Numbers and the market
🎯 Count, ask a price and complete a purchase.
🗣️ Say these out loud
- ఒకటి, రెండు, మూడు, నాలుగు, ఐదు 🔊 o-ka-ti, ren-du, moo-du, naa-lu-gu, ai-du 1 to 5 Close to Tamil and Kannada — the Dravidian numbers are shared.
- ఆరు, ఏడు, ఎనిమిది, తొమ్మిది, పది 🔊 aa-ru, ay-du, e-ni-mi-di, tom-mi-di, pa-di 6 to 10
- ఎంత? — enta? 🔊 EN-ta How much? ఎంత అయ్యింది? = how much has it come to?
- చాలా ఎక్కువ — chaalaa ekkuva 🔊 CHAA-laa EK-ku-va That's far too much. చాలా chaalaa = very, and it is in every second sentence of spoken Telugu.
- తగ్గించండి — taggincandi 🔊 tag-GIN-chan-di Please reduce it. The polite -ండి ending again.
- సరే — sare 🔊 sa-RAY All right / agreed. The word that closes every negotiation and every conversation.
Read every line aloud twice before moving on. The mouth learns a language, not the eye.
🔍 Gender in Telugu is not what Hindi taught you
Telugu divides nouns into 'human male' and 'everything else' in the plural, and into masculine, feminine and neuter in the singular — but it is the verb that changes, not the adjectives. Adjectives never change at all, which is a considerable relief.
- మంచి అబ్బాయి (good boy), మంచి అమ్మాయి (good girl) — మంచి never changes
- అతను వెళ్ళాడు = he went · ఆమె వెళ్ళింది = she went · అది వెళ్ళింది = it went
- In the plural, men take one form and women and objects together take another — a division unique to Telugu among these languages.
🌍 Among the people
The Telugu new year, Ugadi, begins with a dish combining six tastes — sweet, sour, salt, bitter, pungent and astringent — to say that the year will hold all of them. It is a whole philosophy served on a plate.
🔁 Practise today
- Count to twenty aloud.
- Ask ఎంత? for five items.
- Notice that మంచి never changes — try it with five nouns.
