for a few decades in this period. The Chalukyas of Vengi, the mainly Telugu dynasty, weren't as powerful, but were the main power of the central Bay of Bengal coast for a while. As you might have expected, the Chalukyas of the west and east had a close relation, with their founders being brothers. The linguistic impact of this was an even close connection between Telugu and Kannada which were already cousin languages. While they might be looked over in Indian history, the Eastern Chalukyas were the first empire to cause a great impact on the Telugu language. But they wouldn't be the last...

I should mention that this was around the time the Delhi Sultanate was controlling most of Northern India, and the first time they tried to invade the Telugu lands, they were actually defeated by the Kakatiyas. However, the second time the Kakatiyas were defeated and came under the Sultanate's control. However, rebellions would once again weaken the empire, and Andhra would come under native rule again, without much linguistic impact. The final member of the Trinity of Poets was Yerrapragada Yerranna (Yerrapragada is the surname, in Telugu, surnames come first), born in Prakasam District of Andhra  in the 14th century, during the Reddy dynasty in the, which was an important dynasty that ruled the region for about a century, though they aren't the most well known. Yerrapragada (he's known more by his surname) was a poet in the court of King Prolaya Vemareddy, the founder of the dynasty, and he would finish the 3rd chapter of the Mahabharata (FINALLY), as well as translate the Narasimhapurana, one of the Puranas, and the Ramayana and Harivamsa, to name a few achievements.

So this is great, right? Well, it will get even better...

IT'S VIJAYANAGARA TIME! If you have predicted this then you deserve an award because the Vijayanagaras were an AMAZING empire that is not done justice in modern history lessons, and they are personally my favorite historical country (sorry Mauryas and Guptas, you're very close), ruling starting in the 14th century. As incredible as the earlier poets and empires were, this empire was the first empire of India that could claim to have a place on the medieval world stage; their influence not limited by the subcontinent. And this includes their languages, namely Tulu, Kannada and Telugu. While they conquered Tamil and Malayalam parts as well, the empire with its capital in Vijayanagara, now Hampi, on the border of Telugu and Kannada speaking parts, was a big supporter of the usage of both of these cousin languages. Tulu become important because the most important dynasty of the empire was the Tuluva, but now Tulu is a much smaller language. Anyway, as the Vijayanagaras attracted foreign explorers, they also took note of the languages, and this is how Telugu earned it's famous nickname "The Italian of the East". But let's backtrack a bit, and talk about what was happening internally. The Vijayanagara empire was essentially a Telugu-Kannada empire, the official court languages being Telugu and Kannada, and Telugu would gain more prominence in the 16th century, as more warlords came from the Telugu regions. You've already seen all the great poetry, and it would continue into this period.

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL!

Telugu would get its first major exposure to Europeans, thanks to this great empire. Many explorers from all over European, Arab, and Persian worlds visited, hearing of a rich empire in India I'll make a video about that probably, and along with the great cities and wealth, would also learn of the beautiful languages. The most famous admiration of the language is the nickname "The Italian of the East" which was commonly used by British writers in the 19th century, but is usually attributed to the Venetian explorer Niccolò de' Conti, and he was Italian, so you know he's serious lol

This referred to the sweetness and the similar sounds caused by the fact that both languages have words that end exclusively in vowels.

_{*conspiracy theory mode* What if Italians are actually Telugu? What if it is actually Itaalangana? What if the Roman Empire was the Rajamuhndry Empire?? Was Julius Caesar Jolanna Kaijuri??? Was Mussolini Mussaalanna? Is Naples Napulipatnam? Is Milan Milanabad?? Is Venice Venicherla??? *conspiracy theory mode*}

But this was about to end... the Shia Golcondas were a target of the Sunni - you guessed it, Mughals. Unlike the Golcondas after Talikota, the Mughals were very strict and persecuted the Hindu population, and as a large empire controlling an entire subcontinent, didn't give any special attention to the Telugu population. And while the Golcondas were focused in one area and appreciated the pure Telugu language, the Mughals enforced Persian, and this is when some of the Persian vocabulary of Telugu entered the language. However, even more Persian, along with Arabic and Turkic vocabulary would enter during the reign of the Nizam of Hyderabad.

The Asaf Jahi dynasty who ruled as the Nizams of Hyderabad were a Muslim family with Turkic Origin and ties with the Ottomans. However, just like the Mughals, they highly patronized Persian, along with Arabic as a religious language, but also brought in some Turkic vocabulary. This dynasty ruled all of Telangana along with a large part of Maharashtra and a bit of Karnataka for 200 years from the 1730s until 1948, although the latter half was under the British. Speaking of the British...

India would, of course end up getting officially colonized by the UK in 1857, and although Hyderabad would remain as a princely state that was simply subordinate to the British Empire, most of the region would end up under direct British control. The Nizam's long rule would in Telangana would also contribute to a more distinct Persian and North Indian-influenced dialect appearing there. In the 19th and earlier 20th under British rule, Telugu poetry would make a resurgence, or the Telugu Renaissance, and there would be a lot of more modern poets once again, starting to incorporate some English vocabulary as well.

However, before the British, there was a brief period of Maratha rule over this area. You may have noticed I haven't mentioned anything about music till now, but this is around the time when the great Trinity of South Indian Music was born in the late 18th century, so I will also mention them before I get to the British Era. 2 of the Trinity members were Telugu and composed mainly in Telugu, namely Shyama Shastri and Tyagaraja.

