Telugu is an agglutinative language with person, tense, case and number being inflected on the end of nouns and verbs. Its word order is usually subject-object-verb, with the direct object following the indirect object. The grammatical function of the words are marked by suffixes that indicate case and postpositions that follow the oblique stem. It is also head-final and a pro-drop language.
The first treatise on Telugu grammar (), the Andhra Shabda Chintamani () was written in Sanskrit by Nannayya, who is considered the first poet (ÃÂdikavi) and grammarian of the Telugu language, in the 11th century CE. In the 13th century, Andhra Bhasha Bhushanamu, a foundational Telugu grammar and vocabulary work, was written by the 13th-century scholar Mulaghatika Ketana, and is considered the first comprehensive Telugu grammar written in Telugu. In the 19th century, Paravastu Chinnaya Suri wrote a simplified work on Telugu grammar called BÃÂla VyÃÂkaraá¹Âam (lit. Children's grammar), borrowing concepts and ideas from Nannayya, in Telugu.
According to Nannayya, language without 'Niyama' or the language which does not adhere to VyÃÂkaranam is called GrÃÂmya (lit of the village) or Apabhraá¹Âà Âa, is unfit for literary usage. All literary texts in Telugu follow the VyÃÂkaraá¹Âam. Following pure telugu movement to minimise loan words and maximize usage of native telugu that is naatu telugu, a melimi telugu version is introduced where the term melimi means "fine" or excellence". grammar for this version is telugu nudikattu
Telugu is more inflected than other literary Dravidian languages. Telugu nouns are inflected for number (singular, plural), gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and grammatical case (nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, locative and vocative).
There is a rich system of derivational morphology in Telugu. Verbs and adjectives can be converted into nouns by adding a variety of suffixes.
Example:
ceyu + ika = ceyika(action)
manchi + thanam = manchithanam (goodness)
Telugu has three genders, which govern verb agreement:
In Telugu the occurrence of the suffix (âÂÂá¸Âu) almost always encodes masculine gender. For example:
However, there are nouns that do not end in (-á¸Âu) that belong to the masculine class.For example:
Most of the words ending in -á¸Âu 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 -á¸Âu is feminized by adding the suffix -ÃÂlu to the root. The -a ending of the root becomes -ur. This phenomenon is known as the rugÃÂgama 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 -aá¹Â. These neuter words are often borrowed from Sanskrit 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 gendersâ the third person pronoun (à ° à °¦à °¿ ) can be used to refer to animals and objects.
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 (nëru) and milk (pÃÂlu) are always plural.
God (bhagavantudu), sun (suryudu), earth (bhà «mi), and moon (chandrudu) are always singular form.
Cardinal numbers and quantifiers in Telugu vary based on whether or not the noun being counted is human, or non-human. The numbers from 1-7 have unique forms between the human and non-human forms, whereas numbers greater than 7 simply use the measure word à °®à °Âà °¦à °¿ mandi to denote number. Ordinal numbers merely replace the final vowel of the non-human cardinal form with -à  and do not vary between human and non-human nouns.
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, in comparison with classical Telugu:
Only the nominative, genitive, accusative, and dative cases are regularly used, and the locative case is formed using the suffixes -là Â, -là Âpala which were originally placed in the Genitive case by traditional grammarians to fit into the Sanskrit case scheme. The instrumental+sociative case suffix is -tà  (while classical has -cÃÂn/-cÃÂtan for instrumental and -tà Ân/-tà Âá¸Âan for sociative); the colloquial suffixes for ablative case are -nuá¹Âá¸Âi/-nuñci. Ablative case is also used for comparative statements in colloquial Telugu, for which the suffixes are -kaá¹Âá¹Âe/-kannÃÂ. Another usage of ablative case is to indicate 'because of' noun, where the suffix -valla (classical -valanan) is used. The benefactive suffixes in classical (-koá¹Âakun/-kai) are completely replaced by -kà Âsam in modern colloquial Telugu. The genitive form of a noun is defaulted to its oblique stem, i.e., oblique stem of a noun serves as its genitive case by default, though an explicit suffix -yokka is used in formal contexts (refer to oblique stem formation below).
The accusative case suffix is -ni/-nu, with the former always used after final syllables containing -i-, and the latter elsewhere but freely varies with -ni. The intervening vowel is sometimes deleted between -á¸Â-, -l-, -n-, -á¹Â-, -r- and the suffix, e.g. mimmala "you (plural) + -ni â mimmalni, vÃÂá¸Âi "him" + -ni â vÃÂá¹Âá¹Âi (*-á¸Âni â -á¹Âá¹Âi).
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 -ÃÂnni (â *-ÃÂnini) and neuter dative singular -ÃÂniki.
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. The plural oblique stem, however, is either -la or -ḷa.
Only nominative, genitive, accusative, and dative cases are shown here.
Telugu word order tends to be subjectâÂÂobjectâÂÂverb. It is head-final - the head follows its complements. Since Telugu is a pro-drop language, the subject can be omitted as the verb already marks person and number.
Sandhi is the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of sounds due to neighboring sounds or due to the grammatical function of adjacent words.
Telugu sandhis can be divided into native ones and those derived from Sanskrit ones.
These sandhis usually take place when the two words undergoing Sandhi are words borrowed from Sanskrit.
The savará¹Âadërgha sandhi, from Sanskrit savará¹Âa '<nowiki/>same sound' and dërgha 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 guá¹Âasandhi takes place when a word final -a is followed by either -i, -u or -rÃÂ¥. The sandhi yields -ÃÂ, -à  and -ar respectively. -ÃÂ, -à  and -ar are collectively called the guá¹Âas, hence the name.
The vrÃÂ¥ddhisandhi, from Sanskrit vrÃÂ¥ddhi-, 'growth', takes place when a word final -a is followed by -ÃÂ or -ai, -Ã Â or -au, and -ar or -ÃÂr, and yields -ai, -au and -ÃÂr respectively. -ai, -au and -ÃÂr are collectively called the vrÃÂ¥ddhis, hence the name.
The yaá¹ÂÃÂdÃÂà Âasandhi takes place when word final -i, -u or -rÃÂ¥ is followed by a non-similar vowel. The sandhi yields either -y-, -v- or -r- respectively. These are known as the yaá¹ÂÃÂs.
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. iá¹£á¹Âamu).
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:
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:
Sometimes regarded as a form of the ÃÂmrÃÂá¸Âitasandhi, the dviruktaá¹ÂakÃÂrasandhi occurs when kaá¸ÂÃÂdi (kaá¸Âa, naá¸Âuma, madhyÃÂhnamu, bayalu, etc.) words are compounded. A dviruktaá¹ÂakÃÂra, a geminated -á¹Âá¹Â- forms from this sandhi, hence the name.
Samasam or samasa occurs with various structures, but morphologically speaking they are essentially the same: each noun (or adjective) is in its (weak) stem form, with only the final element receiving case inflection.
Some of the Telugu samasams are:
Telugu Alankaram is a figure of speech which means ornaments or embellishments which are used to enhance the beauty of the poems. There are two types of Alankarams, 'Shabdalankaram' which primarily focuses on Sound and 'Arthalamkaram' which focuses on meaning. These two alankarams are further broken down in to different categories. shabdalankaras are 6 types where as there are nearly 30 to 40 types in ardhalankaras.
Metrical poetry in Telugu is called 'Chandassu' or 'Chandas'. ya-maa-taa-raa-ja-bhaa-na-sa-la-gam is called the chandassu chakram. Utpalamala, Champakamala, Mattebha vikreeditham, Sardoola Vikreeditham, Kanda, Aata veladi, Theta geethi, Sragdhara, Bhujangaprayata, etc. are some metrics used in Telugu poetry.
Although the morphological (grammatical) structure of Telugu verbs is quite evidently complex and complicated, the basic conjugation of subject person and number endings in modern spoken Telugu is in fact rather straightforward:
The vowel -ÃÂ- is pronounced as in the past tense ending, except in some verbs. In the verbs an- "to say", kan- "to buy", kon- "to bring forth", kà «rcun- "to be seated", nilcun- "to stand", tin- " to eat", un- "to be", and vin- " to hear", -nà(with ) is used instead.
Telugu has two types of converbs, present and past. These are heavily used to form compound sentences.
Note that in most cases, all sub clauses using these types of converbs need to share a subject.
Telugu forms relative clauses with participles. There are three main participles in Telugu: the perfective, the imperfective, and the negative.
Notice that the negative participle does not show tense. Context is used to disambiguate the tense in this case.