Telugu numbers 1–10

Telugu personal pronouns

Telugu has different pronouns for formal and informal contexts. This guide covers I, you, he/she, we, and they.

Telugu present tense verbs

Telugu present/present-continuous tense is built with the marker -తున్న (-tunna) attached to the verb stem, followed by a person-and-number ending. Here it is conjugated for "చేయు" (cheyu, "to do").

Telugu negation — కాదు vs. లేదు

Telugu splits negation into two words depending on what's being denied: కాదు (kādu) for identity/description ("is not"), and లేదు (lēdu) for existence, possession, or a past action that didn't happen.

Telugu postpositions & case markers

Telugu is agglutinative — instead of separate preposition words, short markers attach directly onto the end of a noun to show its role in the sentence.

Telugu question words & yes/no questions

Telugu wh-questions use a fixed set of question words in the same slot the answer word would occupy; yes/no questions are formed by adding -ఆ (-ā) to the end of the verb.

Telugu sentence structure — building a basic sentence

Telugu follows Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) order, the opposite of English's Subject-Verb-Object. Descriptive words come before the noun they describe, and case markers come after it.