Telugu is a Dravidian language native to the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where it is also the official language. It also has official language status in the Yanam district of the union territory of Puducherry.
Spoken by about 96 million people (2022), Telugu is the most widely spoken member of the Dravidian language family and one of the twenty-two scheduled languages of the Republic of India.
It is one of the few languages that has primary official status in more than one Indian state, alongside Hindi and Bengali.
Telugu is one of six languages designated as a classical language by the Government of India.
It is the 14th most spoken native language in the world. Telugu is the fastest-growing language in the United States. It is also a protected language in South Africa and is offered as an optional third language in schools in KwaZulu-Natal province.
The Telugu script consists of 60 symbols — 16 vowels, 3 vowel modifiers, and 41 consonants.
Modern Standard Telugu is based on the dialect of Krishna-Godavari delta region in Coastal Andhra.
The 15th-century Venetian explorer Niccolò de' Conti (1395–1469), who visited the Vijayanagara Empire, found that the words in the Telugu language end with vowels, just like those in Italian, and hence referred to it as "The Italian of the East".
References -
- Wikipedia