Telugu script

Derivation from Brahmi 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). The Bhattiprolu Brahmi script evolved into the Telugu script by 5th century C.E.

The Muslim historian and scholar Al-Biruni referred to both the Telugu language as well as its script as "Andhri".

Vowels

Telugu uses eighteen 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, kru, 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:

Other 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. ం and ఁ nasalize the vowels or syllables to which they are attached. ః adds a voiceless breath after the vowel or syllable it is attached to.

Examples:

Places of articulation

The places of articulation (passive) are classified as five.

Kaṇṭhya : VelarTālavya : PalatalMūrdhanya : RetroflexDantya : DentalŌshtya : Labial

Apart from that, other places are combinations of the above five places.

Dantōsthya : Labio-dental (E.g.: v)Kantatālavya : E.g.: Diphthong eKantōsthya : labial-velar (E.g.: Diphthong o)

The places of articulation (active) are classified as three, they are

Jihvāmūlam : tongue root, for velarJihvāmadhyam : tongue body, for palatalJihvāgram : tip of tongue, for cerebral and dentalAdhōṣṭa : lower lip, for labial

The attempt of articulation of consonants(Uccāraṇa Prayatnam) is of two types,

Bāhya Prayatnam : External effortSpṛṣṭa : PlosiveĪshat Spṛṣṭa : ApproximantĪshat Saṃvṛta : FricativeAbhyantara Prayatnam : Internal effortAlpaprānam : UnaspiratedMahāprānam : AspiratedŚvāsa : UnvoicedNādam : Voiced

Articulation of consonants

Articulation of consonants will be a logical combination of components in the two prayatnams. The below table gives a view upon articulation of consonants.

Consonant Conjuncts

The Telugu script has generally regular conjuncts, with trailing consonants taking a subjoined form, often losing the v-shaped headstroke. The following table shows all two-consonant and one three-consonant conjunct, but individual conjuncts may differ between fonts.

Numerals

NOTE: ౹, ౺, and ౻ are used also for  ¹⁄₆₄,  ²⁄₆₄,  ³⁄₆₄,  ¹⁄₁₀₂₄, etc. and ౼, ౽, and ౾ are also used for  ¹⁄₂₅₆,  ²⁄₂₅₆,  ³⁄₂₅₆,  ¹⁄₄₀₉₆, etc.

Unicode

Telugu script was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 1991 with the release of version 1.0.

The Unicode block for Telugu is U+0C00–U+0C7F:

In contrast to a syllabic script such as katakana, where one Unicode code point represents the glyph for one syllable, Telugu combines multiple code points to generate the glyph for one syllable, using complex font rendering rules.