#telugulanguage

[reyitsukka]

“ౙాబిలి” (dzabili), the native Telugu word for the moon, is believed to be a compound of the words, “ౙాను” (dzānu) meaning graceful and “పిల్లి” (pilli) meaning cat—together painting the moon as a “graceful cat.” If that isn’t fascinating, I don’t know what is.

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TELUGU: 1 Alphabet.1 Vowels.3

Review:

అ (a): “o” in “come”

ఆ (aa): “a” in “far”

ఇ (i): “i” in “bit” / “ee” in “eek!!!”

ఈ (ee): “ee” in “feel”

Pronunciation

ఉ (u) : “oo” in “wood”

ఊ (uu): “oo” in “cool”

I’d really recommend listening to audio of these letters! These particular sounds exist in several languages but not really in English.

Also, if a word begins with ఉ it will often be pronounced more like ‘vu’ (because it sounds more fluid)

Script

Vocab

ఉppu – salt

ఉlli – onion

ఉngaram – Ring

ఉndi – is/have

ఉnnaayi – are (plural of ఉndi, we’ll get to this in the grammar section!)

ఊha – Imagination

ఊhalu – Dreams

ఊpiri – Breath

ఊyala – Swing

Resources

(I’m not going to link the videos this time since Tumblr isn’t having any of that rn)

Search “Learn Telugu Letters Achulu Hallulu Through English & Hindi” by  Twinkle Star Kids TV

Movie Songs: 

Search “Uyyalaina Jampalaina Video Song” by SriBalajiMovies

Search “Oohalu Gusagusalade Video Song” by Shalimar Telugu & Hindi Movies (The lyrics to this song are on lyricsintelugu dot org in Telugu and romanization!) 

Let me know what you guys think of the resources! I spend way too much time trying to remember them ^^;

Tag List: @mayavanavihariniharini, @gina-writes, (let me know if u want to be added!)

[reyitsukka]

In Telugu, to express love and affection, my అమ్మ amma (mother) often Amma’s me back and my నాన్న nānna (father) nānna’s me back :)

In a nutshell, they use their own designated absolute honorifics in addressing their descendants.

This beautiful linguistic phenomenon that exists in Telugu, doesn’t have a specific name but it is popularly known as self-reciprocal kinship or affectionate kin terms.

[reyitsukka]

[reyitsukka]

Telugu, using “తాను/తను” (tānu/tanu), a gender-neutral pronoun in literature and music is my Vijayanagara empire !

[reyitsukka]

In Telugu, intimacy can be expressed by saying “నిన్ను కంటికి రెప్పలా చూసుకుంటాను/ninnu kaṇṭiki reppalā cūsukuṇṭānu” meaning “I will look after you like my own eyelids look after my eye”

Because… to love, is to cherish. To cherish, is to protect.

[reyitsukka]

ఓడినా సరే, నీలో ఓర్పు ఉందంటే

నువు గెలిచావు అన్నట్లే

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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!