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title: Telugu
description: "Telugu is a Dravidian language of South India and the primary tongue of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Called \"Italian of the East\" for its melodic prosody, it boasts a classical literary status granted by the Indian government."
llms_summary: "Telugu. (Hyderabad, Telangana, India). Profile. Grammatical Typology SOV, Agglutinative. L1 Native Speakers 82 M. Language Family Dravidian / South-Central / Telugu. Language Vitality Index 9 scale. Number of Countries 1 countries. Standard Script Telugu abugida. Total Speakers 95 M. UNESCO Risk Category Safe. Web Domain Share (%) 10% %. Linguistics & Culture. Telugu is a Dravidian language of South India and the primary tongue of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Called \"Italian of the East\" for its melodic prosody, it boasts a classical literary status granted by the Indian government.  canonical profile on Chrisyst Datasets"
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---
# Telugu

Telugu is a Dravidian language of South India and the primary tongue of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Called "Italian of the East" for its melodic prosody, it boasts a classical literary status granted by the Indian government.

## Record

- **Title**: [Telugu](https://datasets.chrisyst.com/telugu/index.md)
- **Geo target**: Hyderabad, Telangana, India
- **Website**: https://www.teluguacademy.gov.in/
- **Address**: Hyderabad, Telangana, India
- **Coordinates**: 17.385, 78.4867

### Summary

Telugu is a Dravidian language of South India and the primary tongue of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Called "Italian of the East" for its melodic prosody, it boasts a classical literary status granted by the Indian government.

### Description

## Historical Evolution
Telugu split from Proto-Dravidian, with Nannaya's 11th-century Mahabharata marking literary maturity. Vijayanagara patronage and Qutb Shahi Hyderabad fostered courtly and musical traditions. Colonial education and cinema (Tollywood) spread the standard based on coastal Andhra speech, with Telangana varieties gaining recognition post-2014 statehood.

## Phonology
Telugu lacks the aspiration contrast of Indo-Aryan neighbors but features an extensive vowel inventory including /æ/ in some dialects. Retroflex consonants are phonemic; word-final vowels are common. Sandhi processes alter morpheme boundaries in fluent speech.

## Syntax
Telugu is SOV with agglutinative verb morphology encoding tense, aspect, mood, causativity, and honorifics. Echo-word reduplication and compound verbs are productive. Unlike Hindi, it uses postpositions and Dravidian-style relative participles rather than Indo-European relative pronouns.

### Attributes

- **Grammatical Typology**: SOV, Agglutinative
- **L1 Native Speakers**: 82 M _(quality 82)_
- **Language Family**: Dravidian / South-Central / Telugu
- **Language Vitality Index**: 9 scale _(quality 9)_
- **Number of Countries**: 1 countries _(quality 1)_
- **Standard Script**: Telugu abugida
- **Total Speakers**: 95 M _(quality 95)_
- **UNESCO Risk Category**: Safe
- **Web Domain Share (%)**: 10% % _(quality 0)_