EDIT Telugu is a syllabic alphabet of the abugida type, which means the consonants have an inherent vowel (a) unless otherwise indicated by diacritics. They are vowel signs that appear as prefixes, suffixes, above or below acharacter. Telugu has 34 consonants and 14 vowels.

Inscriptions in Telugu are known from the early 6th century, the earliest manuscripts date from about 1100. The literary language developed mainly between the 11th and the 15th century. Early classic writings are Telugu versions of the Sanskrit Legends about the gods, especially the Andhra Mahabharata from the 11th.
At the beginning of the 20th century, written and spoken Telugu were almost completely separated languages, and it took many years to create the modern Telugu script that is used today.

 jsw  : :  de 

EDIT Language
Telugu is the script used to write the Dravidian language Telugu. Historically, it is also known as the East Chaalukyan or EC Script by virtue of getting popular during the reign of a royal dynasty by that name which held sway over large territories of the Teluguland during the 10th and 11th centuries A.D. Nannaya Bhatt of 11th century is considered to be the Father of the entire Telugu literature. He started the mission of translating the Maha-bhaaratham from Sanskrit but died after writing only 4,000 verses, leaving the work incomplete until the time of another poet, Thikkana. However, Going by other references and inferences available till date, there is a strong case to believe that the language existed as a distinct form of speech at least one thousand years prior to Nannaya. A huge corpus of over 1,400 ancient texts, hundreds of royal inscriptions and thousands of classical songs of antiquity are available in this language, though several of them are yet to be published. This language is estimated to have a rich vocabulary of 200,000 words, a large chunk of which happen to be borrowed constructions from Sanskrit.

By its origin, the Family of Dravidian languages to which Telugu belongs, is not related to the indo-European languages like Hindi and Bengali. Telugu is spoken by the people in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and neighbouring states. It is also spoken in Bahrain, Fiji, Malaysia, Mauritius, Singapore and the UAE.in southern India and northern Sri Lanka. It is spoken by more people than any other Dravidian language, by about 950 million people in India alone, though not all of them are necessarily conversant with the script of the language. Incidentally it is the 2nd widest spoken language of the Indian Union. Recently it was accorded the status of a Classical Language by the Government of India. Currently, it is the official language of the State of Andhra Pradesh, a vast territory equal to New Zealand.

 jsw  : :  Tadepalli