Telugu-Kannada alphabet
The Telugu–Kannada alphabet (or Kannada–Telugu script) was a writing system used in southern India. Despite some differences, the scripts used for the Telugu and Kannada languages remain quite similar and highly mutually intelligible. History. The Dravidian family comprises about 73 languages including Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam. Satavahanas introduced the Brahmi to present-day Telugu and Kannada speaking regions. Bhattiprolu script introduced by the Satavahanas gave rise to the Kadamba script. During the 5th to 7th centuries CE the early Bādāmi Chālukyās and Early Banavasi Kadambās used an early form of the Kannada script in  inscriptions, called the Kadamba script. The Kadamba script evolved into the Telugu-Kannada script, which was used between the 7th and 11th centuries CE. Kannada became a written language ahead of Telugu. Both Kannada and Telugu produced poetry during the eighth century. Full-fledged literary works in Kannada appeared in the ninth century, two centuries before they became available in Telugu. The earliest known Telugu inscriptions date to the 6th century CE. Telugu poetry began to appear in the 11th century. Telugu writers waited until the 11th century because of socio-political factors (royal patronage, the influence of Buddhism and  Jainism). Between 1100 CE and 1400 CE the Kannada and Telugu scripts separated from the Telugu-Kannada script. Satavahanas and Chalukyas influenced the similarities between Telugu and Kannada scripts. Comparison. The following sections visualize the difference between modern-day Kannada and Telugu styles. Consonants. There is another legacy consonant ೞ/ఴ (ḻ) used to represent , but currently not in use. Unicode. Although the alphabets for Kannada and Telugu languages could have been encoded under a single Unicode block with language-specific fonts to differentiate the styles, they were encoded separately by the governments due to socio-political reasons. Both the  script variants were added to the Unicode Standard in October, 1991 with the release of version 1.0.