#telugulessons

[starsstarsmorestars-blog]

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!

[starsstarsmorestars-blog]

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

[starsstarsmorestars-blog]

TELUGU: 1 Alphabet.1 Vowels.2

Review:

అ (a): “o” in “come”

ఆ (aa): “a” in “far”

Let’s get cracking on the next couple of vowels! Slowly but surely, my friends…

Pronunciation

ఇ (i) sounds like the “i” in “bit” when it’s in a word, or a very abrupt “ee” sound like “eek!!!” when you’re saying it by itself

ఈ (ee) sounds like the “ee” in “feel”

These two are pretty straightforward to pronounce! It should be clear what a difference there is between the short vowel sound and the long vowel sound, so make sure it’s distinct!

Pro Tip: When you’re looking up Telugu stuff, ఇ will always be transliterated as “i” not as ‘e’. When you see ‘e’ it is actually used to represent a different letter and sound entirely!

Script

See how the long vowel takes longer to write?

I should mention that since Telugu is phonetic, the only time you will see the vowels without consonants is at the beginning of words only. The vowel sounds, of course, can be heard throughout the words, but the script will combine the consonant and vowel into one letter!

Vocab

ఇ

ఇllu – home (listen) 

ఇdhi – this is (listen, 2 recordings)

ఈ

ఈ – this [followed by a noun: ‘this house’]

ఈga – housefly (listen)

అ

అndham – beauty

అdhi – that is (listen, 2 recordings)

ఆ

ఆ – that [followed by noun: ‘that house’]

Resources

Google Telugu Alphabet Workbook

If you click the first link that says pdf Telugu Alphabet, it will take you to a pdf of a writing workbook. Don’t get overwhelmed! Scroll down to page 13 to find the letters we’re working on.

Use this in combination with the writing practice resource from last lesson!

Telugu Movie Songs:

Eega :   Listen to the long ఈ in ఈga!

Mellaga :  The letters we’ve learned so far only start appearing a minute in but then you should see అ , ఆ , and ఈ at the beginning of some words from then on (particularly around the 2 minute mark)!

Andama Andamaa :   Listen to the short అ sounds in the chorus!

Ivvu Ivvu  :   Listen to the short ఇ sounds in the chorus! I couldn’t find a lyric video but feel free to watch the video song if it’s not too distracting

All the pictures included above are from the CP Brown Academy Telugu Alphabet Workbook! See you next lesson! Let me know how it’s going :)