Telugu
Telugu is the principal language of the Eastern part of the Indian Peninsula
from Madras to Bengal, and is spoken by about 66 million people. It is a member
of the Dravidian family of languages, a group of about 23 languages spoken chiefly
in south and central India and northern Sri Lanka, that appear to be unrelated
to any other known language family. The Dravidian tongues are derived from a
language spoken in India prior to the invasion of the Aryans around.1500 B.C.,
however after years of contact with Aryan populations, they have been heavily
influenced by Indic languages. The center of Telugu culture and language is
the present state of Andhra Pradesh, a name which reflects the ancient Sanskrit
name for the Telugu people and lands, 'Andhra'. There were several Andhra tribes
populating this region before 1500 B.C. and Telugu is not the language of any
one specific dominant tribe, but the confluence of the individual languages
of a dozen-to-twenty big tribal groups living in Eastern India. Telugu is written
in a syllabic script which is related to by distinct from the Devanagari script
used to write Hindi.
Sources:
Teluguworld.net
Telugu
Language and Literature
Iquest.net
Geocities.com
Encyclopedia.com
Central Institute of Indian Languages
Information on writing systems:
Geocities.com:
Brahmi descended scripts
omniglot.com
Independent Study Courses Available at UCSD:
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Mingei museum of folk art
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