Telugu vowels

In Telugu, vowel length is phonemic. There are 12 vowels, of which 10 are monphthongs, 2 are diphthongs.

Monophthtongs:

V  V:
అ ఆ
ఇ ఈ

ఉ ఊ
ఎ ఏ

ఒ ఓ



Diphthongs:


ఐ 

ఔ


The IPA transcription of many Telugu Vowles on wiki is plain incorrect. The diphthongs' transcription is absurd; they make it sound like American English diphthongs. Telugu diphthongs are sort of closer to Canadian diphthongs before unvoiced consonants (cf. Canadian raising).

Indians, and in particular Telugu folks, replace American diphthongs (MATE, ROTE, RIDE, COW) with ఏ, ఓ, ఐ and ఔ--but this replacement doesn't work!


You have been told to work on your fucking consonants 
by the lame on the interweb. Consonants are not a big deal: the major problem is with vowels!! This has to do with 'hidden' vowel system of English, hidden because there are three kinds of vowels thanks to lexical stress: unreduced and stressed; unreduced and unstressed; reduced and stressed. Then add to this toxic mix is: great vowel shift of English and its spelling; and the way Indians mapped English graphemes to Telugu/Indian graphemes. 


[-reduce, +stress]
[-reduce, -stress]
[+reduce, +stress]