The Father of Modern Telugu Literature would be Kandukuri Veeresalingam, born in 1848, who was also a social reformer, and believed Literature was a way to fight the problems of society. He wrote novels, essays, biographies, and autobiographies in Telugu, such as "Rajasekhara Charitramu", which was inspired by Oliver Goldsmith's "The Vicar of Wakefield". He also wrote and translated numerous plays, many of which were related to the societal problems.

Another of the "Renaissaince" poets, Gidugu Venkata Ramamurthy, would have his Birthday commemorated as World Telugu Day, on August 29. He is most famous for supporting the use of the Vyahavaharika Bhasha, the common or people's language, since it was hard to understand the literary Sanskritized scriptures.

And one more of the famous poets, even though they were many many more I can't mention, was Gurajada Apparao, who was known for writing Kanyasulkam, considered the greatest play in all of Telugu history, which was also concerning social issues. He also promoted the use of local dialects, and wrote songs such as the Telugu Patriotic Song "Deshamanu Preminchumanna".

The rest of the Era of British Rule would have many poets like this, and plays, songs and poets, and this continued after independence. With the development of Indian Films, the Telugu film industry would become huge, with many famous actors and songwriters. The first Telugu movie, Savitri, was made in 1933, and today the Tollywood (yes, that's actually its name) industry is one of the largest in India. And that brings us to today...

As I mentioned, Telugu now has almost a 100 Million Speakers, and has speakers around the world, even if it doesn't seem like it. The Telugu population has been immigrating to all corners of the world recently, especially the United States, and it will probably only grow around the world and become more important. However, at the same time, a lot of Telugu vocabulary is being lost as English takes over, and there aren't many large efforts to save native words. Overall, as Telugu goes into the future, it still seems to be becoming more influential, such as in the United States.

did that even make sense? anyway, on to the linguistics section

Before I start this, I should mention I have no real experience studying linguistics and grammar, I just think it's an interesting topic, and since this is my mother tongue, I'll try to explain what I can about some general linguistic topics.

Telugu is a Subject-Object-Verb Language, though in some cases it can be flexible.

Telugu has many interesting linguistic features but one of the most fun, and challenging, is agglutination. You might be familiar with this from highly agglutinative languages such as Hungarian, Turkish, and Finnish, but Telugu also has it to a large degree. If you don't know, agglutination basically means adding more sounds to one word to give more meaning, rather than using different words for it. For example, here is a a string of agglutinative words. (Also, I am using my own romanization with an acute accent instead of a macron because I think it looks nicer)

Interesting, isn't it? 7 words in one language are 1 word in another! This can go even farther but I refuse to write anymore HTML, so let's move on.

Actually never mind, let's do more color coding. This might seem confusing and hard to understand so... Let me confuse you more! In casual speech, a feature common in Indian languages called Sandhi or Fusion is used a lot. This basically means that words can get mixed together if the last sound of one of them and the first sound of the other are compatible, and both are cancelled out or something like that, it's hard to explain

Here is another example:

This basically makes Telugu speech even harder to understand for learners, I'm not selling that this is an easy language very well, you should still learn it plz.

I mentioned a few times about Telugu's Sanskrit and Persian vocabulary, and we can see Telugu's many influences in this casual sentence.

All of these foreign influences makes Telugu very unique. A famous British geneticist named J.B.S. Haldane even said that Telugu would be an ideal national language for India, as it absorbs its vocabulary from all sources.

Sadly, this idea wasn't implemented by the Republic of India, who ended up choosing Hindi as its official language. However, TheNatureThread empire, the successor of India, would finally realize this dream and make Telugu an official language Haldane would be happy ;)

I should also mention the many dialects of Telugu. The Dialects are mainly divided into Andhra, Telangana, and Rayalaseema, with Andhra being the standard. Within these dialects, each city and region will also have its own accent of the dialect. Telangana Telugu is especially different, the speech you would casually here in Hyderabad is half-unintelligible when you first hear it for an Andhra speaker, but like most dialects, you can learn to understand it after just some experience.

So in conclusion, Telugu is a unique language you won't find anywhere else, a unique Dravidian base with ancient Sanskrit flavor, and a hint of foreign Persian and English influence, is the Italian of the East, Telugu.

Thank you so much for reading my long blog about Telugu! I really hope this was enjoyable, and I didn't get too off-topic with history. Jetpunk lo evaraina telugu vallu unnarante cheppandi comments lo! Na telugu quizlu kuda tisukovandi :) (I'm writing in the English script because its so hard to write Telugu on computers) i hope there are telugu people here because then no one will see what i wrote

So do you want to learn Telugu after reading this? I have seen many videos of polyglots and language learners but despite it's huge community and growing importance, I haven't seen anybody who's learn Telugu, but if you want to learn even a bit, I can definitely help :)

Anyways, this was originally supposed to be a blog just about Telugu to teach more people about an underrated, not well-known language, but since I love languages I've decided to make a series! I will make language profiles for languages around the world, and I will focus on languages that aren't talked about as often or just aren't major languages, so don't expect me to do German or Russian. Of course, no matter how many episodes I do, this will be the most special one, and I won't be able to go as in depth with the other ones which I don't speak. I will do one for each UN region and then start again. I have made a few modifications to the UN regions, so the next region I cover will be Southeast Asia-Oceania!

Here are 5 languages to choose from in this region :) 

Burmese | Khmer | Javanese | Maori | Hawaiian

I totally didn't copy that format from BigGeographyGuy

Once again, dhanyavaadamu for reading, hope you enjoyed, and I will see you in the next blog, bye!

And before I forget, here are some links you can check out next.