Telugu is mainly spoken in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Yanam district of Puducherry as well as in the neighboring states of Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, some parts of Jharkhand and West Bengal in India. The current similarity in scripts between Telugu and Kannada, which falls under the southern group of Proto-Dravidian languages along with Tamil, Malayalam, Tulu and others, has a lot more to do with the rule of the Chalukyas than the similarity between the languages. In India the history of scripts has been almost independent of the history of languages. Telugu is the most widely spoken language of the Dravidian family which consists of 24 languages spanning all of South Asia, from Baluchistan to Sri Lanka. The central group consists of ten languages, out of which only Telugu became a civilized language and the rest of the nine languages remained tribal languages. They can be broadly classified into three groups: Northern group, Central group, and Southern group of Dravidian languages. It is believed that Italian explorer Niccolò Da Conti, who visited Vijayanagara empire during the reign of Vira Vijaya Bukka Raya in the fifteenth century, coined the phrase.Īccording to linguists, Proto-Dravidian gave rise to 21 Dravidian languages. Sri Krishnadeva Raya has said "Desa bhashalandu Telugu Lessa" which means "Among the nation's languages, Telugu is the best." Being a mellifluous language, British authors in the 19th century called Telugu, Italian of the East. Languages also have become more and more simple and adopted simple pronunciations, the reason for some typical sounds of Telugu being missing in many other languages. Telugu is the only language other than Sanskrit which has the linguistic prakriya (literature game) called Avadhana, which disappeared in other languages with the passage of time. Andhra or AP was ruled by him, long before the times of Ramayana and Mahabharata (literature is proven to be of the period 3000 years before CE). As per Hindu mythology, one of the sons of Bali Chakravarthy (the one who was sent to Pathaala by Vamana) is Andhra or Andhrudu. Telugu also finds mention in Rajatarangini, written by Bilhana Kavi. As it is one of the oldest languages in the world, Government of India gave it the status of a Classical language.Īitereya Brahmanyam which is a part of Rigveda (literature dates to 7000 years before CE) written thousands years before CE, has mentioned Telugu. Telugu is the second most spoken language in India and 15th largest spoken language in the world. It is one of the twenty-two scheduled languages of the Republic of India. It is the official language of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Telugu తెలుగు is an Indian language spoken in the southern part of India.
Telugu language free#
Telugu edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Distribution of native Telugu speakers in India (as of 1961)