Learning Telugu - A total newbie !!

[mainhoonemily]

Are there any Telugu-learning tools (books, CDs, etc) that are as reliable as the Snell Teach Yourself Hindi program seems to be?  I've found a couple of Learn Telugu resources on Amazon, but most are unrated and the only one with a rating has just one star.

[omlick]

Are there any Telugu-learning tools (books, CDs, etc) that are as reliable as the Snell Teach Yourself Hindi program seems to be?  I've found a couple of Learn Telugu resources on Amazon, but most are unrated and the only one with a rating has just one star.

I would suspect that the pickings are trim in Telegu learning land.  It is one of those languages that very few Westerners learn, and therefore there is not much market for learning materials.    I don't think you will find a Teach Yourself Telugu in that series of Teach Yourself books. 

[mainhoonemily]

I would suspect that the pickings are trim in Telegu learning land.  It is one of those languages that very few Westerners learn, and therefore there is not much market for learning materials.    I don't think you will find a Teach Yourself Telugu in that series of Teach Yourself books. 

I know, that's why I asked for suggestions.    The two books I found on Amazon are $30 and $20, so before I spent that much money I wanted to find out if anyone had any recommendations.  One is Learn Telugu in 30 Days Through English by Krishna Gopal Vikal and the other Learn Telugu in a Month by Govinbarajulu.

[wannabe]

I know, that's why I asked for suggestions.    The two books I found on Amazon are $30 and $20, so before I spent that much money I wanted to find out if anyone had any recommendations.  One is Learn Telugu in 30 Days Through English by Krishna Gopal Vikal and the other Learn Telugu in a Month by Govinbarajulu.

If those are the government of India publications, (I know the first one is), they tend to teach you a very stilted non-conversational type of Telugu that is correct, but  not actually spoken. 

Are you looking to learn to speak, or to read and write?  All the Government books of "learn X in 30 days" start off with teaching you to read first, which is an unnatural way of learning.   There are some CD's and books available, mainly aimed at second generation immigrants.  Did you check out the links posted by D.t. on the previous page?

[amit]

Just a slight nit-pick, and this is very common - along the same lines as "Ghandi" - it's Telugu, not Telegu. 

[omlick]

The more obscure a language is, the less resources are available for learning it.  Telugu is one of many langauges that there are not much resources for learning.  Your best bet is to go to Hyderabad in my opiinion.  Some universities here in America do offer courses in it, maybe at Madison or Berkeley, I don't remember now. 

Hindi is still way behind Spanish, French, and German, and even Chinese it seems in the learning resources department.  And forget about Urdu, there is hardly anything decent for it as well.  So go figure

[sparkletwist]

If they're the same books as I'm thinking of, those "Learn X in 30 days" books aren't worth the paper they're printed on. And it's pretty cheap paper, so that's saying something.

[sunrise]

  Keep in mind that the Dravidian languages are quite different than Hindii and other I ndo- European languagues, they are agglutative and that makes them very difficult to learn to those who are not born into them.  Think Hungarian, Turkish, Finnish, Georgian among others like that.

Well, personally (though there is some bias as my 'learning method' was through Telugu being my mother tongue!), I don't think it's easier or harder than any other Indian language. In fact, it seems a little easier considering Telugu does not have genders for common nouns (which for example Hindi would have), for example. Grammar-wise, I don't find Telugu any more difficult than I find Hindi (but then again, learning a language as a mother tongue I guess is always different from learning it out of interest when you're much older and wiser...

As for the agglutination, I am actually curious to know how you mean this (yes, despite me being a native speaker, I know... lol. Shame on me!) - do you have any specific examples?

(And also as a comparison point for the agglutination - German has a LOT of small words glued together to make larger words, so I would say it would probably be no more difficult to learn Telugu as it would German. It's quite rewarding when you work out what the word is, at least, haha!)

[krissh]

http://www.word2word.com/coursead.html

There are a few links available through this website.

[AfgJasmine16]

I'm really thinking of learning Telugu, i'm already learning Tamil and Bengali so I don't know if it would be too much or not Anyway I have a couple of questions, is Telugu harder then Tamil? A couple of people I talked too who spoke both lanaguges said Telugu is much harder. But I was wondering if anyone who is learning both would say Telugu is harder or eaiser then Tamil. Also which lanaguge is more spoken?

[senorita]

I'm really thinking of learning Telugu, i'm already learning Tamil and Bengali so I don't know if it would be too much or not Anyway I have a couple of questions, is Telugu harder then Tamil? A couple of people I talked too who spoke both lanaguges said Telugu is much harder. But I was wondering if anyone who is learning both would say Telugu is harder or eaiser then Tamil. Also which lanaguge is more spoken?

