#sirintalks

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TELUGU: 1 Alphabet.1 Vowels.1

Telugu (తెలుగు) is a language with a script that can take a while to learn, especially for someone with little to no experience with non-English or non-Romantic scripts (read: me, when I first started learning). However, I’m a big fan of literacy. To make this less painful for us all, I’m going to mimic Learn Japanese From Zero!’s style of doing things and slowly introduce and integrate the script into the lessons.

Pronunciation

Since we’re just warming up, the only vowels we will cover in this lesson are:

అ (a) which actually sounds like the “u” in “um” or the “o” in “come”, like “Come on, why does it sound like an o?”

ఆ (aa) which sounds like the “aa” in “Baa”, like “Baa Baa Black Sheep”, or the “a” in “far”

It’s important to make sure that your ఆ is a longer vowel than అ. In English the length of a vowel doesn’t make much of a difference, but in phonetic languages like Telugu the length of అ and ఆ is the difference between “or so she said” and “game” -  aka ELONGATE your LONG VOWELS or you will speak gibberish more often than you want to! so definitely overexaggerate your vowels while learning!!! ok!!!

 Script

Pro Tip: generally the vowels that have longer sounds take slightly longer to write. That might help you keep your letters straight as we go on!

 Vocab

అmma – mom (listen)

అgni – fire

అnte – means (like “this/ అmma” means “that/mom”)

ఆvu – cow (listen)

ఆta – game (listen)

ఆru – six (listen)

ఆgu = stop!

I usually run Telugu words through google translate and use the audio feature to check my pronunciations, but it takes a bit of messing with it to get transliterated words to show up. If you try it let me know how it goes! It’s not so important now since we’re just starting, I’d recommend focusing on the vowels alone!

Resources 

(Some of these are for all the vowels because no one believes in moderation, but feel free to just focus on the ones we’re doing this lesson! All in good time!)

http://kidsone.in/telugu/levels/Level_1_A/write_achulu.html 

use this if you like feeling like a little kid! Click the blue button in the top left to trace the chalk 😊

exercise in writing and listening to alphabet and basic vocab

Telugu Movie Songs for this lesson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bepDYMtXJI   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzL0FJ7lfZY

listen for  అ ,  ఆ , and  అnte in Song 1.

listen for  ఆta in Song 2. Pay attention to that ELONGATED VOWEL SOUND

All the pictures included above are from the CP Brown Academy Telugu Alphabet Workbook!

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TELUGU: 0.1 Why learn Telugu?

So I’m (finally) going to start making posts about how to learn Telugu because the lack of resources on Tumblr for this language compared to other ones just makes me :( and the appalling ancientness of resources on the internet at large and in India for the English speaker make me >:(

But that’s a given, you might say, considering that all those other languages are clearly more popular and useful! So here is an under-researched starter pack of Why We Should All Learn Telugu Aside From the Fact That I’m Learning to Speak It and the Lack of Clear Online Resources is Appalling I Gotta Say

Alternatively: Telugu Appreciation post

1.       It’s Language #3 with the most native speakers in India (after Hindi and Bengali) which isn’t too shabby considering India has 22 Official Languages

2.       Learn Telugu and you will open doors into the glory of South India (Dark blue has the highest concentration of Telugu speakers etc.) and I’m not saying South India is better than North India but it is underappreciated

3.       It’s #15 of the most spoken languages worldwide so you don’t have to move to India to get use out of it

4.       It’s 1/6 of the classical languages of India according to the Indian Govt and I’ve seen it called the most musical of the Indian languages, it was the language of choice for Carnatic classical music writers back in the day

5.       It’s got a lot of Sanskrit influence, so learning Telugu will help you with Sanskrit and other Sanskrit-influenced languages like Hindi

6.       This one capital K king with a huge empire consisting of ALL OF SOUTH INDIA ALL OF IT named Krishna Deva Raya loved Telugu so much he basically caused the golden age of Telugu Lit and if it’s good enough for him it’s good enough for you

Bonus: if you learn Telugu you’ll be able to say his name perfectly

7.       Did I mention the script looks like this?

8.      It’s a Dravidian language which has very little practical meaning but according to my one friend “sounds cool” so now you know

9.       Telugu has a Subject-Object-Verb structure so learning this language will help you wrap your mind around the grammar of other languages later; it’s made learning Japanese super chill for me because I just have to learn the vocab and then plug them into the grammar structure I’ve already made in my brain for Telugu

10.      Also Telugu is a language that picks up a lot of loan words from other languages, so if you speak English you will probably be able to speak to a native Telugu speaker and be understood even with limited Telugu vocab by substituting in common English words (so you can be conversational super quick!)

