Language Overview: Telugu

Yo I speak Malayalam and i am glad to see a dravidian language on here Telugu gets such little recognition despite being so spoken, absolute W

overlooked language almost nobody outside of India knows about it but it has over 100 million speakers

Native Telugu Speaker from Telugu Land here. You did great work there, most of your pronunciations are accurate. you earned a subscriber

Well, didnt expect telugu...

I was looking into Malayalam yesterday out of curiousity and thinking "man, there are like no resources for Dravidian languages" then this gets uploaded. Good stuff!

I’m a native Kannada speaker and I never realised how complicated Dravidian languages can get before watching this. A lot of the features you mentioned also exist in Kannada but with different pronunciations (for example our “if suffix” is ದರೆ/dare and our inanimate plural is ಗಳು/gaLu). I’ve used all these complicated features in my everyday speech without thinking twice about why I’m even using it, it’s just something that comes naturally. Another interesting thing is that Telugu and Kannada have very similar scripts. Very interesting and informative video!

I'm surprised that for being so common of a language that there isn't more videos on it. Languages from the Indian subcontinent are so cool and I feel like they don't get talked about a lot. Awesome video, by the way!! 😊

I’m an American born Telugu and am very into linguistics and language learning but I can’t speak Telugu, mainly for lack of motivation to do so. However watching this has honestly restored my motivation to learn this language.

Hi native Telugu speaker here- great video! Since you asked for feedback: There are also “human numbers” for 8 and 9. It is not just “enimidi mandi” and “tommidi mandi” as you said. It is enamanduguru and tommanduguru respectively for 8 and 9. In daily usage, we never use naku pilli undi for saying I have a cat. The possessive is stated as “naa daggera pilli undi”- which translates to “there is a cat near me” but indicates ownership. The formation “naku” is usually used to indicate possession when it is within/ inside me physically or mentally. Naku daggu undi- i have a cough. (Possession within me). Naku juttu undi - I have hair. Or naku kopam vacchindi - I got angry. Hope this helps. Gracias otra vez para traer este video sobre mi lengua native!

As a polyglot, I spent most of my teenagehood and early 20s learning European languages and East Asian languages that people in the Western world are generally familiar with. After I started learning Tamil, I feel like it opened up my world to an entire wealth of culture, as the Dravidian languages have so much depth to them! Great channel, looking forward to seeing what you create.

this is why i love WyL, who the hell else is covering Telugu in such detail?? Fuck yes

Let's goo Telugu is such a W

Around 12:20, you say that linguists tried to make the case system fit European standards. Actually, it isn't the standards of European languages, but rather of Sanskrit, and the linguists in question are the classical/medieval era indigeneous linguists of South Asia, which has one of the longest descriptive linguistic traditions of anywhere (though not without flaws by modern standards, this being a notable one). I'm sure there was a little bit of "Eurocentric linguists writing Eurocentric grammars" going on in the last few hundred years that had an impact, but by far the more important influence was the Paninian grammarian tradition of Sanskrit. The similarity you see with e.g. Slavic is becaude of Sanskrit and Slavic's shared Indo-European roots. You are correct, of course, that the traditional IE case template doesn't apply very well to a Dravidian language. I think in recent decades linguists have adopted different analyses, but the tradition weighs heavily, and on many places on the Internet that lack scholarly rigor (lookinf at you Wikipedia) you'll still see the traditional Sanskritic model—and not just for Telugu, but all Dravidian languages.

The Italian of the East 🇮🇹🇮🇹🇮🇹🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳

As a student of Thai I can see that modern Telugu and modern Cambodian Thai and Lao have a common ancestor script. I can even see it might also be the origin of the round Mon or Burmese script as a common ancestor of both branches.

Thank You very much for making a video on an Indian language! Please also make videos on other Indian languages and scripts also as your videos are very detailed and good if a person wants to learn a language.👍❤ your pronunciation of Telugu and Indic words is so accurate, just like an ordinary Indian! I just can't believe how you literally learnt Telugu and spoke so accurately🤯🤯

Telugu speaker here. I didn`t learn the language in this way. What i meant is, thinking about every conjugation and such in my school days. Perhaps, it is due to being native. It is fun seeing through different lenses. Some things i want to say are: 1. Have u read about "sandhi" in telugu grammar? It was taught to us and that is how we mostly perceive how different words join to form words with different letter. 2.The "am" sound at the end of word is used for informal use case rather than formal use case with respect to "mu" sound. So for a formal use i.e., when u write for example "a week" u write it as "oka varamu" giving it a more formal look(and read as just what u wrote) but when u are speaking to others u can say "oka varam". It`s not much a big deal now as the lines are getting blurred overtime but the perception still exists. Same is the case for "thank you" when used "standalone" will be written and spoken as "dhanyavadamulu" rather than "dhanyavadalu". While both are okay to speak in formal or informal use cases, former is a bit more respectful than later. These are for normal words that u speak in everyday lives. So when transcribing these kind of perceptions can be left out and you can transcribe as it is (for example sanskrit to telugu or some other language to telugu something like that) as what and how it is being conveyed is important that how the language should convey. These are small things and i appreciate the effort you have put up and the video. To be honest most of the video flew over my head as i never had a touch with linguistic courses or how to study a language, but i can recognize most of the stuff and why it is like that.

now do Bengali (this is a threat)

Im so used to conlang reviews that i thought this was a conlang. I was really like "huh? This conlang seems familiar, and the script is pretty nice too"

I am trying to learn Telugu. The resources online are non existent 😭