దేశ భాషలందు తెలుగు లెస్స - Major lang. of Samskritam origin

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classicallover
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దేశ భాషలందు తెలుగు లెస్స - Major lang. of Samskritam origin

Post by classicallover »

Telugu has been a major language of Samskritam origin being used in Carnatic Music and literature.

The epithets attributed to Telugu are :

1. desha bhashalandu telugu lessa ( దేశ భాషలందు తెలుగు లెస్స ) = telugu is the best language among the nation's various regional languages of Samskritam origin.

2. Telugu is called " the Italian of the East ".

3. " .... sundara telunginil paaDuvOm ..." ( ஸுந்தர தெலுங்கினில் பாடுவோம் ) = Mahakavi Subrahmanya Bharati.

4. theta theta telugu ( తేట తేట తెలుగు ) = sweet and soft telugu.

Nick H
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Re: దేశ భాషలందు తెలుగు లెస్స - Major lang. of Samskritam ori

Post by Nick H »

Andhra Pradesh is the source of a very great deal of beauty :$ :$

Even the Telugu script is beautiful --- although I'm told that it is fiendishly difficult!

I wish I was not a dunce at languages...

cmlover
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Re: దేశ భాషలందు తెలుగు లెస్స - Major lang. of Samskritam ori

Post by cmlover »

Well said!
What is the origin of the term "Telugu"?

vasanthakokilam
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Re: దేశ భాషలందు తెలుగు లెస్స - Major lang. of Samskritam ori

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Telugu has been a major language of Samskritam origin
Wait a second. Is that true? I thought not. It uses a lot of words from Samskritam for its vocabulary especially in literary and poetic disciplines but structurally it is not based on Sanskrit.

rshankar
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Re: దేశ భాషలందు తెలుగు లెస్స - Major lang. of Samskritam ori

Post by rshankar »

Did bhArati say 'sundara telunginil pADuvOm'? I thought it was 'sundara telunginil pATTiSaippOm' (means the same, but still) - but if we take this statement of his as one of the justifications for the beauty of telugu, then, is there a similar conclusion to be drawn with another statement of his from the same composition, 'cEranannATTiLam peNgaLUDanE'?
As an aside, he also authored, 'yAm arinda mozhigaLilE, tamizh mozhippOl..'

In other words, every language (English included) is beautiful, and inappropriate use or pronunciation of any language makes me want to agree with the punishment Professor Higgins recommends for the 'cold-blooded murder of the English tongue'.
Last edited by rshankar on 20 Oct 2012, 02:30, edited 1 time in total.

Nick H
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Re: దేశ భాషలందు తెలుగు లెస్స - Major lang. of Samskritam ori

Post by Nick H »

Oh, well said, rshankar. Perfect!

Although not every language is beautiful to every ear. This is an entirely subjective thing: the sound of different languages is like the sound of different music, and, especially when we do not understand the meaning, listening to different languages is like listening to different music. Any one of us is unlikely to enjoy them all.

arasi
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Re: దేశ భాషలందు తెలుగు లెస్స - Major lang. of Samskritam ori

Post by arasi »

Yes Ravi. BhArathi liked the idea of singing in beautiful telugu. sundarath thelunginil pATtisaithE.

Nick,
You will appreciate the verse:


On the river sindhu in moon light
We will row our boats, singing
Songs in beautiful telugu
With fair maidens from keraLA ;)

This is part of a poem which extols national unity and the beauty of each and every indian language...


Rsachi
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Re: దేశ భాషలందు తెలుగు లెస్స - Major lang. of Samskritam ori

Post by Rsachi »

Arasi,
This verse will give ideas to a Bollywood director. A bevy of beautiful Onam-celebrating women, sailing on the moonlit Sindhu (now in Pakistan) being sung to by a cavalier boatman from Andhra (pick your favourite actor there). And the boatman is actually a kind of SRK from Veer Zara. The rest is left to your/Mani Ratnam/RGV's fertile imagination.

That said, I think Telugu and Kannada speaking folks find learning Sanskrit not too difficult.

vasanthakokilam
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Re: దేశ భాషలందు తెలుగు లెస్స - Major lang. of Samskritam ori

Post by vasanthakokilam »

>I think Telugu and Kannada speaking folks find learning Sanskrit not too difficult

That is interesting Rsachi. Let us explore this a little bit, may be it will give us some clues for many of us to learn Sanskrit.

I definitely see it in terms of vocabulary since a lot of Sanskrit words are in common usage in both languages ( and possibly in Malayalam too ). So they have a good head start there and it does not sound too different in terms of the various phonemes. A lot of inertia in learning a new language is getting started so a lot of familiarity with words reduces that start-up inertia. So I see those sides of things.

But would you say the same ease exists in terms of learning to understand spoken Sanskrit and then learning to speak Sanskrit properly? If yes, why?

( we can set aside learning to read or write since that introduces learning the script which can be dealt with separately ).

( This is more of an intellectual exercise on the relative ease. There are courses that teach people to speak reasonable Sanskrit in one month and I have seen non-Indians learning to do that to the extent of fully participating in a 100% Sanskrit skit at the end of the course. It is quite remarkable ).

arasi
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Re: దేశ భాషలందు తెలుగు లెస్స - Major lang. of Samskritam ori

Post by arasi »

VK,
Sachi and you are both right. For them, many sanskrit words are familiar--also in pronouncing them!