11.      Fun cultural stuff like lots of great Movies with super cute actors and actresses, Music, Food, Classical Music, Dance, Poetry, etc etc etc

Extra special bonus: The pleasure of my company as your language guide

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Character question!: Does Keith trust others easily?

finally not hiding behind the guise of Anonymous, I see……

Thanks for the ask!!!! If anyone’s wondering this is about my fic-in-progress Summer Dreams (the genie fic) in which Lance is a part-time Genie and Keith is not about that. (Disclaimer: I don’t watch Voltron. Fanfic is lawless.)

@gina-writes, you’ve read the first few chapters, what do you think…why are you asking me? Is this some kind of trap? Whatever. You’ll never catch me, my leather jacket will slip right through your suspiciously friendly fingers. Ice Queen OUT

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⚘ ⚘ ❤️ Send this to ten bloggers you think are amazing. Spread the love. ❤️

Aww thank you!!!!

Lol I saw my last message to you said a Telugu lesson would be coming in ‘a couple weeks’ and I apologize for my transparent lies 

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hi i just started learning telugu recently (my whole family speaks it and i feel left out) and i really appreciate you breaking down the alphabet bc there are like no good resources to learning it bc its so complicated so thank you for helping out a lost brown girl <3

Thank you so much!!! I was pretty much in the same situation when I started and the basics took me the longest to scour together (with the bonus complication of other American-born cousins who had opted out of learning Telugu at all so my only language buddies were my parents u_u ) 

I’m glad I can help you out! I’ve found that telugu gets way way easier when you get kind of reckless with it; it’s almost impossible when you actually focus on getting grammar ‘perfect’ because you’re essentially spoiled for choice and have several options that are all the right way to say anything! then again i speak mostly in movie quotes so i’m hoping this advice you didn’t even ask for helps you out going forward 

if you could please, please, repeat things your family members say in telugu right back to them like a parrot and tell me their reactions i would be thrilled

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Once you get this, you have to say five things you like about yourself, publicly. Then you have to send this to ten of your favourite followers (non-negotiable, positivity is cool~)🌈🌈

Uno. Mi dedicación a aprender idiomas, aunque mis estudios son más lentos ahorita 😅

2. I like my face! 10/10 Great Face

3. I really like my fashion sense, I put a lot of effort into constantly trying new things and going out of my comfort zone

4. I like my own jokes

5. I??? like???? my ability to read a book all night with no sleep because I severely underestimate how long it takes me to read but I still refuse to acknowledge this in any practical way

Thanks for the ask! I like the vaguely threatening yet positive phrasing it was very encouraging 

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Hiya, so I would love to learn Telugu. It's the language that my maternal grandmother grew up speaking and I really want to connect to that part of my heritage. Also cos I lowkey (not really, it's high key) want to learn Carnatic music (like literally singing, violin, and maybe veena idk) and I feel like knowing Telugu would help. SO, if/whenever you get those resources together I'd be super super keen. also if you had stuff for Tamil too that would be cool(other fam speak tamil) THANKS SO MUCH!

Yes!!!! My favorite thing about learning Telugu is how funny the elderly people are, I had no idea how much I was missing but the jokes are so fireI learned Carnatic singing for a few years, I think before I started learning the language so I never really memorized the lyrics but it was a lot of fun! I think it will definitely help because there’s defo a lot of Telugu carnatic songs and memorizing syllables I didn’t understand was not the way to go. good luck with learning the violin & veena!

no idea for Tamil *shrug emoji* I do know that there’s more US university courses that teach Tamil (very few overall obvi but more than for Telugu) so hopefully a look at their course syllabi might reveal useful readings or textbooks? Let me know! 

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hi I'm a big fan of your fic on ao3, when are you going to update??

hahahahhahahahaha all in good time, @gina-writes , all in good time

I also wonder when I will update