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Malayalam language

Malayalam is the language spoken predominantly in the state States and territories of India

India [i] is subdivided into twenty-eight state [i]s and seven union territories [i]. ... 

 of Kerala Kerala

Kerala is a state [i] on the tropical Malabar Coast [i] of south ... 

, in southern South India

South India is a linguistic-cultural region of India [i] that comprises the four Indian states [i] ... 

 India India

India , officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia [i]. ... 

. It is one of the 23 official languages of India, spoken by around 36 million people. A native speaker of Malayalam is called a "Malayali". Malayalam is also spoken in the Union territories of Lakshadweep Lakshadweep

Lakshadweep is the smallest union territory [i] of India [i]. ... 

 and Pondicherry Puducherry

Puducherry is a Union Territory [i] of India [i]. ... 

 . The language belongs to the family of Dravidian languages. Both the language and its writing system are closely related to Tamil Tamil language

Tamil is a classical language [i] and one of the major language [i]s of the Dravidian language [i] ... 

. Malayalam has a script Malayalam script

The Malayalam script is an abugida [i] of the Brahmic family [i], used to write the Malayalam language [i] ... 

 of its own.

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Encyclopedia

Malayalam is the language spoken predominantly in the state States and territories of India

India [i] is subdivided into twenty-eight state [i]s and seven union territories [i]. ... 

 of Kerala Kerala

Kerala is a state [i] on the tropical Malabar Coast [i] of south ... 

, in southern South India

South India is a linguistic-cultural region of India [i] that comprises the four Indian states [i] ... 

 India India

India , officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia [i]. ... 

. It is one of the 23 official languages of India, spoken by around 36 million people. A native speaker of Malayalam is called a "Malayali". Malayalam is also spoken in the Union territories of Lakshadweep Lakshadweep

Lakshadweep is the smallest union territory [i] of India [i].... 

 and Pondicherry Puducherry

Puducherry is a Union Territory [i] of India [i]. ... 

 .

The language belongs to the family of Dravidian languages. Both the language and its writing system are closely related to Tamil Tamil language

Tamil is a classical language [i] and one of the major language [i]s of the Dravidian language [i] ... 

. Malayalam has a script Malayalam script

The Malayalam script is an abugida [i] of the Brahmic family [i], used to write the Malayalam language [i] ... 

 of its own.

Evolution

With Tamil Tamil language

Tamil is a classical language [i] and one of the major language [i]s of the Dravidian language [i] ... 

, Toda Toda language

Toda is a Dravidian language [i] well known for its many fricatives [i] ... 

, Kota, Kodava Thakk and Kannada Kannada language

Kannada is one of the major Dravidian languages [i] of southern India [i] and one of the oldest language [i] ... 

, Malayalam belongs to the southern group of Dravidian languages. Its roots are in Sanskrit. Its affinity to Tamil is most striking. Proto-Tamil Malayalam, the common stock of Tamil and Malayalam apparently diverged over a period of four of five centuries from the ninth century on, resulting in the emergence of Malayalam as a language distinct from Tamil. As the language of scholarship and administration Tamil greatly influenced the early development of Malayalam. Later the irresistible inroads the Namboothiris made into the cultural life of Kerala and the trade relationships with Arabs and the conquest of Kerala by Portuguese, establishing vassal states accelerated the assimilation of many Romance Romance languages

The Romance languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family [i], ... 

, Semitic Semitic

In linguistics [i] and ethnology [i], Semitic was first used to refer to a language family [i] of large ... 

 and Indo-Aryan features into Malayalam at different levels spoken by different castes and religious communities like Muslims, Christians and Hindus.

Kerala Kerala

Kerala is a state [i] on the tropical Malabar Coast [i] of south ... 

 and Lakshadweep Islands Lakshadweep

Lakshadweep is the smallest union territory [i] of India [i].... 

 and Mahe/Mayyazhi are the only places in the world where Malayalam is the main spoken language.

Development of literature

The earliest written record of Malayalam is the Vazhappalli inscription . The early literature of Malayalam comprised three types of composition:
  • Classical songs known as Pattu of the Tamil tradition
  • Manipravalam/ of the Sanskrit tradition, which permitted a generous interspersing of Sanskrit with Malayalam
  • The folk song rich in native elements


Malayalam poetry to the late twentieth century betrays varying degrees of the fusion of the three different strands. The oldest examples of /Pattu/ and Manipravalam respectively are /ramacharitam/ and /vaishikatantram/, both of the twelfth century.

The earliest extant prose work in the language is a commentary in simple Malayalam, Bhashakautaliyam on Chanakya's Arthasastra. Adhyathmaramayanam by Thunchaththu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan is one of the most important works in Malayalam Literature. Malayalam prose of different periods exhibit various levels of influence from different languages such as Tamil Tamil language

Tamil is a classical language [i] and one of the major language [i]s of the Dravidian language [i] ... 

