Origins of telugu

[K R]

Friends,

I am not a linguist, so possibly this may sound very naive. But I would like
to know how you classify a language as either Dravidian
or Indo-European. For example, most of the words in today's Telugu are from
Sanskrit. And nearly all the major literary works (starting from Nannaya's
Mahabharata in the 11th Cent. AD) are in Sanskritized telugu. It seems to me
that the bond between today's Telugu and Sanskrit is much more pronounced
than the relationship between
Tamil and Telugu.
-
This fact came up when some one mentioned to me that Jayadeva's
Gita Govinda (which is of course in Sanskrit) is very well known
in Andhra Pradesh ... the reason of course being that a good knowledge
of Telugu was sufficient to follow most of it. Also, this person
told me that being a native Telugu speaker he cannot understand
a word of Tamil.
-
Thanks for your help,

KR

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