Meaning of Telugu (language) in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, bse. Telugu language In which countries is Telugu spoken?

TELUGU (LANGUAGE)

telungu, tenugu, tenungu, the language of the Andhra (Telugu) people. Distributed in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh (official language), in the adjacent regions of Tamil Nadu and Mysore, as well as in some countries South-East Asia. T. is spoken by about 50 million people (1975, estimate). Belongs to the southeastern group of Dravidian languages. There are two forms of T. - the archaic "granthika" (literally - bookish) and the commonly used "vyavaharika" (literally - common, it has been confirmed in the literature since the 15th century). The reference dialect of "vyavaharika" T. is the dialect of the eastern districts (Eastern Godavari, Western Godavari, Krishna, Gunturu); Rayalasim, Telenganskpy and northeastern (Sri Kakulam and Visakhapatnam districts) dialects are also distinguished.

Distinctive features of T. are the loss of the original Dravidian alveolar noisy and retroflex smooth sonant, the loss (apheresis) of the root vowel [for example, rendu "two"< *irandu, m(r)a n u "дерево" < * mara n ], развитие аффрикаты, нейтрализация различия между женским и средним родом в единственном числе (мужской род противопоставляется немужскому). Эпиграфические памятники письменности появляются в 7 в., художественная литература - в 11 в.

Lit .: Petrunicheva Z. N., Telugu language, M., 1960; Telugurus dictionary, M., 1972; Arden, A. H., A progressive grammar of Telugu language, Madras, 1955; Krishna murti B., Telugu verbal bases: a comparative and descriptive study, Berkeley - Los Ang., 1961; Mahadeva Sastri K., Historical grammar of Telugu, Anantapur, 1969: Subrahmanyam P. S., Modern Telugu, Annamalainagar, 1973: Galletti di Cadilhac A., Galletti's telugu dictionary. A dictionary of current Telugu, L., 1935.

M. S. ANDRONOV

Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB. 2012

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Telugu is an old written language; its oldest monuments date back to the end of the 6th - beginning of the 7th century AD. e. Telugu literature developed later than other Dravidian languages. The beginning of the literary tradition of Telugu (earlier monuments of Jain literature of the 9th-11th centuries were destroyed after the establishment of Hinduism in Andhra) was laid by poets who worked in the 11th (Nannaya Bhatta) and 13th centuries (,); they translated the classical ancient Indian epic Mahabharata into Telugu (the result of this transcription was called Andhra Mahabharata, where Andhra is the name of the Telugu-speaking people and the country where they live; occasionally this term is also used as another name for the Telugu language itself). Original works appeared in the 14th century, and norms literary language formed in the 15th-16th centuries under the influence of Sanskrit and Prakrits, the Middle Indian literary languages that inherited Sanskrit.

As in other early written Dravidian languages, the classical literary and colloquial versions of Telugu differ greatly. However, already in the poetry of the preachers of the bhakti movement (in the 12th-13th centuries, and then in the 15th century), the spoken language was used, and in the 19th century a movement arose, led by the writer G. Apparao, whose goal was to create a new, close to colloquial literary language . In the 20th century, a new literary language took a dominant position in fiction and the media. Since 1968, the Telugu Academy has been functioning, developing the normative grammar of the new literary language (“vyavaharika”); the old bookish language (“granthika”) is preserved only in limited areas - in particular, in poetry.

The first Telugu grammar, Shabdachinthamani ("Talisman of Words"), was compiled by Nannaya Bhatta in the 11th century; modern stage in the study of Telugu began in the 19th century (grammar by C.P. Brown and other works). In 1832, an encyclopedia of Pedda balashiksha was compiled for children, containing basic information about Telugu writing and phonology. In addition to European scientists, Telugu is studied by Indian scientists at the universities of Hyderabad, Tirupati and Visakhapattanam.

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Structurally, Telugu is close to the "general Dravidian standard". Phonetically, it is similar to the Kannada language (in ancient times, their similarities were even greater). In morphology, Telugu is characterized by the absence of feminine forms of nouns (in the singular, masculine and non-masculine genders are distinguished; in the plural, “epicene” for names of persons and middle for all other nouns); in this Telugu is similar to the northern Dravidian languages - Kurukh and Malto. Already in ancient Telugu, in comparison with other Dravidian languages, the case system was simplified (four cases against, on average, six). In the subsystem of pronouns, as in most Dravidian languages, there are inclusive (“we are with you”) and exclusive (“we are without you”) forms of the 1st person plural. numbers. In the indicative mood of the positive conjugation, only two aspectual-temporal forms are opposed - the present-future and the simple past; the number of moods (indicative, imperative, potential and conditional), on the contrary, is somewhat greater than in most Dravidian languages. The syntax is typically Dravidian.

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Region of residence: Asia

TELUGU, andhra, people in India, the main population of the state of Andhra Pradesh, also live in the adjacent areas of the states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Number of 74.5 million people. They speak the Telugu language (Gentoo, or Telegu) of the Dravidian family. Most of the Telugu are Vaishnavite Hindus, and some are Sunni Muslims.

