Old Telugu (Telugu: ప్రాఁదెనుఁగు, ప్ఴాన్దెనుఙ్గు, పాత తెలుగు, romanized: prā̃denũgu, pḻāndenuṅgu, pāta telugu) is the earliest attested stage of the Telugu language.^[1]

Old Telugu is attested in various inscriptions, labels and as early loanwords in the literature of several other languages.

The term పాత తెలుగు pāta telugu is the Modern Telugu word, referring to the Old Telugu language.

The word పాత pāta and the adjectival prefixes ప్రాఁ prā̃, ప్ఴాన్ pḻān come from the reconstructed Dravidian word *paḻan-(tta), meaning old/ancient.

In Old Telugu, the inherited Proto-Dravidian consonantal system was fairly well preserved except for incorporating the feature of voicing from the earliest known period.

Old Telugu maintained a three-way distinction of coronal consonants which includes, alveolar, retroflex and dental stops. ḏ was originally derived from PDr post-nasal *-ṯ- and constrasted with intervocalic trill -ṟ-. In very few cases -ḏ- did appear intervocalically, eg. caḏu (> ceḍu) vs pāṟum but it was mostly an allophone of ṟ before n, eg. mūnḏu.^[2]

Voiceless stops appeared at medial positions, by the simplification of geminates after a long vowel and a nasal, eg: *tōṇṭṭa > tōṇṭa (> tōṭa)  :'garden'.

Pre-plosive nasals are allophones in both Old and Modern Telugu; i.e: n before dentals, ṇ before retroflexes, ṉ before alveolars, ṅ before velars, ñ before palatals and m before labials.

Aspirated consonants were borrowed from Indo-Aryan and were incorporated into the writing system, although colloquially the contrast of aspirated-unaspirated stops largely remained absent in most dialects and accents, even in Modern Telugu.

Apical displacement was progressive for certain period of time, resulting in word-initial apical consonants in some words. This change was initiated in pre-historic times and is recorded historically.

eg: *awanḏu > wānḏu ('that man'/'he'); puḻōl-> pḻōlu (> prōlu) ('city')

Voicing of word-initial stops was progressive in some words. Both voiced and voiceless word-initials were recorded in inscriptions and might vary dialectally.

eg: tūṟu > dūṟu ('to enter'); kaḍacina > gaḍicina ('that which is passed')

• nḏ has its reflex being voiced retroflex stop in Modern Telugu, <ṟṟ> was either pronounced [r:] (derived from /r/) or [t:] (from PD *ṯṯ), former became rr while latter became ṭṭ, eg. goṟiya, puṟṟa > goṟṟe, puṟṟa > gorre, puṭṭa.^[3]
• ḻ became a stop intervocalically by Middle Telugu and a r in clusters in Middle Telugu, *kuḻ- > OTe. kḻocce > MiTe. krocce > Te. kocce.
• Most pre-plosive nasals got deleted by nasalizing the previous vowel in Middle Telugu and later loosing nasalization in Modern Telugu, eg. teluṅgu > telũgu > telugu and other various cluster simplifications like krōlu > kōlu.^[4]
• Modern Telugu is mostly free from retroflex ḷ and ṇ. However, dialectally ḷ is preserved as a geminate in plurals (from PDr plural *-Vḷ) as in *nīr-ḷ(u) > nīḷḷu ('waters') and regularly after retroflex ḍ and dental l, eg.: guḍi-ḷu > guḷḷu ('temples') and pagul-ḷu > paguḷḷu ('breakages').

Old Telugu is an agglutinative language primarily utilizing suffixes to express grammatical relationships. Noun morphology included gender markers and various derivational processes, while verb morphology was highly developed with distinct markers for tense, mood, and aspect.

Old Telugu preserved the two-way masculine vs non-masculine gender pattern intact, which is said to be the original case with Proto-Dravidian and this is also inherited by Modern Telugu.

