Telugu

Plain vowels.

o cannot appear at the end of a word.wl,#Phonology

æː occurs in loan wordswl,#Phonology, but may also occur before a syllable with the sounds a, o, or u, and in some verbal forms.d,417

Diphthongs

Inherent vowel suppression

Telugu words usually end with a vowel, eg.

ఇక్కడ

In traditional Telugu there is always a vowel sound at the end of a word, however in the modern language it is possible for m, n, y, and w to end a wordwl,#Phonology.

Telugu uses 0C4D (called virāmamu in Telugu) to show that the inherent vowel after a consonant is not pronounced, eg. ల్ explicitly represents just the sound l, eg.

హాస్పిటల్

The virama is usually hidden when the consonant is part of a consonant cluster (see clusters).

Plain vowels

Telugu uses the following dedicated combining marks for plain vowel sounds. They may be used on their own, or in combination with others (see circumgraphs).

Diphthongs

Telugu has 2 vowel signs that represent diphthongs.

Circumgraph

One vowel is produced by a single combining character with visually separate parts, that appears on opposite sides of the consonant onset (above and below, in this case), eg.

పైడి

ఇరవై

These do not split a non-spacing conjunct, but instead they treat the conjunct as a single unit and place glyphs above and below it. However, as described earlier, when the conjunct is spacing, the parts of the circumgraph are placed around the first consonant in the cluster. In either case, however, the circumgraph is typed and stored after the cluster as a whole. Examples:

రద్దైన

చెన్నై

Encoding. The circumgraph can be written as a single character, or as two.

1. 0C48
2. 0C46 0C56

The single code point per vowel sign is the form preferred by the Unicode Standard and the form in common use for Telugu. The parts are separated, however, in Unicode when normalised using Normalisation Form D (NFD).

Whichever approach is used, the vowel signs must be typed and stored after the consonant characters they surround. In the case of decomposed vowel signs, the order is also important and must be as shown above.

Composite vowel signs

Composite vowels occur in decomposed text, where the glyphs in Telugu's circumgraph are split into separate code points. This is the only place where 0C56 occurs.

Another code point representing a partial glyph is 0C55. This does not normally occur in Telugu text (see encoding).

Vowel length

Differences in vowel length are indicated by the choice of vowel sign.

Vowel sign placement

The following list shows where vowel signs are positioned around a base consonant to produce vowels for precomposed text, and how many instances of that pattern there are. The figure after the + sign represents combinations of Unicode characters,

• 2 post-base, eg. కు ku
• 8 superscript, eg. కి ki
• 1 super+subscript. eg. కై kaʲ

At maximum, vowel components can occur concurrently on 2 sides of the base.

Plain vowels

Complex vowels

RA coda

In modern Telugu, clusters that begin with r are formed in the normal way, eg. గూర్చి

In older texts, however, the r is represented as a special form to the right of the second consonant, and the second consonant is left intact and carries any vowel signs. See fig_gurci for an example.

This effect can be produced in Unicode using 200D immediately after the virama, although not all fonts support it, eg.

గూర్‍చి

In a font that shows the reph form by default, it should be possible to disable it using the ZWJ before the virama instead of after it, as long as the font supports it.

Combining marks

There are several ways of representing syllable-final nasals.

Nasals can be written using 0C02. Before a plosive this is pronounced as a homorganic nasal, eg. అంగము It is pronounced m when followed by a non-plosive consonant, or at the end of a word,d,415 eg. సింహ లగాం

Syllable final h (usually pronounced ha) can be written with 0C03, which is principally used for Sanskrit words, eg. పునః

Conjunct formation

In Unicode, the transformation of the 2nd consonant is achieved by adding 0C4D between the consonants. The font hides the glyph automatically.

See a table of 2-consonant clusters.
The table allows you to test results for various fonts.

Simple stacking

fig_stacks shows consonants subjoined below themselves that are simply reduced in size, stripped of any headstroke, and positioned directly below the initial consonant. This approach is particularly common for geminated consonants.

Stacking with transformations

The following consonants are also subjoined below the first, but are rendered with a very different shape.

Conjoined with reduced, spacing form

The second consonant in these clusters is transformed into a spacing glyph that extends above and below the baseline.

In a conjunct of this kind, any vowel sign is visually attached to the initial consonant letter but still typed and stored after the conjunct, eg.

అన్నీ

Triple-consonant clusters

Telugu has a number of clusters involving 3 consonants. For example, the following words contain triple-consonant clusters. As always, click on the example to see the composition.

Examples of use:

ఈర్ష్య

మేస్త్రి

లక్ష్మి

Syllable-final diacritics

As mentioned in finals, Telugu represents some final consonants using diacritics. Such syllable-final diacritics are followed by ordinary consonant shapes in consonant clusters.

Fractions

The Unicode Standard describes the use of fraction characters as follows.

Prior to the adoption of the metric system, Telugu fractions were used as part of the system of measurement. Telugu fractions are quaternary (base-4), and use eight marks, which are conceptually divided into two sets. The first set represents odd-numbered negative powers of four in fractions. The second set represents even-numbered negative powers of four in fractions. Different zeros are used with each set. The zero from the first set is known as hakki, ౸. The zero for the second set is ౦.u,501

Consonant headstrokes

A majority of the Telugu consonants have a v-shaped headstroke, which is equivalent to the horizontal line in Devanagari. This headstroke is replaced when marks appear above the consonant, eg. క becomes క్ when followed by an explicit virama and కి when followed by the i vowel sign.u,499

Out of 36 consonants, the following are the 9 that don't have a headstroke:

Vowel signs

Most vowel signs interact typographically with their base consonant, replacing the check mark above the base.

A few also produce slightly different joined shapes. For example, in addition to the standard కి ki 0C3F produces shapes such as the following: గి giచి ci Also, 0C4A and 0C4B adopt very different shapes when they follow m or y, ie. మొ moమో mōయొ yoయో yō

Context-based positioning

Vowel signs need to be correctly positioned relative to the base character, and multiple marks can be combined with a single base character, eg. in అర్పించాలి ạr͓pim̽cāli offer the i vowel sign needs to be positioned over the initial consonant in the cluster, even though it occurs after the second in memory. The glyph also has to be carefully positioned with respect to the base character it is attached to.

That example also shows the use of multiple diacritics attached to the same base consonant.

See also the special positioning rules described in reph.

Bracketed text

Telugu commonly uses ASCII parentheses to insert parenthetical information into text.

In-word line-breaks

Because of the length of Telugu words, in-word line-breaks (hyphenation) are very common and needed during layout, especially in narrow columns, such as newsprint.

Hyphenation mostly takes place at syllable boundaries, however there are also occasional exceptions and special cases.

Observation:InDesign produces a hyphen at the end of a line to mark that hyphenation has split a word.

Line-edge rules

Like most writing systems, certain characters are expected not to start or end a line. For example, periods and commas shouldn't start a line, and opening parentheses shouldn't end a line.

Numeric

The telugu numeric style is decimal-based and uses these digits.rmcs

Examples:

Prefixes and suffixes

Telugu commonly uses a full stop + space as a suffix.

Examples: