What is Telugu?

Telugu has 135 million speakers around the world. By comparison Japanese is spoken by 130 million speakers. So it's a pretty well spoken language with its own script and very rich literature. University of Texas at Austin is offering beginners and accelerated course work in Telugu beginning 2007 as part of its Asian Studies program. (: I am ethnically Telugu from the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. That's likely my mother's tongue and most certainly both my grandma's. (: