A Memoir Of Telugu Words...

I remember the days spent as a kid at my native place for every summer vacation. All those vacations have given me a fond memory. Today I was thinking about few of the words which were very common and very native in those days without the influence of TV or the cellular technology.

Being a kid from the city I used to ponder on some of the words that were part of day to day conversations with the people there. As with the word తాతిన్‌లు - a common word for holidays or సాలె - which means school. These might be a native slang of Mahabubnagar and may not have been used in other places.

As with everything, most of these words have become rare or replaced with more authentic (without the slang) words or substituted with English words.If I visit my village today, I don't hear the word తాతిన్‌లు . Now most of the people tend to use సెలవులు or "Holidays". It could be due to the increase in percentage of educated people and percentage of school goers. Which is a good sign of our progress. However, just try to remember how many of those native words do we still remember which were common once?

I am not saying that these words have become obsolete, but the frequency at which we hear now is decreased tremendously from the past. At least it had in my experience.

Lets begin with Telugu words for colors. Almost all of us know the Telugu names of the main colors as Red, Green and Yellow. Do we still remember names for different shades of color? I could recollect only చిలక పచ్చ(Lime or Peridot), పోక బంతి రంగు (Chocolate Brown) , నారింజ రంగు (Orange),కృష్ణ రంగు (Blue) and పాల పిట్ట రంగు (Turquoise). I am not sure if we could still see a పాల పిట్ట (Blue Jay) early in the morning. That said, we might not forget some words as వడ్రంగి పిట్ట, which is a Woodpecker, since it is more or less straightly translated to English.

This post is not about saving the Language. Fortunately it is not in the verge of collapse and I don't think it will ever vanish. This post is just about feel good reminiscence of my childhood. If you know any of such words (not from Google but from your knowledge or memory), then please let me know.