Telugu/Noun - Wikibooks, open books for an open world (2024)

Introduction[edit | edit source]

A Noun is any word that is a name of a person, thing, place, or concept. Simply, a noun is any word that gives a name to something.

In English examples include:

• Mary (Person)
• Shop (place)
• Love (concept)
• Pencil (thing)

In Telugu, the word for noun is నామవాచకం (Nāmavācakaṁ)

Characteristics of Nouns[edit | edit source]

Nouns in Telugu have 3 characteristics:

• Number
• Gender
• Case

Number[edit | edit source]

Number simply refers to how many of something there is. In Telugu there are two numbers: singular(only one of something) and plural(more than one of something). Number in Telugu works very similarly to the English number system. In English, a singular noun can be made plural by adding an -s(most of the time) at the end of word. The Telugu equivalent to the "-s" in English is the suffix "-lu(లు)".

Some examples are below:

Sandhi rules for pluralization[edit | edit source]

Sandhi is a Sanskrit word that literally means connecting or joining. In the case of grammar, it means how the pronunciation changes when two words or parts of words are joined. For example, take the English phrase "What do you mean?". When speaking, people often pronounce this as "Whadaya mean?". When they do this, they are connecting the ends and beginnings of words to make their speech more smooth. Similarly, when certain words combine with the plural suffix in Telugu, their ending sound changes.

For example, Gudi(గుడి) or Temple + -lu(లు) or -s = Gullu(గుళ్ళు) or Temples

Gender[edit | edit source]

In Telugu every noun has a grammatical gender, this is in contrast to English where only pronouns have gender. There are two Telugu genders, masculine and non-masculine. What gender a noun is varies on whether it is in the singular or the plural.

In the singular[edit | edit source]

• Masculine
  • Any noun that refers to a male human
  • Any noun that refers to a male deity or god
  • Any noun that is a personification of a male
    • For Example, the word sun, Sūryuḍu(సూర్యుడు), is a personification of the male Hindu god, Surya. It is considered a masculine noun despite the sun not having a gender.
• Non-Masculine
  • Any noun that is a female human
  • Any animal or other non-human living thing
  • Inanimate objects

In the plural[edit | edit source]

• Masculine
  • Any human
• Non-masculine
  • Any non-human

The gender of a noun affects

Case[edit | edit source]

The case of a noun tells the listener or reader what the role of the noun in the sentence is. In English, this is primarily conveyed through either sentence structure(where the word is in the sentence) or helper words(such as to, from, with, etc.). In Telugu, these are expressed by suffixes. A suffix is simply something that is added onto the end of a word. For example, the "s" added at the end of the word "chief" to form the word "chiefs" is a suffix.

The various cases are called Vibhakti in Telugu, which comes from the Sanskrit word for declension.

To understand some of the cases, the terms subject, verb, direct object, and indirect object must be understood. A verb is simply an action(such as the verb "to eat"), an occurrence(such as the verb "to happen"), or state of being(such as the verb "to exist"). A subject is what does the verb. A direct object is the recipient of the verb. Finally, an indirect object is what receives the direct object. For example, take the sentence "John throws the ball to Mary". The verb is throw, as this is an action. To figure out who the subject is, the question is "what is throwing the ball". Since John throws the ball, he is the subject. Identifying the direct object must be done by asking the question "what is being thrown by John". The ball is the direct object as it is thrown by John. Finally, to find out what what the indirect object is, the following question must be answered, "what is receiving the ball?". Mary is receiving the ball, so she is the indirect object.

The cases are listed below:[edit | edit source]

The suffixes that are bold are the ones commonly used in conversational Telugu, these must be learned. The italicized suffixes are sometimes used in conversational Telugu, but are rarer than the bold suffixes.The non-bold suffixes are very rarely or never used in conversation and are more commonly used in literature.

When adding a case to a plural noun, the case suffix comes after the plural suffix. In this case, the plural suffix also changes from -lu to -la. For example, take the word "Kukkalu"(కుక్కలు), or "dogs" in English, if you were to add the Instrumental case suffix to it, it would become "Kukkalato"(కుక్కలతో), or "with dogs" in English.

Possession[edit | edit source]

Possession simply refers to when a noun owns or has another noun. In English this is expressed by "of" or "'s" such as "John's house" or "the house of John".

Similarly to English, the noun that owns or has something is put before the noun it owns. In literary Telugu, possession is expressed by the suffix "-yokka"(యొక్క), which is the equivalent of the English "'s". For example "Naa(My) ammayokka(mother's) kukka(dog)"(నా అమ్మయొక్క కుక్క). However, in spoken Telugu, the "-yokka"(యొక్క) suffix is not used. Instead, the owner noun is simply placed before the noun that is owned, for example "Naa(My) amma(mother's) kukka(dog)"(నా అమ్మ కుక్క). In this case, the possession is simply understood with word order and context, without the need for a suffix.

Possession can also be expressed using the suffixes "-ki" or "-ku" combined with the verbs "un" and "le". The noun that is owned is in the nominative case(Prathamā Vibhakti (ప్రథమా విభక్తి)) and thus does not have a case suffix added to the end of it, then the owner noun uses the "-ki" or "-ku" suffix. After this, if the noun is owned(to have), the verb "un" is used, if the noun is not owned(to not have), the verb "le" is used. The verb must match the nominative noun in gender, number, and person. These concepts are explored further in the pronoun and verb sections, but the following charts give the different forms of the verbs "un" and "le":

Examples of this are:

• Avi nāku unnāi(అవి నాకు ఉన్నాయ్), in English "I have those"
• Banti kukkaki undi(బంతి కుక్కకి ఉంది), in English "The dog has the ball"
• Nāku kārlu lēvu(నాకు కార్లు లేవు), in English "I don't have cars"
• Pani vāḍiki lēdu(పని వాడికి లేదు), in English "He doesn't have a job"

Note how in these examples the order of the words does not matter, in some sentences the nominative noun comes first, in others it comes second. Telugu has relatively free word order, thus the order of the sentence can be changed without changing the meaning; this can be done to change the emphasis. The full rules on word order and sentence structure are discussed in that section.