Telugu belongs to the family of Dravidian languages and is the official language of the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. It is also one among the 19 official national languages of India. In India, Telugu is the most spoken mother tongue after Hindi.

Telugu was initially called Andhra bhasha (the language of Andhra). Andhra was the name of the area consisting of the present coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh. In 1956, 10 Nizam districts and 4 districts of Rayalaseema were merged to Andhra and the collection was called Andhra Pradesh. Prakrut had significant effect on Telugu in earlier ages. But from Nannayya, Sanskrit had major influence on Telugu for the next 500-600 years.

Telugu is a member of the Telugu languages, along with Chenchu language, Savara language, and Waddar language. The Telugu languages are part of the South-central branch of the Dravidian languages.

The dialects of Telugu identified by the Ethnologue are Berad, Dasari, Dommara, Golari, Kamathi, Komtao, Konda-Reddi, Salewari, Telangana, Telugu, Vadaga, Vadari, Srikakula, Vishakapatnam, East Godavari, Rayalseema, Nellore and Guntur.In Tamil Nadu the Telugu dialect is classified into salem, coimbatore, chennai Telugu dialects.

Telugu is usually written using the Telugu alphabet, a Brahmic script. The Telugu script is phonetic in nature. It has 56 characters in total. Its appearance is quite similar to the Kannada alphabet.

Telugu is spoken in Andhra Pradesh and neighboring states. Also spoken in Bahrain, Fiji, Malaysia, Mauritius, Singapore, UAE. 6,96,34,000 in India (1997). Population total all countries 6,96,66,000 or more. Including second language speakers: 7,50,00,000 (1999). Three Letter Code for telugu is TCW. Alternative Names for telugu are TELEGU, ANDHRA, GENTOO, TAILANGI, TELANGIRE, TELGI, TENGU, TERANGI, TOLANGAN. Yanadi and Bagata are ethnic groups speaking Telugu as mother tongue.


Notable features:

This is a syllabic alphabet in which all consonants have an inherent vowel. Diacritics, which can appear above, below, before or after the consonant they belong to, are used to change the inherent vowel.

When they appear the the beginning of a syllable, vowels are written as independent letters. When certain consonants occur together, special conjunct symbols are used which combine the essential parts of each letter.