Telugu

How to spell telugu

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce telugu

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does telugu mean?

1. nounA Dravidian language spoken mainly in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, or relating to its speakers and culture.

Telugu in a sentence

• The film was shot in telugu and later dubbed into Hindi.

• She grew up speaking telugu at home and English at school.

Where does telugu come from?

Language of origin: Other

Telugu is the name of a major Dravidian language spoken largely in the south-eastern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and the word is itself a Telugu and broader Indian term rather than an English coinage. The origin of the name is genuinely debated among scholars. One long-standing explanation links it to 'Trilinga', a Sanskrit-derived word meaning 'three lingas', after three sacred Shaivite shrines said to mark the historical boundaries of the Telugu country, which over time could have softened into 'Telinga' and then 'Telugu'. A competing view treats it as a native Dravidian word, possibly connected to roots meaning 'south' or to 'tenugu', a term associated with sweetness, a nod to the language's famously mellifluous sound that earned it the nickname 'the Italian of the East'. English picked the name up during the colonial period of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as British administrators and missionaries catalogued the languages of the subcontinent. For an English speller the trap is simply the unstressed middle and final vowels: it is spelled with a 'u' in both the second and third syllables (te-lu-gu), not the 'oo' the ear might suggest at the end.

How the word is built

• telugu (a proper-noun language name borrowed whole; not built from English prefix-root-suffix parts)