Learning Telugu seems pretty easy to me, but then it is my mothertongue  
I don't know Tamil, so can't really say which one is easier.

As to the language with most number of speakers of the two - its Telugu.
 According to 2001 census data, Telugu is the 3rd most spoken language in India(Tamil is 5th) and it is the 15th most spoken language in the World.

The more obscure a language is, the less resources are available for learning it.  Telugu is one of many langauges that there are not much resources for learning.  

 Telugu and Tamil are not some obscure langauges Its quite the opposite, trust me. Andhra Pradesh is the biggest southern state in India & over 75 million people speak Telugu  
But usually the focus has never been on developing language resources for non-native speakers. Its always just been within the family. Hindi speakers have never been known to show any interest in learning south indian languages. Irony of ironies...now resources have to be developed for non-native English speakers.  Maybe things will slowly start to change as the demand to cater to 2nd generation Indians grows as well.

[jjake61]

This is interesting! So Telugu is agluati...whatever like kiswahili! In Kiswahili the word ninakupenda is the sentence I(ni) present tense(na) you (ku) love (penda). And in kiswahili borrowed nouns have a vowel added too. Bus=basi, bank= banki car=gari. Sorry OT but I always had a feeling those long Telugu words could be broken down like kiswahili can.

[senorita]

Yes, i guess Telugu is aggula.......lol.
To take a popular example: NVNV
Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana can be broken down into Nuvvu Vostanu Ante Nenu Voddu Antana

Bommarillu is formed by combining Bomma(doll) & Illu(house)

So once one learns the root words (there is a lot of influence of sanskrit) it does become fairly easy.
The other day i noticed Vivek Oberoi tweeting in Telugu and Diya Mirza responding back in Telugu. Both of them did pretty good 

[dustdevil]

I found this website "Learning Telugu" http://www.learningtelugu.org/, that seems like a pretty well thought out intro course for the total newbie.  I like that the approach could be supplemented well by watching subtitled films.

(It does look like it was put together by a group associated with a particular religious leader.  Hmm, if I get into it, and the content of the Telugu starts being about how "XXX is so great, please send XXX money," I'll report back .)

[kalikaliankhen]

Yes, i guess Telugu is aggula.......lol.
To take a popular example: NVNV
Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana can be broken down into Nuvvu Vostanu Ante Nenu Voddu Antana

Bommarillu is formed by combining Bomma(doll) & Illu(house)

So once one learns the root words (there is a lot of influence of sanskrit) it does become fairly easy.
The other day i noticed Vivek Oberoi tweeting in Telugu and Diya Mirza responding back in Telugu. Both of them did pretty good 

I love this thread! I'm taking the mad fool route and trying to teach myself Telugu, by using online news articles for reading/transliteration practice, the Teach yourself telugu through English in 30 days (as IF! 30 months more like!), a crazy hard academic text on telugu phrases that I found on the web AND watching a bunch of Telugu movies. The latter being my favourite method 

I also have the 'Talk Now' CD ROM which doesn't seem particularly useful for the grammar. I have looked high and low for a 'Teach Yourself' from the same series as Snell, and the closest in name in all the catalogues I've seen appears to be Tagalog...which is no help

However, rereading VO's and Dia's tweets today after having seen a few Telugu movies, am delighted to report that I understood them both. They were gobbledygook when they first appeared in my twitter timeline 

[kalikaliankhen]

I found this website "Learning Telugu" http://www.learningtelugu.org/, that seems like a pretty well thought out intro course for the total newbie.  I like that the approach could be supplemented well by watching subtitled films.

(It does look like it was put together by a group associated with a particular religious leader.  Hmm, if I get into it, and the content of the Telugu starts being about how "XXX is so great, please send XXX money," I'll report back .)

Wow! I'm going through the first lesson, and it seems really good. I will keep going with it! Thanks so much for the link, this has never shown up in my previous searches.

[Putturani]

Re: last names

The last names in our family are hilarious! We're Telgu/Kannadiga Brahmins so we've got the "Rao" thing going on pretty universally. Funnily enough, most of my ancestors didn't put their father's name in front of their given name. It was more like: Village of Origin, Given name, profession. e.g. Harohalli Krishnamurthy Shastri (Shashtri means priest and Harohalli is a random village). And it's funny that my grandpa had the last name "Rao" and his village modifier but my grandmom hasn't taken on the "Rao" but taken on his village modifier and first name as initials before hers. It's strange! Then my mom and her brother and all their cousins have no last name, but are named after where they were born - major metro e.g. Madras Venkata. Then my generation has adopted the Rao again and droped the place modifier. It seems my family is fond of picking up and dropping the Rao.

