116. But a new phenomenon appears in modern Telugu. Words which appeared in the Kavya dialect with an initial (u) or e (o) long or short now take the augment (v) for which there is no parallel in the Kavya dialect. Examples + oöom + + + +
117. In his works in modern Telugu Mr. K. Veeresalingam Pantulu freely uses forms with an initial ) (vu).
118. In his grammar of the Dravidian languages, Caldwell remarks, “There is a tendency in all the Dravidian languages to pronounce e as if it were ye and o as if it were wo. In colloquial Tamil, this pronunciation though often heard, is seldom represented in writing; but in modern Canarese and Telugu y before e and w before o are often written as well as pronounced. (Vide page 4). In a foot-note he remarks, “Europeans often notice the appearance of this peculiarity in the pronunciation of English by the people of Southern India. ‘Every’ becomes ‘yevery’ and ‘over’ becomes wover.
119. The uniformity of sandhi in the Kavya dialect was, no doubt, to some extent artificial as in classical Sanskrit. Whether in any particular case the y augment was a fleeting incident of sandhi, or formed an integral part of a word, we have no means of determining. In the older stages of the language as now, the initial letters of many words probably varied from a vowel to a semi vowel according to their position in a sentence. The author of Andhra Sabdachintamani who is held by the orthodox school to be the most authoritative grammarian to Telugu held that many words which were supposed by grammarians to begin with vowels other
