Telugu Alphabetical Characters and their Pronunciation

Vowels


Telugu language has 56 characters which includes vowels and consonants. But in the table below you will find only 52 characters because the others are not commonly used. The characters shown in the brackets are NOT commonly used.

In the following table you can see Telugu characters. There is no universally accepted transliteration scheme to write them in Roman script. The top row of Roman alphabetical letters in blue (with a hyperlink) is the version preferred for this class. It is called RIT (Rice University's Inverse Transliteration System). To hear the actual sound (wav file) of a letter, click on the corresponding blue link.

Below these RTS representations, you will also find, in black, an alternative transliteration sceheme, which may be a bit more phonetic.  It is given here only for guidance.

Click here to hear all of the vowels in Real Audio Format

Vowels:

acculu1.gif (2835 bytes)

a

a

A

aa

i

i

I

ee

u

u

U

oo

R

aRu

(RU)

aRoo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

acculu2.gif (2628 bytes)

e

e

E

ae

ai

ai

o

o

O

oa

au

ow

aM

am

(@h)

aha

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 a is pronounced as in cup, bus

 A is pronounced as in far, bar, fall

  i is pronounced as in in, inform, inspector

  I is pronounced as in easy, eagle

 u is pronounced as in look, book

 U is pronounced as in fool, rooster

 e is pronounced as in fable, gray

 E is pronounced as in

ai is pronounced as in my, fly

 

o

O is pronounced as in

au is pronounced as in down, gown

 

aM is pronounced as the sound of M in sum

 

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