Ten short lessons that take you from zero to building your own Telugu sentences. Not a wordlist — the actual grammar, in the order it becomes useful, with a practice quiz after every lesson.
Most people trying to learn Telugu get handed a list of words and a phrasebook, and then discover they still cannot say anything that isn't on the list. The missing piece is the grammar — and Telugu grammar is unusually kind to beginners once someone lays it out in the right order.
This course does that in ten lessons. It assumes you know nothing. Work through them in sequence; each one is five to ten minutes of reading and a short quiz. Your progress is saved in this browser, so you can close the tab and come back.
Moderately hard, but front-loaded. The grammar is regular — very few exceptions compared to English — and the script is phonetic, so once you can read it you can pronounce anything. The difficulties are the verb endings that change with the subject, the retroflex consonants that English does not distinguish, and a vocabulary that shares almost nothing with English. Expect the first two weeks to be the steepest part.
Around ninety minutes of reading if you go straight through, but that is not the recommended way. One lesson a day for ten days, with the quiz done properly and a few sentences of your own written out, will leave you far better off than one long session.
It teaches you sentence construction, which is what lets you speak. What it cannot give you is listening practice and the confidence that only comes from being answered by a real person. Pair it with the phrases page, and if you have Telugu speakers around you, use them — they will be pleased you asked.
Standard written Telugu, which is understood everywhere and is the safe default for a learner. Spoken Telangana Telugu differs in some verb endings and vocabulary, and coastal Andhra has its own habits. None of this will stop you being understood; you will pick up the local flavour from the people around you far faster than from a page.
Only in your own browser, using local storage. Nothing is sent to a server, there is no account, and clearing your browser data or using a different device will reset it. The "Reset progress" button at the top clears it deliberately.