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Telugu Alphabet

This document provides an overview of the Telugu script and alphabet. It discusses vowels, consonants, conjunct consonants, numerals, and other symbols. It explains that vowels following consonants are written with extra strokes. It notes that the characters are listed in the same order as the alphabet workbook to make exercises easier. It then provides a list of consonant-vowel combinations and notes some patterns in how they are composed. It discusses why there is no secondary form used for the vowel "a" and explains the approach taken to include "a" inherently in each consonant. Finally, it explains how syllables are built in Telugu, including use of the desyllabizing marker to represent single consonants.

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9K views9 pages

Telugu Alphabet

This document provides an overview of the Telugu script and alphabet. It discusses vowels, consonants, conjunct consonants, numerals, and other symbols. It explains that vowels following consonants are written with extra strokes. It notes that the characters are listed in the same order as the alphabet workbook to make exercises easier. It then provides a list of consonant-vowel combinations and notes some patterns in how they are composed. It discusses why there is no secondary form used for the vowel "a" and explains the approach taken to include "a" inherently in each consonant. Finally, it explains how syllables are built in Telugu, including use of the desyllabizing marker to represent single consonants.

Uploaded by

rkloganathan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Telugu alphabet

Vowels

Consonants

Conjunct consonants

Other symbols

Numerals and fractions

The following is the basic Telugu script.

Once again, like other South Asian writing systems, vowels following a consonant other than the default
/a/ is written with extra strokes, as in the following example:

The characters are listed in the same order as in the Aplhabet Workbook, which makes it easier to
follow up with the exercises later on. But do not worry about learning or recognizing these characters
by now. This is just an overview. We will talk about learning later. For now, let us just get a feeling of
how consonants and vowels are combined to form these characters.

Here is the list of all consonant-vowel combinations in general use today. Again, this is in line with the
CP Brown workbook. As you skim trough this list, try to find some patterns how these symbols are
composed. See how in each character the secondary form of the vowel is added to the primary form of
the consonant, either on top or on the right hand side. This pattern is pretty straight forward. There
are some exceptions to that, these are the ones marked. If you take a closer look, even some of these
exceptions follow their own patterns.

Again, don't worry about learning the characters at the moment. For now just get a feeling of how the
basic system works.
As mentioned above this set of characters is in line with the Aplhabet Workbook. There are some
variations in the way the charactes are written in older manuscripts (see A Primer of Telugu
Charaters), however, for the purpose of making learning as fast and easy as possible we will stay with
this set for now.

Why is there no secondary form for ?


You may have noticed that I did not use a secondary form for in my introduction to the characters.
There are other books that suggest using the
(called tick or talakattu) for that. Well, this type of
explanation may be true for some letters:

But it soon runs into a huge number of exceptions when you list all the consonant-vowel combinations.
Take a look at the chart again and see all the symbols with a
where the 'a' is not sounded. If you
say that this stands for 'a' - how do you explain that?

Or what about these letters, that have no tick but still the 'a' is sounded:

A rule is nothing else but a tool to make learning easy. A small number of exceptions is OK, but too
many exceptions are just confusing. This is why I followed the other approach that explains the as 'a'
inherently included in every consonant. I found this approach in the book An Intensive Course in
Telugu(p. 13) published by the CIIL, and I think it is just the better approach for learning, that's all.

How syllables are built


If you have followed me up to this point you are now aware that the characters in Telugu are
combinations of vowels and consonants representing syllables. We also said that these syllables
always end with a vowel.
Now let us take a closer look at how characters are built. The basic pattern is one of these possible
forms:

vowel
consonant

consonant - vowel
consonant - consonant - vowel
consonant - consonant - [more consonants] - vowel
In other words: a single character in Telugu can represent a single vowel, a single consonant, a
consonant-vowel combination, or a combination of several consonants with a vowel. So the only two
exceptions wherer a character is representing a single sound rather then a combination are:

the single vowel which this can be seen as kind of a degenerated vowel-ending-syllable and
the single consonant which we will talk about now.
There is a unique symbol to transform a standard consonant-with-a into a pure consonant. This is
called desyllabizing marker or pollu:

If this symbol is added to the base symbol of a consonant, just as any other vowel is added, this
character becomes a pure consonant. Another way to say this is:

The point I want to make here is: if you write Telugu characters try to think in vowel-ending syllables.
The single character is the exception. If you have a German or English speaking background you
probably think in single sounds and the syllables as a combination of sounds. In India it truly is the
other way around: the base is the vowel-ending syllable, the single consonant is just a syllable with a
non-sound at the end. Just play with this thought when looking at the examples of the lessons.
Here is a example of where this desyllabizing marker is used:

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