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Lingo7 lets you read books with a translation under every sentence in 49 languages. Telugu is not one of them yet. Ask for it below, and see what adding it takes and what reading Telugu involves.
Lingo7 does not read Telugu yet: the app has no Telugu dictionary, audio or shelf of books. You can vote for Telugu here. Leave your email to vote; we add the most requested languages first and write to you once, when Telugu is ready.
We add the most requested languages first. Leave your email and we'll write to you once, when Telugu is ready.
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The demo below is the live reader with a German book. Telugu would work the same way once it is added.
Spoken in: India (Andhra Pradesh, Telangana)
Telugu script is an abugida with rounded letters, most of them topped by a small v-shaped tick, the talakattu. It has 16 vowels and 33 primary consonants. When two consonants meet without a vowel, the second is written as a small subscript form (a vattu) under the first, usually without its tick, and a reader learns to take in the pair as one unit.
The script is a close relative of Kannada: the two split from a common Telugu-Kannada script around 1300 CE and still look very much alike. Telugu words generally end in vowels, which earned the language the nickname "the Italian of the East", often credited to the 15th-century Venetian traveller Niccolò de' Conti. In the modern language a few consonants, m, n, y and w, may also end a word.
Older writing used grandhika, a classical literary register, while modern writing follows vyavaharika, the standard based on speech. Gidugu Venkata Ramamurthy led the campaign for vyavaharika, and it is now the medium of schools, exams and even theses. Classical poetry, from Nannaya's 11th-century Telugu Mahabharata onward, is in the older language, and StoryWeaver, a free online library, has close to a thousand illustrated Telugu stories for beginners.
Our free tools cover the 49 languages in the app.
There is no date yet. We add the most requested languages first, and Telugu needs the work described on this page. Leave your email in the form and we will write to you once, when Telugu is ready.
Not yet. Lingo7 has no Telugu dictionary, audio or shelf of books, so a Telugu book would not get the sentence-by-sentence translation and word lookups the app is built on. The 49 languages it does read are listed on the home page.
One vote per email address per language. The count on this page shows a number once at least 10 people have asked, and refreshes within a minute of a new vote. Your email is stored only to tell you when Telugu launches, and deleted whenever you ask at support@lingoseven.com.
The letters, largely yes: the two scripts split from a common ancestor around 1300 CE and are often treated as regional variants of one script. The languages are related but distinct, so recognizing the letters is the easy part and understanding the text takes study.
Grandhika is the classical written register of older literature; vyavaharika is the modern standard based on speech. Gidugu Venkata Ramamurthy campaigned for vyavaharika against strong opposition from traditional scholars, and today it is the language of schools and exams.
The first consonant is written in full and the next one as a small subscript form, a vattu, under it, usually without its tick. A cluster therefore reads top to bottom, and a reader learns the subscript shape of each consonant alongside its full form.