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Telugu Pronunciation – Consonants

Don’t want to read? Watch this video instead!

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.

Detroit – Hamtramck Assembly

The Dodge Main, or Chrysler Hamtramck Assembly Plant, as it stood in 1965. Image from the Detroit Historical Society.

In 1980, General Motors convinced the cities of Detroit and Hamtramck, Michigan to use a newly passed eminent domain law to demolish 1,500 homes, 144 businesses, and 16 churches to build a new auto plant on the Detroit – Hamtramck Border.

At the time, Detroit was in decline, losing population and businesses to the suburbs. Detroit, and its Mayor Coleman Young, wanted to attract new businesses to the struggling city, and agreed. Despite protests, legal challenges, and a visit by Ralph Nader, the Detroit neighborhood of Poletown was demolished and its 4,200 residents relocated (CityLab).

Telugu Verbs Primer

Hyderabad bazaar — Charminar in Hyderabad. Source: ruffin_reddy

This is a very quick introduction to Telugu verbs – designed to help you get speaking right away. To keep it simple, I’ve decided not to include some more advanced stuff like spelling changes or irregular verbs – I’ll cover them in a future post.

July 6th Progress

I’m writing this article to provide an update to this post. Since writing, it here’s what I’ve gotten done:

bought tickets for RRR (a new Telugu film) on Friday
skimmed through a book (Learn Telugu in 30 Days) to see what I would learn from it, but didn’t study it

I wanted to get more done by this point, and in the spirit of working on the process, here are some things that I think I need to do to be more successful in this endeavor.

Want to learn a language that’s useful in the NYC area? Check out these 5

Let’s say you live in the New York Metropolitan region, the area defined by New York City and its surrounding suburbs. You want to learn a language, but you don’t want to learn one to travel somewhere. Instead, you want to learn a language to communicate with people in your region who speak that language. What language should you learn?

I argue that your best bet is Spanish, Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese), Russian, Korean or Bengali. I argue this based on a combination of three metrics. The first is total number of speakers of each language, the second is total number of speakers of each language who also don’t speak English well, and third is the percentage of each linguistic community who do not speak English well.

The location of Temple #1

Photo credit: Historic Masjid Wali Muhammad

I’m in the middle of reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and I’m at the chapter where he moves to Detroit after converting to the Nation of Islam.

Malcolm mentions the NOI’s Temple No #1, citing an address on Frederick St. That wasn’t the Temple’s first address, nor was it the final one. Temple Number 1 now stands at 11529 Linwood Street, in Detroit’s Dexter Linwood neighborhood. Although it’s formally known as Temple Number 1, it is also referred to as Masjid Wali Muhammad [1].

Montréal Reflections

I just finished an 8 day trip to Montréal (with 2 days on either end in Toronto). I had some expectations about this trip that I don’t think were met, but still learned many lessons from it that I’ll share today.

My expecations about this trip

This is my second long solo trip. The first one was when I went to Mexico City in February 2020 for 10 days. I went to explore the city, get out of the cold Michigan winter, and see the Monarch Butterfly Preserve. I also wanted to immerse myself in a Spanish speaking environment, and use Spanish. I ended up speaking a decent amount of Spanish to get around, but ended up speaking mostly English with the other people at the hostel.

My Language Learning Method

Since I’ve been writing about languages for a while, I thought it was time I outline my language learning method, and some reasons why I think this has been successful for me.

For background, I am fluent in Spanish (with a B2 certification from the Instituto Cervantes, and I’ve used it to tutor monolingual Spanish students in a local high school) and am conversational in French (see this post). I previously learned tourist Hebrew when I lived in Israel for the summer. Because of my family, I can also understand and speak some Telugu, though my comprehension decreases the more someone speaks “pure”, rather than English influenced Telugu.

Three Year Plan

Jan 2023: See an update to these goals

I find that having a plan, even if I don’t follow it to a T, helps me feel like I’m moving towards a goal. I also find that publishing a plan makes it feel more concrete. Hence, I’m posting my three year plan. This plan should guide me from now until the end of the 2024 Olympics in Paris (I started thinking about long term planning when I was watching this year’s Olympics).

My plan is divided into two categories – languages, and writing.

Languages

I speak Spanish fluently, and even took a language exam to prove my proficiency. I find languages to be a pretty high reward activity, but one that requires significant delayed gratification. For many years I never thought I would be able to communicate in Spanish fluently, but now I can almost think in Spanish. My Spanish is not perfect, but there’s not a ton of incentive to get to C1 or C2 level unless I started working in Spanish. I can carry out most interactions with Spanish speakers that I encounter in the United States.

2021 Telugu Challenge

July 2022 Update: For a number of reasons, I didn’t end up following through with this plan. I’m starting this challenge again, see this post for more information.

Telugu is one of the languages I have wanted to improve for a while. I now have more time (and better time management skills). This post will outline my current level of Telugu, what I want to learn, and how I plan on learning it.

I’m posting this online to hold myself accountable and to help others understand how I go about learning languages. Hopefully this can help guide your own language learning journey.