Natives teach citizens how to spell Telugu' on social media

Hyderabad: Natives of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have taken it upon themselves to teach Netizens the correct spellings of Telangana and Telugu.

Several people have been expressing their opinions regarding developments in the Telugu-speaking states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, however, not all of them have been spelling “Telugu” right. Many of them have been writing “Telegu” instead.

Annoyed by this, natives of the Telugu states have launched a hashtag campaign, using the hashtags #ItsTeluguNotTelegu and #ItsTelanganaNotTelengana on Facebook and Twitter, to educate people.
A Twitter user named Chetan Joshi tweeted, “It is so irritating when someone forgets to put noun #ItsTeluguNotTelegu. Similarly it’s not Kannad, it’s Kannada. It’s not Karnatak, it’s Karnataka. It is not Tamil Nad, It’s Tamil Nadu, It’s not Keral, it’s kerala,”[sic].

Some users have even gone on to explain that according to a rule of Telugu, all native words end in vowels, which is why the language is called Italian of the east.

An expert pointed out, “People are not aware of how to spell Telugu. Hindi speakers tend to pronounce Telugu incorrectly because the letter “e” is the front vowel while the letter “u” is the back vowel. There are some rules in languages like Hindi, which make the word Telugu sound very unusual.”

However, experts believe that if taught, Hindi speakers can also pronounce the word correctly.

In the past, there have been instances of the Prime Minister’s Office spelling the words Telangana and Telugu incorrectly in tweets.