Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue

Note on Transliteration and Spelling

Not e on Tra nsliterat io n a nd Spelling Words from Indian languages that are commonly recognized in English, contemporary place-names, and personal names have been transliterated without diacritics. For all other terms transliterated from Indian languages, long vowels are marked (a as in hot; i as in deep; u as in fool; e as in fade; o as in hope), and short vowels—half the length of their long counterparts— are left unmarked (a as in hut; i as in dip; u as in full; e as in fed; o as in the first o in oh-oh). An underdot beneath a consonant (t, th, d, dh, n, s, l) indicates a retroflex consonant, pronounced by curling the tip of the tongue back toward the palate and flipping it forward, except for ®, which indicates a vowel sound similar to the ri in merrily. ≈ is pronounced as the English sh. For consistency and to assist English readers I have departed from conventional Telugu transliteration practices in using ch (rather than c) to indicate the English ch sound and chh to indicate an aspirated ch. For Tamil words, ≠ indicates a retroflex r, and π indicates a sound similar to an English r when single and a trilled tr when doubled. Within quotations I have kept an author’s original transliteration scheme and markings. All translations from Telugu are my own unless otherwise indicated. Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India ...