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Today, I’ll outline sounds in Telugu that are different from their English counterparts, or don’t exist in English. We’ll need to learn them in order to pronounce Telugu properly, hear distinctions between certain words, and have a good accent. I’ll focus on consonants for this post. I’ll begin by just going over the sounds, without focusing on the more technical linguistics behind it. If you’re curious to learn more, I’ve included it at the bottom of this post.
Trouble Sounds for English Speakers Learning Telugu
Luckily, most of the sounds and letters in Telugu are the same as in English. There are a few sounds that are slightly different, listed below. In the following section, I will review them section by section. Note that in the table, a line over a vowel indicates a long vowel (ex. kā is kaa).
| Sound (IPA) | Letter | Translit. | Example | RoughPronunciation |
| /ʈ/ | ట | ṭa | గంట – ganṭa – hour | t, but tongue moved back |
| /ɖ/ | డ | ḍa | మెడ – meḍa – neck | d, but tongue moved back |
| /t͡ʃ/ | చ | ca | చేయి – chēyi – hand | “ch” as in chair |
| /d͡ʒ/ | జ | ja | జనని – janani – mother | “j” as in january |
| /ɳ/ | ణ | ṇa | దక్షిణ – dakṣiṇa – South | kind of like n |
| /ʋ/ | వ | va/wa | వెన్న – venna – butter | cross between v/w |
| /ɭ/ | ళ | ḷa | కళ – kaḷa – Art | l, but tongue moved back |
| /ɾ/* | ర | ra | రా – ra – come (comand) | r, little more forward with tongue |
I’ll make a quick note about త / ta. It’s written as just a t, but isn’t pronounced the same way as the t in “top”. It’s pronounced with your tongue touching the back of your top teeth, like “the” or “teeth”.
ṭa / ḍa / ḷa / ṇa (Retroflex)
The other sounds we discuss are going to be slight modifications of English sounds (mostly just moving your tongue a little bit forward or backward), but these sounds are a little more unfamiliar.
Retroflex consonants are ones in which the sound is made (“articulated”) between the alveolar ridge, and the hard palate, giving it a much “harder” pronunciation. The alveolar ridge is the tougher ridge behind your teeth. It’s near where your tongue rests when you pronounce “t” in “top” or “d” in “dentist.” The hard palate is further back in the mouth, and it’s where your tongue makes contact with the roof of your mouth when you pronounce the first sound in “you” or the y in the Spanish word “ayer (yesterday).”
People with strong Indian accents will sometimes pronounce top and dentist with retroflex t’s and d’s rather than English t’s and d’s. If you can imitate that, you’re on your way to pronouncing these properly.
Left: The position of tongue during pronunciation of retroflex consonant. Right: A diagram of the mouth showing the alveolar ridge (right behind the upper teeth), and hard palate. Retroflex consonants are pronounced in between the two.
Source: Wikipedia (left), Reading University (right)
The best way to make these sounds is to work from a sound you already know how to pronounce, and then move your tongue until you get the new sound. Retroflex t (ṭ) is between t as in “top”, and c as in “chair”. Retroflex ḍ is also between d as in “darn” and “j” as in “జంతు / jantu” (animal). Or in English, j as in John. It’s the same t and d sounds that people with strong Indian accents make.
First, listen to the sounds below, making sure you can hear the distinction between the two t’s and two d’s. Once you can do that, start trying to pronounce the word.
“t” sound “ṭ sound” “ch” sound
Source: UC Davis
To make our new sound, start by making the “t – top” sound, and then move your tongue back until it makes contact with your mouth just before the roof of your mouth smooths out. Make your tongue wide and flat, you want the sides of it to also make contact with the side of your mouth. If it starts sounding like ch – chair, then you’ve gone too far. Keep practicing until you can produce both t’s and both d’s, and they sound different from each other.
Check out some of the minimal pairs below as well, and make sure you can pronounce them just like it sounds. Minimal pairs are just two words that are identical or nearly identical except for one sound. For native speakers, these sound like two completely different sounds, so minimal pairs are useful for practice.
t/ṭ minimal pair:
(still looking for some, check back soon)
d/ḍ similar words:
| Telugu | కుడా | కూద |
| Transliteration | Kuḍā | Kūda |
| English translation (Google Translate) | Bay | Hair |
Similarly, both /ɭ/ and /ɳ/ are similar to existing sounds you know. For /ɭ/, make a n /l/ sound like Larry, then move your tongue back to the similar position as ṭ and ḍ. For /ɳ/, start at the normal /n/ sound, and then move your tongue back. If it starts sounding like the ñ in the Spanish pronunciation of niño, where the back of your tongue is making contact with the roof of your mouth, you’ve gone too far.
