by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2010/05/12 13:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2010/05/12/10011402.aspx
The Telugu Language Interface Pack for Windows 7 is now available!
It is available for 32-bit only, and English resources must be available for fallback.
There is some indication, for example from @SiddharthAtDell (who stated "We are not offering 32 bit OS anymore" on Twiitter), that Dell in India is no longer making the 32-bit OS available, which would tend to suggest some problems for the 32-bit only Indic LIPs. More on this as information is made available....
Once again produced by the Local Language Program, sponsored by Public Sector.
And now for a little background information on Telugu:
NUMBER OF SPEAKERS: 74 million speakers
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. It’s the third most spoken language in India. 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".
- The original source for the claim can be found in a quote from centuries earlier: "...Telugu can be referred as "Italian of the East" because Telugu is the only language other than Italian where every word ends in a vowel. This gives the language an enchanting lilting quality when spoken." - Niccolo de Conti, 16th century Italian traveler
- Most Indic languages see the bulk of words, as was pointed out to me in A Strange and Sublime HASANT: "Bengali shares with most of the other modern Indo-Aryan languages a pervasive loss of final vowels. That being so, it's customary not to bother with a final virama, and the reader just has to know when there's still a final vowel (usually in a borrowing, particularly a borrowing from Sanskrit, where final vowels were still much in evidence) and when there is not." -- this apparently is not so much the case for Telugu.
- For the (huge) Telugu movie industry there is the term Tollywood.
- The list of Telugu dialects includes: Dialects of Telugu are Berad, Dasari, Dommara, Golari, Kamathi, Komtao, Konda-Reddi, Salewari, Telangana, Warangal, Mahaboob Nagar (Palamuru), Gadwal (Rayalaseema mix), Narayana peta (Kannada and Marathi influence), Vijayawada, Vadaga, Srikakula, Visakhapatnam, Toorpu (East) Godavari, Paschima (West) Godavari, Kandula, Rayalaseema, Nellooru, Prakasam, Guntooru, Tirupati, Vadari and Yanadi (Yenadi), with varying degress of mutual intelligibility between all of them.
- Standard Telugu is often called a Shuddha Bhaasha ("pure language").
- As in Turkish, Hungarian and Finnish, Telugu words have vowels in inflectional suffixes harmonised with the vowels of the preceding syllable (aka Vowel Harmony).
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.
For more information on Telugu, click here.
Enjoy!