It's not Telugu [తెలుగు] Tubbies (and it's certainly not Punjabi [ਪੰਜਾਬੀ] Tubbies!)
by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2006/04/06 12:32 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2006/04/06/569864.aspx
Previous LIP release posts:
(I am trying to figure out if this list being put in each post can actually scale or not!)
Anyway, the Telugu Language Interface Pack has now been released!
And so has the Punjabi Language Interface Pack!
Some info on Telugu:
Number of speakers:
~60 million
Name in the language itself: తెలుగు
Telugu is the one of India's national languages and the official language of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. That state was actually the first Indic state to be formed along linguistic borders. Today 84.86% of the state's population speak Telugu. Four main (and several minor) dialects exist, in all of which there is a marked difference between the spoken and the literary form. Still, the difference is not as big as in the beginning of the 20th century when spoken and literary Telugu had drifted apart so much that they seemed two different languages: the modernized literary language is closer to everyday speech today.
Fun facts:
- Because all words in Telugu end with vowels, the English in 19th-century India called the language "the Italian of the East".
- For the (huge) Telugu movie industry there is the term Tollywood.
Classification
Telugu is the biggest of the Dravidian languages. Therefore it is related to languages like Tamil, Kannada or Malayalam - but not at all to Hindi or Punjabi.
Script
Telugu has its own script which is quite similar in appearance to Kannada.
And some info on Punjabi:
Number of speakers:
104 million
Name in the language itself: ਪੰਜਾਬੀ
Punjabi is the language of the Punjab region which includes the Punjab province of Pakistan as well as the Indian states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Since 1966, it is the official language of the Indian state of Punjab, where it is spoken by most of the inhabitants. Overall it is spoken by around 28 million people in India, and it is one of the 22 official languages of the country. It is has many more speakers in the Punjab province of Pakistan, but although more than 70 million people speak it in that country, Punjabi has no official status in Pakistan.
Punjabi has many regional dialects which form a continuum and merge with related languages on the borders. The main dialects of Punjabi in India are Majhi, Doabi, Malwai and Powadhi, while Pothohari, Lahndi and Multani are most prominent in Pakistan. Majhi, which is spoken in the cities of Lahore and Amritsar, is considered the purest and the standard form of Punjabi in India.
Punjabi is also spoken as a minority language in several countries where Punjabis have emigrated, for example Great Britain, the United States, Australia and especially Canada, where it is the sixth most commonly used language.
With more than 100 million speakers Punjabi is ranking as 10th among the most commonly spoken languages worldwide. One feature makes Punjabi unique amongst Indo-European languages: It is a tonal language, like e.g. Chinese; there are three different tones (high, mid, low) in Punjabi which create different meanings.
Fun fact: Punjabi is the language usually used in Bhangra music which has gained wide popularity in Southeast Asia, but also in Europe (The rapper/DJ Panjabi MC landed major dance hits in Europe with his songs "Mundian To Bach Ke" and "Jogi").
Classification
Punjabi - like Hindi and Gujarati - belongs to the Central Zone of the Indo-Aryan languages, which in turn are members of the Indo-European language family.
Script
In the Indian state of Punjab Punjabi is mostly written in the Gurmukhi script, while in Pakistan the Shahmukhi script is used (a modified Persian script also used for Urdu). Punjabi is also written in Devanagari in India.
These two LIP releases join the others previous released for languages from in and around India (such as Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Gujarati, Konkani, Bengali, Malayalam, and Kannada).
Enjoy!
This post brought to you by "త" and "ਪ" (U+0c24 and U+0a2a, a.k.a. TELUGU LETTER TA and GURMUKHI LETTER PA)
# Amar on 6 Apr 2006 12:39 PM:
Dude! you know lot about Indian Languages.
# Ravi on 6 Apr 2006 1:26 PM:
Thank you. Its been due for a long time..
# Seshagiri on 7 Apr 2006 12:42 AM:
that's great.
And I Telugu is older than Kannada, so I would say Kannada script looks similar to telugu. Not the other way round :)
Its amazing to see your grasp on the languages or should I say fonts.
thanks
Seshagiri
# Michael S. Kaplan on 7 Apr 2006 10:24 AM:
Hello Amar and Sechagiri --
I know a little about languages, sure -- but much of the text in these LIP posts is coming from other people whose words I am borrowing (and much of those words were themselves received from other sources, too).
I think it is interesting to put that info out into the world, in any case.... :-)
# Anonymous on 18 May 2006 7:32 AM:
It's great that the Punjabi one has finally been released - been waiting ages for this !! Will Vista ship with one?
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