Telugu is a Dravidian language native to the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where it is also the official language. Spoken by about 96 million people (2022), Telugu is the most widely spoken member of the Dravidian language family, and one of the twenty-two scheduled languages of the Republic of India. It is one of the few languages that has primary official status in more than one Indian state, alongside Hindi and Bengali. Telugu is one of the six languages designated as a classical language by the Government of India. It is the 14th most spoken native language in the world. Modern Standard Telugu is based on the dialect of erstwhile Krishna, Guntur, East and West Godavari districts of Coastal Andhra.
Telugu script, an abugida from the Brahmic family of scripts, is used to write the Telugu language, a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as well as several other neighbouring states. It is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic. The Telugu script is also widely used for writing Sanskrit texts and to some extent the Gondi language. It gained prominence during the Eastern Chalukyas also known as Vengi Chalukya era. It shares extensive similarities with the Kannada script, as both of them evolved from the Bhattiprolu and Kadamba scripts of the Brahmi family. In 2008, the Telugu language was given the status of a Classical Language of India, in recognition of its rich history and heritage.
The Gondi (Gōṇḍī) or Gond people, who refer to themselves as "Koitur", are an ethnolinguistic group in India. Their native language, Gondi, belongs to the Dravidian family. They are spread over the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and Odisha. They are listed as a Scheduled Tribe for the purpose of India's system of reservation.
Telangana is a state in India situated in southern part of the Indian peninsula on the high Deccan Plateau. It is the eleventh-largest state and the twelfth-most populated state in India as per 2011 census. On 2 June 2014, the area was separated from the northwestern part of United Andhra Pradesh as the newly formed state of Telangana, with Hyderabad as its capital.
Uniscribe is the Microsoft Windows set of services for rendering Unicode-encoded text, supporting complex text layout. It is implemented in the dynamic link library USP10.DLL. Uniscribe was released with Windows 2000 and Internet Explorer 5.0. In addition, the Windows CE platform has supported Uniscribe since version 5.0.
Gondi (Gōṇḍī), natively known as Koitur, is a South-Central Dravidian language, spoken by about three million Gondi people, chiefly in the Indian states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and by small minorities in neighbouring states. Although it is the language of the Gond people, it is highly endangered, with only one fifth of Gonds speaking the language. Gondi has a rich folk literature, examples of which are wedding songs and narrations. Gondi people are ethnically related to the Telugus.
The Śāradā, Sarada or Sharada script is an abugida writing system of the Brahmic family of scripts. The script was widespread between the 8th and 12th centuries in the northwestern parts of Indian Subcontinent, for writing Sanskrit and Kashmiri. Although originally a signature Brahminical script created in the valley, it was more widespread throughout northwestern Indian subcontinent, although became later restricted to Kashmir, and it is now rarely used, except by the Kashmiri Pandit community for religious purposes.
Komaram Bheem (1901–1940), alternatively Kumram Bheem, was a revolutionary leader in Hyderabad State of British India from the Gond tribes. Bheem, in association with other Gond leaders, led a protracted low intensity rebellion against the feudal Nizams of Hyderabad in the eastern part of the princely state during the 1930s, which contributed in the culmination of the Telangana Rebellion of 1946.
Nandināgarī is a Brahmic script derived from the Nāgarī script which appeared in the 7th century AD. This script and its variants were used in the central Deccan region and south India, and an abundance of Sanskrit manuscripts in Nandināgarī have been discovered but remain untransliterated. Some of the discovered manuscripts of Madhvacharya of the Dvaita Vedanta school of Hinduism are in Nandināgarī script.
Adilabad district is a district located in the northern region of Telangana, India. It is known as the gateway district to South and Central India. The town of Adilabad is its headquarters. The district shares boundaries with Asifabad, Nirmal districts and with the state boundary of Maharashtra.
Telugu language policy is a policy issue in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, with 84 percent of the population reporting Telugu as their first language in Andhra Pradesh prior to the creation of the State of Telangana. Telugu-language advocates decry a lack of incentivisation and government support for the language, and press for their linguistic rights for Telugu's greater recognition and promotion.
Telugu is a Unicode block containing characters for the Telugu, Gondi, and Lambadi languages of Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. In its original incarnation, the code points U+0C01..U+0C4D were a direct copy of the Telugu characters A1-ED from the 1988 ISCII standard. The Devanagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Oriya, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam blocks were similarly all based on their ISCII encodings.
Gondi has typically been written in Devanagari script or Telugu script, but native scripts are in existence. A Gond by the name of Munshi Mangal Singh Masaram designed a Brahmi-based script in 1918, and in 2006, a native script that dates up to 1750 has been discovered by a group of researchers from the University of Hyderabad.
Gunjala is a village in the Adilabad district of Telangana, India.
Kumuram Bheem Asifabad district is a district in the Indian state of Telangana. The town of Asifabad is its district headquarters and kagaznagar as its largest town. It is named after Gond tribal leader Kumuram Bheem. It was earlier part of Adilabad district and it became a new district in 2016. The district share boundaries with Adilabad, Nirmal, Mancherial districts and with the state boundary of Maharashtra. It is the second most backward district in India, according to the 2018 NITI Aayog ranking.
Masaram Gondi is a Unicode block containing characters from the Masaram Gondi script, which was designed for writing Gondi in 1918 by Munshi Mangal Singh Masaram, a Gond from Balaghat district of Madhya Pradesh, India.
Gunjala Gondi is a Unicode block containing characters of Gunjala Gondi script used for writing the Adilabad dialect of the Gondi language.
Motiravan Kangali was an Indian linguist and author from the Gond community. He is known for his work on the origins and development of the Gondi language, and particularly for his creation of a script for it. Kangali authored Gondi dictionaries in English, Hindi and Marathi. He also aided efforts for the standardization and preservation of Gondi grammar while authoring several books on Gond society, culture and religion.
Sakini Ramachandraih is a vocal folk singer and Dhol player from the Bhadradri town in the Telangana State in India. He is known for his expertise in "Kanchumelam-Kanchuthalam" an art form particularly identified with the Koya tribal community in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. This art form is almost on the verge of extinction and Ramachandraih is the only surviving practitioner of the art who can narrate the history of the sacred festival "Sammakka Sarakka Jathara" in both Telugu and Koya languages in its full totality. In the year 2022, Govt of India honoured Ramachandraiah by conferring the Padma Shri award for his contributions to art.
Jayadheer Tirumala Rao is a professor, poet, and historian from Telangana, India. He has been researching about tribal people and their culture for more than 35 years.