Telugu branch is evidenced to have inherited three distinct plural markers which are: -ḷ, -kVḷ and -r. By the time of early writings, -kVḷ marker underwent back-stem formation with the root words, losing its status as a distinct plural marker, eg. mrā̃-kulu (< *maran-kVḷ), later getting analyzed as mrā̃ku-lu, creating a root mrā̃ku (> Modern māku). Other examples include goḍugu, ciluka, eluka.

The noun formative was -ambu, later -amu/-am > -aũ, eg. OTe. paṭṭambu ('authority/power') > MTe./Te. paṭṭamu/paṭṭam > spoken Te. paṭṭaũ (coastal dialects).

Old Telugu and Proto-Dravidian maintained contrast in nominative and oblique forms of masculine singulars; as in wāṉḏu (nom.) vs wāni- (obl.), which is dialectally preserved in Modern Telugu.

Nouns in Old Telugu could be primary or derived, with primary nouns often being free forms and derived nouns formed through suffixation. Gender was signaled by specific suffixes and the overall morphology was influenced by both native Dravidian elements and Indo-Aryan borrowings.

Old Telugu verbs were categorized into finite and non-finite forms, with various suffixes indicating tense, mood, and agreement with subjects.

The language had two primary tense paradigms: past, non-past.

Past and non-past markers in Old Telugu were: -iti- (a combination of PDr past markers *-i- and *-tt-) and -VdV- (< PDr non-past *-t-) respectively. Pure past marker *-iy/*-i appeared in third person. These markers were followed by personal terminations, also varied by number.

The pronominal system in Old Telugu marked person, number, and gender. Reflexive pronouns and a range of demonstratives, interrogatives, and indefinites were also used.

• The third person is formed by personal & gender markers on demonstratives. eg.: *awanṯu > wāṉḏu (> wāḍu) : 'that man'; *iwanṯu > wīṉḏu (> wīḍu) : 'this man'; a-di : 'that thing' etc.

The structure of Old Telugu sentences typically involved nominative-accusative alignment, with case markers indicating the grammatical roles of nouns. The language employed a variety of case forms and postpositions to express detailed semantic relations.

• Telugu is the only Dravidian language to have a native word for "thousand" (wēyi), while other literary languages borrowed Indo-Aryan sahasra.
• The reconstructed PDr laryngeal *H (PDr *paHtu) has its reflex being an aspiration as -bʰadi/-ppʰadi in the multiples of ten.

There are four primary colours in Old Telugu, with the root words being:

weḷ-/teḷ- : 'white'; kār- : 'black'; kem-/cem- : 'red'; pacc-/pas- : 'green' & 'yellow'.

Both Old Telugu and Proto-Dravidian had absence of roots which distinguish green and yellow colours, a feature which still exists in Modern Telugu.

svasti srī cōḻa mahārājull ēḷan erigal dugarājul iccina pannasa kocciya pāṟa rēvasarmmārikīni ḻaccina wāṉḏu pañcamahāpataka samyuktuṉḏagu...

...oḷana inpuḻōli aṇapōtulu rēvaṇakālu puddaṇakālu iccina pannasa pen pāṟa iseṟēnikin dīni ḻaccina wāṉḏu pañcamahāpatakuṉḏagun asivairuvu likitam...

paṭṭambu gaṭṭina prathamambu nēṇḍu balagarvvaṁ boppaṅga bai lēci sēna paṭṭambu gaṭṭiñci prabhu baṇḍa raṅgu bañcina samatta paḍuvatō bōya koṭṭãbulvaṇḍreṇḍu goṇi vēṅgi nāḍin goḷalci (ya) tribhuvanāṅkuśa bāṇa nilpi kaṭṭepu durggaambu gaḍu bayalsēsi kaṇḍukūr bejavāḍa gāviñcemecci...

...velayaṅga niyyeṭṭu ḻissi malinurai viḍisina vrōla gala tānapatulunu rājupaṭṭambu gaṭṭina patiyu naliyaṁ bayvūrala velvariñcina naśvamēdhambu phalambu pēkṣiñcina liṅgaṁ baḻisina pāpambu damaku...

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