Telugu script

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 also shares extensive similarities with the Kannada script.

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 of Ptolemy and Masalia of Periplus). Kadamba script developed by the Kadamba dynasty was derived from the Brahmi script and later evolved into the Telugu-Kannada script after the 7th century. The Telugu and Kannada scripts then separated by around 1300 CE. The Muslim historian and scholar Al-Biruni referred to both the Telugu language as well as its script as "Andhri".

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:

The consonants and their combining forms (on the right) are provided below. Subscript letters are used in consonant clusters and geminate consonants.

The letter for a voiced alveolar plosive is found in some inscriptions, it is thought to have been distinguished from the trill ఱ (ṟa) intervocalically rarely; its mostly found after a nasal as in మూన్ౚు (mūnḏu).

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.