Is Telugu originated from Tamil?
The Telugu language is not derived from Tamil. Telegu is one of the Dravidian languages, originated along with Gondi (spoken in Madhya Pradesh) and Kovi(spoken in Orissa). It is mainly spoken by the people in the southeastern state of India - Andra Pradesh and Telangana.
Telugu is one the oldest languages in the world
The Dravidian languages are considered some of the oldest ever spoken. Specifically, Tamil –one of Telugu's “cousin” languages – is recognized as having been around approximately 5,000 years ago.
Sanskrit (5000 years old) - World's Oldest Language
Source Unlike Tamil, which is still a widely spoken language, Sanskrit is the oldest language in the world but fell out of common usage around 600 B.C. It is now a liturgical language - the holy languages found in the scriptures of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.
Venkateswarlu systematically establishes, citing well researched works, that Telugu is formed from its own roots and has no connection to Sanskrit or other South Indian languages.
Tamil. Of the four literary languages in the Dravidian family, Tamil is the oldest, with examples dating to the early Common Era.
Have you ever thought 'How hard would it be to learn the Telugu language being a Tamilian or vice-versa'. Telugu and Tamil are like sisters as they are descended from an ancient Dravidian dialect. Through these years the journey and connection between these two languages are beyond our imagination.
2. Sanskrit – 1500 BC (circa. 3500 years old)
American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS)
Tamil is possibly older than Sanskrit, in speech, but Sanskrit is definitely older than Tamil in writing (that we know of).
Detailed Solution. The oldest language of South India is Tamil (200 BC). It is also one of the 7 ancient languages in the world that is still spoken. Malayalam is a dialect of Tamil which dates back to 9th century, Kannada to 400 AD, and Telugu to 571 AD.
The closest major relative of Tamil is Malayalam; the two began diverging around the 9th century AD.
What is the 3 oldest language in the world?
- Hurrian – oldest proof of written Hurrian dates back to the 21st century BC;
- Palaic – attested in cuneiform tablets in Bronze Age Hattusa – circa the 16th century BC;
- Egyptian – its earliest known complete written sentence has been dated to about 2690 BC;
"Root Tamil words exist in many languages of the world in various modifications but retaining the semantic meaning. In the world languages, it is difficult to find a basic word that does not have some link with the Tamil word. Hence, Tamil has the status of the mother tongue in the world," the CM said.

This helped ensure that the modern Tamils could be described as both indigenous people of South India and the direct descendants of the people of Kumari Kandam. This, in turn, allowed them to describe the Tamil language and culture as the world's oldest.
According to linguist Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, Telugu, as a Dravidian language, descends from Proto-Dravidian, a proto-language. Linguistic reconstruction suggests that Proto-Dravidian was spoken around the third millennium BCE.
Telugu language, largest member of the Dravidian language family. Primarily spoken in southeastern India, it is the official language of the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. In the early 21st century Telugu had more than 75 million speakers. The first written materials in the language date from 575 ce.
- Marathi (1500 – 2000 years)
- Odia (2000 years)
- Malayalam (2000 years)
- Telugu (1500 – 2000 years)
- Kannada (2000 years)
- Sanskrit (3000 years)
- Tamil (5000 years)
- Indian Languages and Knowledge-bases.
Tamil is the oldest language still in use today. By order of appearance, the Tamil language (part of the family of Dravidian languages) would be considered the world's oldest living language as it is over 5,000 years old, with its first grammar book having made its first appearance in 3,000 BC.
Kannada is the oldest language along with Prakrit, Sanskrit, and Tamil. Linguists are of believing that Kannada branched off from the proto-Tamil South Dravidian division even before the Christian Era. This means it was spoken way before English and Hindi.
According to their tradition, Sri Lankan Tamils are lineal descendants of the aboriginal Naga and Yaksha people of Sri Lanka.
He said Sanskrit is the mother of all languages, including Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam. Responding to his comments, DMK member A. Raja said they do not accept that Tamil came from Sanskrit. Tamil is older than Sanskrit and there is record of 'Tamil Sangam' dating back 4,500 years, he said.
Why Telugu is called Italian of the East?
The Telugu language was called the 'Italian of the East' by the Englishmen of the 19th Century, as all words in Telugu end with a vowel sound — such as “du, mu, vu, lu” — as in Italian. Says Wikipedia: “Being a mellifluous language, British authors in the 19th century called Telugu the Italian of the East.
Though we can not ascertain the world's oldest language, other languages including Chinese and Egyptian are older than Tamil.
The Adamic language, according to Jewish tradition (as recorded in the midrashim) and some Christians, is the language spoken by Adam (and possibly Eve) in the Garden of Eden.
Most religious scholars and historians agree with Pope Francis that the historical Jesus principally spoke a Galilean dialect of Aramaic. Through trade, invasions and conquest, the Aramaic language had spread far afield by the 7th century B.C., and would become the lingua franca in much of the Middle East.
The Tamil people are an ethnic group from South Asia with a recorded history going back more than two millennia. The oldest Tamil communities are those of southern India and northeastern Sri Lanka.
Conversation. Sanskrit scholars always called Tamil as a sister language, and others as daughters. Thus Sanskrit can borrow from Tamil but not from others. The fact that Sanskrit words form 40% of Tamil vocabulary even today, hence Sanskrit is older.
Tamil (5000 years old)
Indian Language Tamil is 5000 years old and is the official language of Sri Lanka as well as Singapore. It is the part of the Dravidian family and is also the only language that has survived all the way to the modern world.
