Telugu grammar

Telugu has three genders:

• masculine (purusha liṅgamu),
• feminine (strī liṅgamu),
• neuter (napunsaka liṅgamu).

In Telugu the occurrence of the suffix (–ḍu) almost always encodes masculine gender. For example:

• tammuḍu (younger brother),
• mukhyuḍu (important man),
• Rāmuḍu (Rāma),
• nāyakuḍu (leader).

However, there are nouns that do not end in (-ḍu) that belong to the masculine class.For example:

• annayya (elder brother),
• māmayya (uncle).

Most of the words ending in -ḍu are borrowings from Sanskrit words ending in -a, and therefore the feminine forms of these words are equivalent to the Sanskrit words.

Sometimes, a word ending in -ḍu is feminized by adding the suffix -ālu to the root. The -a ending of the root becomes -ur. This phenomenon is known as the rugāgama sandhi.

Neuter-gendered words usually contain the suffix -amu. This suffix descends from the Old Telugu suffix -ambu and is increasingly losing the final -u to become -aṁ. These neuter words are often borrowed from Sanskrit neuter-gendered words ending in -a or -u. The final -a usually becomes -amu, and the final -u becomes -uvu.

However, Telugu sometimes uses the same forms for singular feminine and neuter genders – the third person pronoun (అది /ad̪i/) is used to refer to animals and objects.[3]

Anything with quantity one is singular (ekavachanam). Anything more than one in number is called plural (bahuvachanam), as in English. Formation of the plural stem, however, is relatively complicated, although the ending is centered on variants -lu or -ḷu.

In Telugu the plural is also used to as an honorific. Some nouns are always plural and some are always singular. For example, water (neellu) is always plural.

God (bhagavantudu), sun (suryudu), earth (bhūmi), and moon (chandrudu) are always singular form.

A Grammar of Modern Telugu by Krishnamurti and Gwynn (1985), which focuses on a grammatical description of modern spoken Telugu rather than classical literary Telugu, presents a simple analysis of grammatical case:

Only the nominative, genitive, accusative, and dative cases are regularly used, and the locative case is formed using the suffixes -lō, -lōpala which were originally placed in the Genitive case by traditional grammarians to fit into the Sanskrit case scheme. The instrumental case suffix is -tō; the colloquial suffixes for ablative case are -valla and -kaṇṭe/-kannā. The dative suffixes in classical are completely replaced by -kōsam.

The accusative case suffix is usually simply -ni/-nu, the former used after final syllables containing -i- while the later elsewhere.

In neuter nouns, the nominative singular ending -am changes before the accusative and dative case suffixes, such that the combined forms of these endings are neuter accusative singular -ānni and neuter dative singular -āniki (Krishnamurti and Gwynn, pp. 85-97).

Formation of the oblique stem, also usually but not always the same as the genitive (by default homophonous unless noted), is relatively complicated just like pluralization.

These sandhis usually take place when the two words undergoing Sandhi are words borrowed from Sanskrit.

The savarṇadīrgha sandhi, from Sanskrit savarṇa 'same sound' and dīrgha 'long', this sandhi takes place when the first word ends in the same vowel that the second word starts with. The two vowels join to form one long vowel.

The guṇasandhi takes place when a word final -a is followed by either -i, -u or -r̥. The sandhi yields -ē, -ō and -ar respectively. -ē, -ō and -ar are collectively called the guṇas, hence the name.

The vr̥ddhisandhi, from Sanskrit vr̥ddhi-, 'growth', takes place when a word final -a is followed by -ē or -ai, -ō or -au, and -ar or -ār, and yields -ai, -au and -ār respectively. -ai, -au and -ār are collectively called the vr̥ddhis, hence the name.

The yaṇādēśasandhi takes place when word final -i, -u or -r̥ is followed by a non-similar vowel. The sandhi yields either -y-, -v- or -r- respectively. These are known as the yaṇās.

These sandhis usually occur when one or both of the words is a native Telugu word, or is a Sanskrit borrowing that is treated as such (ex. iṣṭamu).

This sandhi occurs when a word final -a is followed by any vowel. The word final -a is removed, and the following vowel takes its place.

This sandhi occurs when a word final -i is followed by any vowel. The word final -i is removed, and the following vowel takes its place.

This sandhi occurs when a word final -u is followed by any vowel. The word final -u is removed, and the following vowel takes its place.

One of the most complicated of the sandhis, the trikasandhi is of two forms:

1. When a final -ā -ī or -ē is followed by a non-clustered consonant, the vowel is shortened, and the unclustered consonant is geminated.
2. When the word mūḍu (three) is followed by a consonant, the word-final -ḍu is eliminated. This triggers the first rule of the trikasandhi, and the now-word-final -ū is shortened, and the following consonant is geminated. When the consonant is l-, sometimes it is geminated to -ḷḷ- instead.

This sandhi deals with repeated words, i.e., pairs of same words. This sandhi forms some of the most used irregular-looking words in the language. It has three rules:

1. When a vowel-initial word is repeated, the final vowel of the first word is eliminated.
2. Word final forms of ka (ka, ki, ku, ke, etc.) of the first word are eliminated and the first rule is applied.
3. The andādi words (anduku, iggulu, tumuru, tuniyalu, etc.) when compounded lead to irregular forms.

Sometimes regarded as a form of the āmrēḍitasandhi, the dviruktaṭakārasandhi occurs when kaḍādi (kaḍa, naḍuma, madhyāhnamu, bayalu, etc.) words are compounded. A dviruktaṭakāra, a geminated -ṭṭ- forms from this sandhi, hence the name.

• Trika Sandhi.
• Dugagama Sandhi.
• Saraladesha Sandhi
• Gasadadavadesha Sandhi.
• Rugagama Sandhi.
• Yadagama Sandhi.
• Prathametara Vibhakti Sandhi.
• Uchadadi sandhi.

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