#indianlanguage

Pronunciation

ఉ (u) : “oo” in “wood”

ఊ (uu): “oo” in “cool”

I’d really recommend listening to audio of these letters! These particular sounds exist in several languages but not really in English.

Also, if a word begins with ఉ it will often be pronounced more like ‘vu’ (because it sounds more fluid)

Script

Vocab

ఉppu – salt

ఉlli – onion

ఉngaram – Ring

ఉndi – is/have

ఉnnaayi – are (plural of ఉndi, we’ll get to this in the grammar section!)

ఊha – Imagination

ఊhalu – Dreams

ఊpiri – Breath

ఊyala – Swing

Resources

(I’m not going to link the videos this time since Tumblr isn’t having any of that rn)

Search “Learn Telugu Letters Achulu Hallulu Through English & Hindi” by  Twinkle Star Kids TV

Movie Songs: 

Search “Uyyalaina Jampalaina Video Song” by SriBalajiMovies

Search “Oohalu Gusagusalade Video Song” by Shalimar Telugu & Hindi Movies (The lyrics to this song are on lyricsintelugu dot org in Telugu and romanization!) 

Let me know what you guys think of the resources! I spend way too much time trying to remember them ^^;

1.       It’s Language #3 with the most native speakers in India (after Hindi and Bengali) which isn’t too shabby considering India has 22 Official Languages

2.       Learn Telugu and you will open doors into the glory of South India (Dark blue has the highest concentration of Telugu speakers etc.) and I’m not saying South India is better than North India but it is underappreciated

3.       It’s #15 of the most spoken languages worldwide so you don’t have to move to India to get use out of it

4.       It’s 1/6 of the classical languages of India according to the Indian Govt and I’ve seen it called the most musical of the Indian languages, it was the language of choice for Carnatic classical music writers back in the day

5.       It’s got a lot of Sanskrit influence, so learning Telugu will help you with Sanskrit and other Sanskrit-influenced languages like Hindi

6.       This one capital K king with a huge empire consisting of ALL OF SOUTH INDIA ALL OF IT named Krishna Deva Raya loved Telugu so much he basically caused the golden age of Telugu Lit and if it’s good enough for him it’s good enough for you

Bonus: if you learn Telugu you’ll be able to say his name perfectly

7.       Did I mention the script looks like this?

8.      It’s a Dravidian language which has very little practical meaning but according to my one friend “sounds cool” so now you know

9.       Telugu has a Subject-Object-Verb structure so learning this language will help you wrap your mind around the grammar of other languages later; it’s made learning Japanese super chill for me because I just have to learn the vocab and then plug them into the grammar structure I’ve already made in my brain for Telugu

10.      Also Telugu is a language that picks up a lot of loan words from other languages, so if you speak English you will probably be able to speak to a native Telugu speaker and be understood even with limited Telugu vocab by substituting in common English words (so you can be conversational super quick!)

11.      Fun cultural stuff like lots of great Movies with super cute actors and actresses, Music, Food, Classical Music, Dance, Poetry, etc etc etc