Telugu
Telugu from the script upward. The alphabet is not a preliminary here but the first third of the course: an abugida of fifty-two letters, each consonant carrying a vowel of its own, is a system to be understood rather than a list to be memorised — and it is drilled at length before a single sentence is asked for.
A1
The Vowels — అచ్చులు
—The sixteen independent vowels, arranged as the short and long pairs they in fact are. These are the letters used when a word begins with a vowel; the signs used elsewhere are taken up later.
The Consonants I — the Five Vargas
—Twenty-five of the thirty-six consonants fall into a grid five wide and five deep, ordered by where the sound is made and how. Learn the grid and you have not a list of twenty-five letters but two facts about each one.
The Consonants II — Outside the Grid
—The eleven consonants that no varga accounts for: the four semivowels, the three sibilants with *h*, the retroflex ళ, the dead ఱ, the conjunct క్ష — and the two marks that are counted with neither vowels nor consonants.
CheckpointCheckpoint: The Varṇamāla
—A cumulative examination of the whole alphabet: the sixteen vowels, the twenty-five letters of the varga grid, the eleven outside it, and the two marks counted with neither. Twenty-eight questions in the four examination formats.
Sit the checkpoint29 questions · 116 marks · covers 3 sectionsThe Vowel Signs — గుణింతం
—How a consonant is made to carry a vowel other than its own. Sixteen signs, one for each vowel but the first, attached above, below, to the right, or in two places at once — and the single most important thing to know about reading Telugu.
Muting, Joining, and the Digits
—The last of the writing system: the mark that takes a consonant's vowel away, the subjoined forms by which two consonants are written together, the doubled consonants that fill everyday Telugu words, and the ten digits.
First Sentences
—The script will now carry meaning. Telugu makes a statement of identity with no verb at all: two nouns set side by side are a sentence, and a single word turns it into a denial.
CheckpointCheckpoint: Reading Telugu
—A cumulative examination of sections four to six: the vowel signs and the guṇintam, the pollu and the subjoined consonants, the digits, and the verbless sentence. By the end of it a learner can read a Telugu word aloud and say what it means.
Sit the checkpoint24 questions · 96 marks · covers 3 sectionsNouns, Number, and Gender
—The plural in -లు, and the two genders Telugu makes where European languages make three — masculine and non-masculine, with no feminine as such, and a line between them that falls in one place for the singular and in quite another for the plural.
The Pronouns
—The personal pronouns, the two words for *we* that English cannot tell apart, the possessives that distinguish what is mine from what is ours, and the demonstratives that do duty for the third person — graded by respect, and running in a near series beside a far one.
The Cases
—Telugu marks the work a noun does by gluing a suffix onto it. The suffixes are few and regular; the stem they are glued to is what varies, and that stem — the oblique — is a case in its own right, the genitive.
The Verb: Person and the Present
—The verb stands last, and it agrees with its subject in person, number and class — so that the division of ¶40 comes back as a set of endings. Telugu distinguishes a true present from a habitual/future, and denies each of them, and the past, in a different way.
CheckpointCheckpoint: Nouns, Pronouns, Cases, and the Verb
—A cumulative examination of sections seven through nine: gender and number, the pronouns and demonstratives, the case suffixes glued onto the oblique stem, and the verb that agrees in person, number and gender.
Sit the checkpoint36 questions · 144 marks · covers 4 sectionsNumerals and Counting
—ఒకటి to వంద, and the second set of numerals Telugu keeps for counting people — the gender division of the noun reaching as far as the number words, and stopping short at the ordinals.
The Verb: The Past
—The past places an event before now, and covers what English splits into a simple past and a perfect. Its marker is -ఏ- (or -ఇన్- before -ది), with a small class of verbs that take -నా- instead — and the personal endings of ¶74 close the form as they do in every other tense.
The Verb: The Future-Habitual
—The -తా- form of ¶78 is taken up again for its stem changes: geminates simplify, -ప్పు and -ట్టు voice, -న్ turns -త్- retroflex, and -చ్చు becomes -స్- — the same personal endings closing each form, and the negative tense denying them.
CheckpointCheckpoint: Numerals and the Verb Tenses
—A cumulative examination of numerals and the past and future-habitual: human against thing-counting, the past stem classes, the -తా- stem changes, and the three denials kept distinct.
Sit the checkpoint32 questions · 128 marks · covers 3 sections