However, the oldest forms of the Dravidian languages are found in southern India. These were not exposed to Sanskrit until the 5th century BCE. The south was populated by Dravidian speakers even before the entry of Aryans into India, implying that the Dravidian languages existed long before Sanskrit.
- Tamil languages, including Tamil. Malayalam languages, including Malayalam. Irula. Kodava. Kurumba. Toda. Kota.
- Kannada languages. Kannada. Badaga.
Japanese and Tamil share a nearly identical set of vowels (a, i, u, e, o). All of these vowels have both a short and long form. Furthermore, both Tamil and Japanese have two different nasal 'n' sounds, one of which never ends a word and one of which never begins a word.
What is the mother tongue of Tamil?
Tamil language, member of the Dravidian language family, spoken primarily in India. It is the official language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the union territory of Puducherry (Pondicherry).
The world's youngest language, coming in at only 100 years old (officially), is the South African language of Afrikaans. Surprised? Afrikaans, the natively spoken language of 7 million South Africans, was born from the white Dutch, French, and German colonizers in South Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The Proto-Human language (also Proto-Sapiens, Proto-World) is the hypothetical direct genetic predecessor of all the world's spoken languages. It would not be ancestral to sign languages.
- Italian.
- Korean.
- Tamil.
- Farsi.
- Hebrew.
- Aramaic.
- Chinese.
- Greek.
The Tamil language is recognized as the oldest language in the world and it is the oldest language of the Dravidian family. This language had a presence even around 5,000 years ago. According to a survey, 1863 newspapers are published in the Tamil language only every day.
Maraimalai Adigal (15 July 1876 – 15 September 1950) was a Tamil orator and writer and father of Pure Tamil movement.
The oldest living language, still in use to date, might be Tamil. This fact is widely debated across linguistic communities. Tamil is proposed to be first attested somewhere between 5320 BC and 8th century CE. The Dravidian language has speakers in Southern India and Sri Lanka.
In the 4th century, the Pallava dynasty created a new script for Tamil and the Grantha alphabet evolved from it, adding the Vaṭṭeḻuttu alphabet for sounds not found to write Sanskrit.
The written origins of the language have been traced back to 1250 BC in the late Shang dynasty. Along with Tamil, Chinese is one of the oldest surviving languages in the world. Hebrew: While many believe that Hebrew has been used for the last 5000 years, its earliest written examples date only to 1000BC.
The correct option is B Madras.
Who founded the Telugu?
Telugu originated from the Proto-Dravidian language. It probably split from Proto-Dravidian between 1500 BCE and 1000 BCE, which was roughly the same time the Tamil language became distinct in terms of literary activity[1].
Kannada became a written language ahead of Telugu. Kannada produced many poetries during the eighth century under Chalukyas. Full-fledged literary works in Kannada appeared in the ninth century, two centuries later they became available in Telugu. The earliest known Telugu inscriptions date to the 6th century CE.
A stone inscription in Modi script (used to write Marathi language), that was unearthed in Thanjavur reveals that the age of Tamil language could date back to more than 10,000 years. Such archaeological evidence provide ample proof to establish the antiquity of Tamil as an ancient language.
Most scholars believe that Sanskrit is the mother language for many currently spoken Indian languages, including Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, and Punjabi. Probably the closest spoken language to classical Sanskrit is Kashmiri spoken in a Nepali accent.
Earliest records
Prakrit Inscriptions with some Telugu words dating back to between 400 BCE and 100 BCE have been discovered in Bhattiprolu in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh.
According to Aitareya Brahmana of the Rigveda, the Andhras left North India from the banks of river Yamuna and migrated to South India. They are mentioned at the time of the death of the Mauryan King Ashoka in 232 BC. This date has been considered to be the beginning of the Andhra historical record.
Telugu is the language of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Well over 75 million people, the world over, speak Telugu, and it stands second only to Hindi in India as to the number of native speakers. According to linguists, Telugu is a Dravidian language.
There are four Dravidian langauges - Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, and Malayalam. Among them, Tamil is the oldest.
The fact that Sanskrit words form 40% of Tamil vocabulary even today, hence Sanskrit is older. True sir, Sanskrit is the oldest language of the world.
This language is spoken in India, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaysia. World's oldest language is Sanskrit.
What is oldest language in the world?
- The first known language ever was a proto-language on the African continent, and the first known proto-writing system was created in Nigeria.
- So, it is perhaps no surprise that the oldest language on this list is also from and used in Africa – Egyptian.
Telugu originated from the Proto-Dravidian language. It probably split from Proto-Dravidian between 1500 BCE and 1000 BCE, which was roughly the same time the Tamil language became distinct in terms of literary activity[1].
The largest Dravidian ethnic groups are the Telugus from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, the Tamils from Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore, the Kannadigas from Karnataka, the Malayalis from Kerala, and the Tulu people from Karnataka.
According to Hindu legend, Tamil or in personification form Tamil Thāi (Mother Tamil) was created by Lord Shiva.
Telugu is one of the official and oldest languages of India in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and the Puducherry Territory. This language has evolved from the Proto-Dravidian language in the 1500 and 1000 BC and about 7.9% of the population speak this language designating it as a classical language.
Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a large collection of hymns, incantations, and religio-philosophical discussions which form the earliest religious texts in India and the basis for much of the Hindu religion. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda to be the earliest.
By order of appearance, Tamil would be considered the world's oldest language as it is over 5,000 years old, having made its first appearance in 3,000 BC. The literature collection in Tamil, which is a classical language, is very vast. It is also varied.