Telugu script తెలుగు లిపి
The word 'Telugu Lipi' in Telugu script
Script type	Abugida
Time period	c. 1300 CE–present[1]
Direction	left-to-right
Languages	Telugu Lambadi Gondi Koya Konda Sanskrit Saurashtra
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Aramaic Brahmi script Bhattiprolu script[2][3][1] Kadamba script Telugu-Kannada script[4][5] Telugu script
Sister systems	Kannada
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Telu (340), ​Telugu
Unicode
Unicode alias	Telugu
Unicode range	U+0C00–U+0C7F
[a] The Semitic origin of the Brahmic scripts is not universally agreed upon.

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Telugu script (Telugu: తెలుగు లిపి, romanized: Telugu lipi), an abugida from the Brahmic family of scripts, is used to write the Telugu language, a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as well as several other neighbouring states. It is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic. 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 both of them evolved from the Bhattiprolu and Kadamba scripts of the Brahmi family. In 2008, the Telugu language was given the status of a Classical Language of India, in recognition of its rich history and heritage.^[6]

History

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.^[7][8] Buddhism spread to East Asia from the nearby ports of Ghantasala and Masulipatnam (ancient Maisolos of Ptolemy and Masalia of Periplus).^[9]Kadamba script developed by the Kadamba dynasty from Karnataka was derived from the Brahmi script and later evolved into the Kannada-Telugu script after the 7th century.^[1][2][3] The Kannada and Telugu scripts then separated by around 1300 CE.^[1][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 sixteen 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, kr̥, 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.^[17]

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.^[18][19]

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.^[20][21] The character is a combination of the characters "జ", "్", "ఞ", "ా" and The Zero-Width Non-Joiner character which looks combined like this "జ్ఞా". Apple confirmed a fix for iOS 11.3 and macOS 10.13.4.^[22]

See also

• Telugu Braille
• Kannada script
• Sinhala script
• Grantha script
• ISO 15919

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
• Telugu Alphabets