The ethnogenetic basis of Telugu was the Dravidian tribes - Andhra, Kalinga and Telugu proper (tenugu). According to epic monuments, around the middle of the 1st millennium BC, the Andhra and Kalinga migrated from Northern India to the south, where they mixed with Telugu and adopted their ethnonym, merging into a single people in the 2nd century BC - 3rd century AD. Telugu created ancient and medieval state formations.

The main occupation is arable farming (red pepper, rice, legumes, cotton, jute and tobacco). Part of Telugu is sheep breeders. Crafts are developed - pottery, weaving, fabric ornamentation, jewelry and lacquer art.

In the villages, representatives of the upper castes live in large families in brick houses with quadrangular courtyards. In the southern part of the house there are bedrooms, in the eastern part there is a chapel, in the western part there is a guest room. The rest of the house is occupied by pantries. Families of peasants and artisans of the middle castes live in adobe one-room houses, sometimes with wattle walls, usually with a veranda. Members of the untouchable weaver caste live in round bamboo or adobe huts.

Men wear a dhoti, over it a white or colored shirt, a scarf or towel is thrown over their shoulders (shepherds wear a blanket). On the head is a turban. Telugu Muslims wear a lungi, a shirt and a round cap. Women's clothing is a sari, an underskirt, a short jacket with sleeves (choli), the floors of which are tied in front with a knot. Peasant women drape in saris like dhoti. Hair is braided or put in a bun. Popular cosmetics, jewelry (for the rich - from gold).

The main food is from rice, beans (especially spicy dishes), beans, pumpkins, sour milk. Season food with mango fruits, lemons, spices. Festive dishes - sweet, from beans, etc.

Telugu retains a caste division, mainly along professional lines. Influential agricultural castes, castes of pastoralists, and special craft castes, which before the adoption of the Constitution of 1950 were considered untouchable, are often forced to live on the outskirts or outside the villages. Castes are divided into exogamous tribal groups, some traditions of matrilineality are preserved (marriage with the daughter of the mother's brother, for low castes - matrilineality of inheritance). Divorce and remarriage of widows are prohibited.

Telugu have created a rich national literature and folklore, numerous monuments of ancient architecture.

Telugu Muslims live in some urban areas, however, they still retain the features of Hinduism, caste division.

The Telugu language, which is part of the southern group of Dravidian languages, is spoken in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and in the union territory of Punducherry. It ranks third in terms of the number of speakers in India (75 million people) and 13th in the Ethnologue list of the most widely spoken languages in the world. The etymology of the name "Telugu" is not entirely clear, but according to a popular theory, it is formed from the words telu (in the Gondi language it means "white") and unga (plural suffix) and refers to people with white skin color.

During its development, Telugu, like other languages of India, has undergone strong changes. In particular, in the 14-17 centuries, during the reign of the Muslim Sultan dynasty, a wide layer of borrowings from Arabic and Farsi.

And during the period of British rule (late 19th - early 20th century), the Telugu lexicon was replenished with numerous English borrowings. By the 1930s, the Telugu literary norm (accha telugu - “pure Telugu”) was formed, which is now taught in schools and universities. Telugu is one of 22 state languages India and the official language of Andhra Pradesh. And in 2008, Telugu was declared one of the classical languages India, after Sanskrit (in 2005) and Tamil (in 2008).

Telugu is characterized by a peculiar harmony of vowels, when the second vowel in a word is assimilated in quality to the first vowel. That is, if the second vowel is open (or closed), the first vowel also becomes more open or more closed.

Since Telugu is an agglutinative language, words often consist of numerous morphemes: for example, the word nuvvostanante (“if you say you will come”) consists of separate words nuvvu, vastaanu and ante. For the purpose of emphasizing, duplication is used: paka ("laughter") - pakapaka ("sudden laughter"), gara ("clean") - garagara ("very clean").

The typical word order in a sentence is Subject-Predicate-Object.

Cases are divided into 4 groups: grammatical (nominative, genitive, indirect, instrumental); cases of place (dative, adessive, inessive, local); motion cases (superactive, allative, divisive, expiratory, elative, illative, sublative, termative); cases of relation (beneficial, causative, comitative, possessive).

As in other Dravidian languages, Telugu distinguishes between inclusive and exclusive forms of the personal pronoun "we" (manamu/memu). When addressing the interlocutor with respect, pronouns are used both in the second person plural and in the third person. The singular forms of feminine and neuter pronouns are the same.

There are a lot of loanwords from Sanskrit in Telugu, there are also loanwords from Farsi and Arabic. AT modern language diglossia is clearly observed, since the official language is the standard version of Telugu, which has been strongly influenced by Sanskrit. The same variant is taught in schools and used by Hindu religious institutions. As for the living language, it is presented in the form of many dialects that are common in different regions and social circles.

Words in Telugu are written from left to right and consist of sequences of simple or compound characters. The letter is syllabic in nature, and since the possible number of syllables is very large, in writing they are transmitted by combinations of basic symbols denoting individual vowels or consonants. A total of 60 characters are used, of which 16 are vowels, 41 are consonants, and 3 are vowel modifiers.

See also interpretations, synonyms, meanings of the word and what is TELUGU (LANGUAGE) in Russian in dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference books:

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Linguistic information[ | ]

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Language structure [ | ]