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Word Wars
The disputation over Telugu highlights the need to protect our linguistic integrity and federal diversity in the face of the hegemony of a few globalised languages.
Being neither a linguist nor a specialist of the Dravidian group of languages, I will not attempt, in this brief piece, to tackle all the South Indian languages. For one reason, I do not know them all. For another, Telugu is my mother tongue, with which I am fairly familiar and comfortable. It is but natural that I ought to confine myself to Telugu, whose future, and even survival, troubles me.
Earlier, Telugu was the official language of the united Andhra Pradesh, but with the bifurcation of the state, our language dilemmas have taken a new turn. Of all the South Indian languages, Telugu is the one closest to Sanskrit. And yet it is a Dravidian language with a Dravidian script and pronunciation. Though its script resembles Kannada to a large extent, both are different languages.
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