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. Buddhism spread to East Asia from the nearby ports of Ghantasala and Masulipatnam (ancient Maisolos ofVowels
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). 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
The consonants and their combining forms (on the right) are provided below. Subscript letters are used in consonant clusters and geminate consonants.Marginal and archaic consonants
* Additionally there are ౘ (ĉa) and ౙ (ẑa) for /t͡sa, d͡za/ which are rarely used, letters forOther 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. ం represents a corresponding class nasal sound when followed by a consonant from that class (i.e., the last column of the corresponding consonant row for the first five rows of the consonants table); when not followed by anything or by a consonant from the first five rows of the consonant table, it represents a true nasal sound. ఁ represents a historically used that is no longer pronounced, or a nasalized vowel when transliterating other languages (e.g., Hindi) into the Telugu script. ః adds a voiceless breath after the vowel or syllable it is attached to. Examples:Marginal and archaic diacritics and signs
*: Telugu nuqta *: Telugu avagraha *: Nakara pollu *: The combining candrabindu nasal vowel diacritic of the Telugu script *: Combining anusvara above *: Siddham sign *: Tuumu signPlaces 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 : : 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: VoicedArticulation of consonants
Articulation of consonants is the logical combination of components in the two prayatnams. The below table gives a view upon articulation of consonants. The Telugu script has generally regular conjuncts, with trailing consonants taking a subjoined form, often losing the talakattu (the v-shaped headstroke). The following table shows all two-consonant conjuncts and one three-consonant conjunct, but individual conjuncts may differ between fonts. These are referred in Telugu as vattulu (వత్తులు).Consonants with vowel diacritics
The consonants with vowel diacritics are referred to in the Telugu language as guṇintālu (). The word ''Guṇita'' refers to 'multiplying oneself'. Therefore, each consonant sound can be multiplied with vowel sounds to produce vowel diacritics. The vowel diacritics along with their symbols and names are given below. The following table contains the consonants with vowel diacritics in the Telugu language.Numerals
NOTE: , , and are used also for , , , , etc. and , , and are also used for , , , , etc.Unicode
Telugu script was added to theiOS 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. 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.See also
* Telugu Braille * Kannada script * Sinhala script * Grantha script * ISO 15919Notes
References
External links