l / ḷ minimal pair:
| Telugu Word | కల | కళ |
| Transliteration | kala | kaḷa |
| Audio | Audio Link | Audio Link |
| English Translation | dream | art |
Audio Source: Forvo.com
n / ṇ minimal pair:
(still looking for some, check back soon)
ca / ja – Palatal
This one is pretty easy. Ca is pronounced like the first sound in “church”, or “chair.” Ja is pronounced like the first sound in “Jackson.” Listen to the examples below:
va / ra – Last Ones
Va (/ʋ/) is almost like a cross between v and w. Put your teeth and lips in a position to pronounce the letter “V”, and without moving them, pronounce the letter “W” instead.
Ra /ɾ/. This is an alveolar flap, similar to sound represented by “tt” in “better” (how Americans pronounce it). Professor R. Vemuri of U.C. Davis (who also has this site up with additional Telugu information) describes it as “…similar to the Scottish rolled r . The tongue tip merely touches the alveolar ridge [just behind the upper front teeth] once toward the end of the articulation.”
See this video for a much better visual explanation:
Here’s the audio file of the sound, from Prof. R. Vemuri.
That’s all for now – keep practicing the different sounds, and try recording yourself saying some of them for correction with a native speaker.
If anything in this guide was confusing, leave a comment below or contact me so I can clarify it!
More Technical Version
I’m including this section for people who are interested in linguistics, or want to learn more about how I arrived at the letters above. Ignore this if it doesn’t make sense – it’s not necesary to understand the rest of the post. Here are all the (consonant) sounds (in linguistic terms, the consonant inventory) of Telugu.
| Labial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | |
| Plosive – tenuis | p | t | ʈ | t͡ʃ | k |
| Plosive – voiced | b | d | ɖ | d͡ʒ | ɡ |
| aspirated* | pʰ | tʰ | ʈʰ | t͡ʃʰ | kʰ |
| breathy voiced* | bʱ | dʱ | ɖʱ | d͡ʒʱ | ɡʱ |
| Nasal | m | n | ɳ | ||
| Fricative* | f | s | ʂ | ɕ | x |
| Approximant | ʋ | l | ɭ | j | |
| Flap | ɾ |
Source: Krishnamurti (1998), “Telugu”. In Steever (ed.), The Dravidian Languages. Routledge. pp. 202–240, 260 via Wikipedia
*The aspirated and breathy-voiced consonants occur mostly in loan words, as do the fricatives apart from native /s/.
You don’t have to memorize these symbols, or understand what they all mean. I’m including this part for the sake of explanation – you can skip to the next section and come back as a reference.
There’s a lot going on in this diagram, so let’s break it down here. The first thing to note are the symbols. Some of them look familiar, like /p/ or /t/, but some of them are new, like /ʈ/ and /kʰ/. The symbols are what’s called the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), a way of unambiguously describing sounds in various languages. In IPA, every symbol or letter, has exactly one sound. /k/ is always pronounced like the first sound in Canada, and /t͡ʃ/ like the first sound in chair. This is unlike English, where one letter (“c” for example), can have multiple pronunciations, like in the words Canada and chair above.
The column headings (labial, alveolar, retroflex etc.) refer to the place of articulation. That is, the place where the sound is made. /p/ is made with the lips, so it is called labial (lips). /t/ is made by placing the tongue on the alveolar ridge, right where the teeth end and the top of the gums begin. Retroflex is made with the tongue slightly behind it, and so on. The row headings are the manner of articulation, or how the sound is made.
We’re not going to memorize these sounds or symbols, so don’t worry. We’re only using IPA as a tool to find which sounds occur in Telugu, that don’t occur in English. Let’s look at the consonant inventory for English, below:
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Post-alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
| Nasal | m1 | n1 | ŋ | ||||
| Plosive/affricate – is | p | t | tʃ | k | |||
| lenis | b | d | dʒ | ɡ | |||
| Fricative – fortis | f | θ2 | s | ʃ | x3 | h | |
| Fricative – lenis | v | ð2 | z | ʒ | “ | ||
| Approximant | l1 | r4 | j5 | w6 |
Source: Wikipedia, again.
By comparing the two, we notice that the following sounds occur in the chart for Telugu, that don’t appear in the chart for English. You may have noticed that I ignored completely the rows next to “aspirated” and “breathy voiced.” The reason is that those sounds usually occur in Hindi or Sanskrit loanwords, but not that often in native Telugu words. For now, we’ll ignore them to make this simpler. Here’s how I arrived at the new sounds we need to learn.