Telugu alphabet: vowels and consonants

Telugu vowels (achulu, అచులు)

Telugu has 16 vowels in its traditional classical inventory, though a few are rare in everyday modern writing. Each one shown here is the independent form, the way the vowel looks on its own rather than attached to a consonant.

The four vowels marked archaic or rare (ఋ, ౠ, ఌ, ౡ) mostly survive in Sanskrit loanwords and formal or literary text. In everyday typing and messaging you'll see the first twelve far more often than these four.

Telugu consonants (hallulu, హల్లులు)

Telugu has 34 primary consonant letters, plus two archaic ones you'll rarely encounter outside historical texts. Each consonant below is shown with its inherent 'a' sound, which is how these letters are conventionally listed and pronounced on their own.

Two additional archaic consonants, ౘ (ĉa) and ౙ (ẑa), appear in some older texts but are essentially unused in modern Telugu writing.

How consonants and vowels combine

A consonant letter on its own is read with the inherent 'a' sound: క alone is "ka". To change that vowel sound, a small mark (a vowel sign, called a గుణింతం in Telugu grammar) attaches to the consonant. For example, క (ka) becomes కి (ki), కీ (kee), కు (ku), కూ (koo), కె (ke), కే (kae), కొ (ko), and కో (koa) depending on which vowel sign is added. This is why a single consonant like క can appear in dozens of different visual forms depending on context, and it's also why the transliteration tool on the main translator page needs to interpret a whole syllable's spelling, not just one letter at a time, to produce the right combined character.

A worked example: క with every vowel sign

To see exactly how the combination system works, here's every vowel sign attached to a single consonant, క (ka).

Every other consonant in the chart above follows this exact same pattern: strip the vowel sign, and you're left with the base consonant plus its inherent 'a' sound. Recognizing this pattern is the fastest way to go from being able to sound out a handful of Telugu words to reading unfamiliar ones.

Telugu number words, zero to ten

Numbers are some of the first words worth learning in any language. Modern written Telugu commonly uses the same 0-9 digits as English for numerals, but the spoken words are entirely different.

Two extra marks worth knowing: ం and ః

Beyond the vowels and consonants above, Telugu uses two small marks that change a syllable's ending sound. The anusvara (ం) adds a nasal sound after a vowel, turning క (ka) into కం (kam), and shows up constantly in everyday words, including నమస్కారం (namaskaram) itself. The visarga (ః), written as two small dots, adds a light breathy 'h' sound after a vowel and appears mostly in words borrowed from Sanskrit, such as దుఃఖం (duhkham, meaning sadness or sorrow). You don't need to memorize these to use the translator, but recognizing them helps when reading real Telugu text.

Reading Telugu script versus typing it

This chart is about reading and recognizing letters. If your goal is to write in Telugu without knowing the script by heart, the Type in Telugu tool converts English-letter spelling into correct Telugu script automatically, so you don't need to memorize every vowel sign combination shown above to type a message. Knowing the chart still helps: understanding why ki becomes కి rather than కు makes it much easier to fix a word that converts incorrectly, since you can see which vowel sign is wrong and adjust your spelling accordingly.