By the same token, I have heard some non-thamizhs say that thamizh is not an easy language to learn.

When it comes to Hindi, it seems that folks from all states find it easy. Is it because it's a young language, compared to others?
Last edited by arasi on 21 Oct 2012, 06:59, edited 3 times in total.

vasanthakokilam
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Re: దేశ భాషలందు తెలుగు లెస్స - Major lang. of Samskritam ori

Post by vasanthakokilam »

>but also in pronouncing them!

Right. That is what I meant when I wrote about phonemes. Huge advantage indeed.

Sanskrit, or for that matter any language, is much more than the vocabulary. Right? or I am giving those aspects more significance than warranted?

We can actually make it a bit more concrete to aid the discussion. I took one year of Sanskrit long time back and the first one was Kalidasa's Raghuvamsa fourth canto and the familiar verse

sa rājyaṁ guruṇā dattaṁ pratipadyādhikaṁ babhau |
dinānte nihitaṁ tejaḥ savitreva hutāśanaḥ

Does a Telugu or Kannada speaking person has an advantage in learning what this means? ( and other subsequent verses ). Or even, does the familiarity in vocabulary help them in taking a guess at what this means and then build up on it? If so, I do grant that initial advantage in learning the language based on the familiarity with the vocabulary. I first thought kalidasa may not be a fair starter example but then I realized it was the first verse in the first course in Sanskrit and so it may actually be a good example.

Rsachi
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Re: దేశ భాషలందు తెలుగు లెస్స - Major lang. of Samskritam ori

Post by Rsachi »

It is a VERY long time since I studied Sanskrit, but the moment I see the shloka above, my mind works like this:
sa first vibhakti=he dattam, rajyam, second..guruNaa third so every word is tagged and the meaning starts emerging.
He shone.. Upamaa kaalidasasya..like..dinaante savitraa eva like by the evening sun...again hutaashanah..go back to sa..he..

I think it is the combination of vocabulary, alphabet, phonetics, and the structured format (cases and tenses) that makes Samskrit easy. My conclusion that it might be easier for T and K is based on difficulties I see that my friends from the other two languages evidence in working out these aspects. Do they have a fear factor?

But finally it must be the way one is taught more than anything else, so this theory about K and T may become null and void!

By the same token, I hated Hindi and was hopeless. Of course living in Delhi later helped me pick it up very fast when I attended some refresher classes.

classicallover
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Re: దేశ భాషలందు తెలుగు లెస్స - Major lang. of Samskritam ori

Post by classicallover »

The discussion is deviating into learning of Samskritam. Let us come back and stick to the original topic.

Telugu & Kannada to a lesser extent have many words of Samskritam origin. But quite a few of the words have lost the original meaning while some others have got corrupted during the import into a different form. Bharati fixed the adjective "sundara" to Telugu, whether it was out of admiration or just for lyrical beauty is another topic. But that also is of Samskritam origin !!

In previous century and during the decades of Composite Madras State, many many people knew to speak or write in Telugu. Language was certainly not the barrier for music. How do you justify the numerous compositions of so many composers being in Telugu ? Moreover, it was easy to learn Telugu then as the Tamil script contained the letters for sa, ha, etc which were later removed. In addition, many could read & write the Grantha script which had all the letters of Samskritam.

It is published that while Tamil continued to develop from Brahmi script, Telugu & Kannada stopped very long back. It was revived later on. Telugu & Kannada do not have scripts of their own. Their scripts were developed by a linguist sage called "Pishacha" and hence the scripts came to be known as "Paishacha lipi ". For sake of political conveniences they were recently given the 'Classical Language ' status by the Central Govt. when the respective State Govts. fought for it , citing the reason that Telugu & Kannada were on par with Tamil as far as heritage, standards, speaking population, etc were concerned.

Even the grammar for Telugu was consolidated by Chinnayya Suri on the lines of Panini's Samskritam only during the last century.

natyasri
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Re: దేశ భాషలందు తెలుగు లెస్స - Major lang. of Samskritam origin

Post by natyasri »

i think Telugu came from Prakrit (including script) while Tamil from Pali. While one see clear influence of Sanskrit for the purpose of literature in all Indian languages, which also goes to prove that Sanskrit was the medium of education, Actual and pure Telugu, if you look closely at various dialects has as much to do with Sanskrit as any other language.
While Tamil still wield more political power than naive Telugus, it was more of the naivety that led to the delayed grant of classical status to Telugu language.
The biggest advantage of Telugu is that it has the maximum number of alphabets as against any other Indian language and phonetic for each and specific sound. also most number of words end with vowel which makes it more adaptable for literature.
Telugu heritage is older than Tamil if I may, else we are talking of Pali and Prakrit. We cannot for the sake of convenience compare Telugu with Pali.
Telugu is the oldest language cause it has inscriptions unearthed aged at 4500BC and the vast vyakrana is the evidence.

natyasri
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Re: దేశ భాషలందు తెలుగు లెస్స - Major lang. of Samskritam origin

Post by natyasri »

it has been proved beyond doubt that Telugu used Brahmi lipi, and not the one mentioned by the above poster, Infact it was the Satavahanas that introduced Brahmi to Tamil, who a theory states, were not the original inhabitants of the mainland India.

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