Oh and like Telgu words, almost all Kannada words end in vowels as well e.g. hudugi (girl), mane (house) unlike the Hindi ghar

[Italian0]

I found this website "Learning Telugu" http://www.learningtelugu.org/, that seems like a pretty well thought out intro course for the total newbie.  I like that the approach could be supplemented well by watching subtitled films.

(It does look like it was put together by a group associated with a particular religious leader.  Hmm, if I get into it, and the content of the Telugu starts being about how "XXX is so great, please send XXX money," I'll report back .)

Actually C.P. Brown isn’t a religious leader at all 
He was a Telugu writer of English descent who is considered to have saved Telugu literature, which was in a dying state at the beginning of the 19th century.

[senorita]

It seems like for the past couple of years Berkeley university is offering Telugu classes. There was a news item about this yesterday. looks like around 45 people have taken this, out of which 10 people are of American descent.
Here is the video of a woman who is taking the class & very bravely answered questions in Telugu for a couple of minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtK2TkiilJg#t=2m20s

[kalikaliankhen]

Guys, I've been trying out the www.learningtelugu.com site into practice, and it takes effort, but am getting somewhere. I started off by learning the script first, and I'm transcribing then translating online articles in Telugu with the help of an online dictionary. I then pick apart the articles for constructions that I can use in conversation. I have friends on Twitter who help by conversing with me in Telugu too

Here's a tumblr (it's like a mini-blog) that I have started up to track my progress, and as a central place to record the bits and pieces that I learn! Only one post so far, but working on the next one... enjoy!

http://tollywoodismyteacher.tumblr.com

[BanditQueen]

Anyone can help me to translate this in Telugu? Need this for a secret santa gift

Dance with me Lisa 

Thank you

[mayabazar]

lisa, naato dance aadandi - should do the trick for you... In case you want to make it pure telugu, remove dance from the sentence. It can be understood from the  context.

lisa, naato kalisi dance cheyyandi (conversational telugu)

lisa, naato kalisi naatyam cheyyandi (true telugu, but not being used these days too much.).

Naatyam means dance, but it is slowly acquiring the meaning of traditional dances.


replace aadandi with aadu and cheyyandi with cheyyi, if its not a request.

[Dancelover]

In America, for four decades (forty years) now,
both Science Fiction writers and Feminists have been searching for
pronouns for living beings that do not specify gender.
("It" does not answer, because it is for things that are not alive.)

Now I see here that some Indian languages have such pronouns, "vo/voh" and "yeh!"
Hooary! I cannot wait to tell my friends in Science Fiction!
I will tell them at
bar.baen.com
which is the website/forum of Baen Books.

I am not certain from this context whether those words are in Telugu, Hindi, Urda, or all of them.

Dancelover
On Baen's Bar I am Howard True Map-addict

**
I think what I'm referring to is the fact that "vo" in Urdu/Hindi is used for both "he" and "she", correct?
**
Actually, now that I think about it, I think in one of the other learning Hindi threads,
someone had said that you figure out whether it means "he" or "she" by the form of the verb ending,
which is different for the masculine or feminine.
[snip]
Part of this confusion also comes from the fact that I have seen many Hindi/Urdu speakers on the net
commonly confuse the third person pronouns, especially possessive ones, when writing in English,
such as "I think Amisha has one brother, but I don't know if he has any sisters."
or "Amisha looks lovely. His dress is very pretty."
I connected all this to the fact that the same word is used for both male and female.
[snip]

You are correct that vo/yeh is the same for masculine and feminine,
and that that this goes for the possessive, dative, object, etc forms of this as well. 
But all verbs have a different form for feminine and masculine, except for the present form of hona, that is, hai. 
"Voh Dilli mein hai" could mean He is in Delhi or she is in Delhi. 
But otherwise you can use the verb to figure out the gender,
as in "Voh Dilli mein rehta* hai" (masculine--He lives in Delhi),
or "Voh Dilli mein rehti* hai" (she lives in Delhi).
That is a very strange feature of Telengana Telugu that you are talking about. 

[AfgJasmine16]

I don't know if this will be useful but it has a couple links to websites for Telugu and two radio stations:

http://www.parleremo.org/viewcatalog.php?catlang=tel

[senorita]

Teaching Telugu to American diplomats in Washinton DC:

 http://www.theindiasite.com/so-what-do-you-want-to-know-about-india/