Page:Gurujadalu English.djvu/389

 180. One process of simplification is elimination. The other appears to be the avoidance of words and forms which are “less usual” and the use of words and forms which are “more familiar”. This means, I suppose (as Mr. K.V. Lakshmana Row puts it more clearly when speaking of Taddharma forms and their alternatives), a recommendation to use only those forms “Which are nearer to the colloquial forms”.

181. Mr. J. Ramayya Pantulu and Mr. K.V. Lakshmana Row think this a process of simplification. But it is not. The very similarity between the literary and the spoken forms which they consider as a recommendation, proves an inconvenience on account of cross-associations and leads to much uncertainty and confusion. Why should I say ‘leads’? It is precisely the use of these similar forms which has led to one large class of blunders which deface Neo-Kavya prose and the answer-books of candidates at examinations.

182. The slight variation in form of these similar forms is due to an important phenomenon in the history of the language. In Telugu there is a law of vowel mutation which modern grammarians have called harmonic sequence or vowel harmony. This law is more extensively in operation in modern Telugu, than it was in old Telugu. Therefore many words of the literary dialect appear in a slightly different shape in modern Telugu. A writer who elects to use the archaic forms has to work against the strong phonetic tendencies of the present.

EXAMPLES

Current & Non-literary Archaic (This form appears in an inscription of the 13th century.)