How to approximate
written and spoken Telugu.
The first object of the "Society *[1]for promoting the cultivation of current Telugu" is to bring about an approximation of the written and the spoken dialects. The source of the written language must, of course, have been originally the spoken form; but for obvious reasons they have gradually diverged further and further from each other so that, as Arden says, "thousands of natives who use the language as only the medium of conversation, cannot read a gramatically written book or understand it when read to them," and as Campbell remarks "even to the learned the use of commentaries is indispensible for the correct understanding of many of their best works." But in some communities like the English the relations between the two dialects are constantly adjusted and they are found in close approximation to one another.
When we say that written English approximates to spoken English we are not asserting that they are exactly identical. There are differences between them not only of pronunciation but also of style, idiom, vocabulary and even grammatical forms, which vary with time, place and manner of expression and also with the habits and education of individual writers and speakers. But,
- ↑ * Vide page 32 of the last number of the Telugu Journal.
