Telugu script

Telugu Alphabet
Type	Abugida
Languages	Telugu Sanskrit Gondi language
Time period	c. 900CE–present[1]
Parent systems	Proto-Sinaitic alphabet[a] Phoenician alphabet[a] Aramaic alphabet[a] Brāhmī Bhattiprolu script Telugu Alphabet
Sister systems	Kannada Sinhala Dhives akuru
Direction	Left-to-right
ISO 15924	Telu, 340
Unicode alias	Telugu
Unicode range	U+0C00–U+0C7F
[a] The Semitic origin of the Brahmic scripts is not universally agreed upon.

Telugu script (Telugu: తెలుగు లిపి, translit. Telugu lipi), an abugida from the Brahmic family of scripts, is used to write the Telugu language, a Dravidian language spoken in the South Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as well as several other neighbouring states. The Telugu script is also widely used for writing Sanskrit texts and to some extent the Gondi language. It gained prominence during the Eastern Chalukyas also known as Vengi Chalukya era. It shares extensive similarities with the Kannada script, as it has evolved from Kadamba and Bhattiprolu scripts of the Brahmi family. Both Adikavi Pampa of Kannada and Adikavi Nannayya of Telugu hail from families native to the Vengi region.

Derivation from the Brahmi script

The Brahmi script used by Mauryan kings eventually reached the Krishna River delta and would give rise to the Bhattiprolu script found on an urn purported to contain Lord Buddha's relics.^[2][3] Buddhism spread to East Asia from the nearby ports of Ghantasala and Masulipatnam (ancient Maisolos of Ptolemy and Masalia of Periplus).^[4] The Bhattiprolu Brahmi script evolved to become the Telugu script by 5th century C.E.^{[5][6][7][8][9][10][11]}

The Muslim historian and scholar Al-Biruni referred to both the Telugu language as well as its script as "Andhri".^[12]

Vowels

Telugu uses eighteen vowels, each of which has both an independent form and a diacritic form used with consonants to create syllables. The language makes a distinction between short and long vowels.

The independent form is used when the vowel occurs at the beginning of a word or syllable, or is a complete syllable in itself (example: a, u, o). The diacritic form is added to consonants (represented by the dotted circle) to form a consonant-vowel syllable (example: ka, kru, mo). అ does not have a diacritic form, because this vowel is already inherent in all of the consonants. The other diacritic vowels are added to consonants to change their pronunciation to that of the vowel.

Examples:

Consonants

Other diacritics

There are also several other diacritics used in the Telugu script. ్ mutes the vowel of a consonant, so that only the consonant is pronounced. ం and ఁ nasalize the vowels or syllables to which they are attached. ః adds a voiceless breath after the vowel or syllable it is attached to.

Examples:

Places of articulation

There are five classifications of passive articulations:

Kaṇṭhya: Velar

Tālavya: Palatal

Mūrdhanya: Retroflex

Dantya: Dental

Ōshtya: Labial

Apart from that, other places are combinations of the above five:

Dantōsthya: Labio-dental (E.g.: v)

Kantatālavya: E.g.: Diphthong e

Kantōsthya: labial-velar (E.g.: Diphthong o)

There are three places of active articulation:

Jihvāmūlam: tongue root, for velar

Jihvāmadhyam: tongue body, for palatal

Jihvāgram: tip of tongue, for cerebral and dental

Adhōṣṭa: lower lip, for labial

The attempt of articulation of consonants (Uccāraṇa Prayatnam) is of two types,

Bāhya Prayatnam: External effort

Spṛṣṭa: Plosive

Īshat Spṛṣṭa: Approximant

Īshat Saṃvṛta: Fricative

Abhyantara Prayatnam: Internal effort

Alpaprānam: Unaspirated

Mahāprānam: Aspirated

Śvāsa: Unvoiced

Nādam: Voiced

Numerals

NOTE: ౹, ౺, and ౻ are used also for ​¹⁄₆₄, ​²⁄₆₄, ​³⁄₆₄, ​¹⁄₁₀₂₄, etc. and ౼, ౽, and ౾ are also used for ​¹⁄₂₅₆, ​²⁄₂₅₆, ​³⁄₂₅₆, ​¹⁄₄₀₉₆, etc.^[14]

Unicode

Telugu script was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 1991 with the release of version 1.0.

The Unicode block for Telugu is U+0C00–U+0C7F:

In contrast to a syllabic script such as katakana, where one Unicode code point represents the glyph for one syllable, Telugu combines multiple code points to generate the glyph for one syllable, using complex font rendering rules.^[15][16]

iOS character crash bug

On February 12, 2018 a bug in the iOS operating system was reported that caused iOS devices to crash if a particular Telugu character was displayed.^[17][18] The character is a combination of the characters "జ", "్", "ఞ", "ా" and The Zero-Width Non-Joiner character which looks combined like this "జ్ఞా". An incorrect handling of the Zero-Width Non-Joiner separator while combining the characters seems to be the cause of the Telugu bug.^[19] Apple confirmed a fix for iOS 11.3 and macOS 10.13.4.^[20]

See also

• Telugu Braille

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Telugu script.

External links

• Ethnologue Languages of the World - Telugu
• Microsoft - Telugu Input tool
• OLAC resources in and about the Telugu language
• Omniglot - Telugu script
• Telugu to English Dictionary