, Sanskrit Sanskrit

The Sanskrit language is a classical language [i] of India [i], a liturgical language [i] ... 

, Prakrit, Pali, Hebrew Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language [i] of the Afro-Asiatic language family [i] ... 

, Hindi Hindi

Hindi , an Indo-European language [i] spoken mainly in northern [i] ... 

, Urdu Urdu

is an Indo-European language [i] of the Indo-Aryan family [i] ... 

, Arabic Arabic language

The Arabic language , or simply Arabic , is the largest member of the Semitic [i] branch of the Afro-Asiatic [i] ... 

, Persian Persian language

[i] , [[Afghanistan]... 

, Syriac Syriac language

Syriac is an Eastern Aramaic language [i] that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent [i]. ... 

, Portuguese Portuguese language

Portuguese is an Iberian Romance language [i], of the Indo-European family [i] ... 

, Dutch Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic [i] language [i] spoken by around 22 million people, mainly in the Netherlands [i] ... 

, French French language

French is the third-largest of the Romance languages [i] in terms of number of native speakers, after Spanish [i] ... 

 and English English language

English is a widely distributed language that originated in England [i] but is now the primary language ... 

. Modern literature is rich in poetry, fiction, drama, biography, and literary criticism.

Phonology

For the consonants and vowels, the IPA is given, followed by the Malayalam character and the ISO 15919 transliteration.

Vowels

  Short Long
Front Central Back Front Central Back
Close ? i * u ? u ? i   ? u
Mid ? e * a ? o ? e   ? o
Open   ? a     ? a  


  • * is the , an epenthentic vowel in Malayalam. Therefore, it has no independent vowel letter but, when it comes after a consonant, there are various ways of representing it. In mediaeval times, it was just represented with the symbol for , but later on it was just completely missed out . In modern times, it is written in two different ways - the Northern style, in which a chandrakkala is used, and the Southern or Travancore Travancore

    Travancore or Thiruvithaamkoor or Tamil ?????????????? was a princely state [i] ... 

     style, in which the diacritic for a is attached to the preceding consonant and a chandrakkala is written above.


  • * and are both represented as basic or "default" vowels in the abugida script , but they are distinct vowels.


Malayalam has also borrowed the Sanskrit diphthongs of and , although these mostly occur only in Sanskrit loanwords. Traditionally , four vocalic consonants have been classified as vowels: vocalic r , long vocalic r , vocalic l and long vocalic l .

Consonants

Bilabial Bilabial consonant

In phonetics [i], a bilabial consonant is a consonant [i] articulated with both lip [i]s.... 

Labiodental Labiodental consonant

In phonetics [i], labiodentals are consonants [i] articulated with the lower lip and the upper... 

Dental Dental consonant

Dentals are consonant [i]s such as t, d, n, and l articulated with either the lower teet ... 

Alveolar Alveolar consonant

Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge [i], ... 

Retroflex Retroflex consonant

In phonetics [i], retroflex consonants are consonant [i] sounds used in some language [i]s. ... 

Palatal Palatal consonant

Palatal consonants are consonant [i]s articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate [i] ... 

Velar Velar consonant

Velars are consonant [i]s articulated with the back part of the tongue
... 

Glottal Glottal consonant

Glottal consonants are consonant [i]s articulated with the glottis [i]. ... 

Stop Unaspirated t
Aspirated
Nasal ? m  ? n ? * n ? ? ? ñ ? ?
Approximant ? v ? l ? y
Liquid  ? r
Fricative ?* f ? s ? ? ? s ? h
Tap Flap consonant

In phonetics [i], a flap or tap is a type of consonant [i]al sound, which is produced with a singl... 

? r
Lateral approximant Lateral consonant

Laterals are "L"-like consonant [i]s pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the t ... 

? l ? ?


  • The unaspirated alveolar plosive used to have a separate character but it has become obsolete because it only occurs in geminate form or immediately following other consonants . To see how the archaic letter looked, find the Malayalam letter in the the row for t .


  • The alveolar nasal used to have a separate character but this is now obsolete and the sound is now almost always represented by the symbol that was originally used only for the dental nasal.


  • The letter ? represents both , a native phoneme, and , which only occurs in borrowed words.

is an allophone of occurring in certain words. However, there are no rules to determine where occurs and where occurs - it must simply be memorized.

The script


In the early ninth century /vattezhuthu/ traceable through the Grantha Grantha

Grantha is an ancient script that was prevalent in South India [i]. ... 

 script, to the pan-Indian Brahmi Brahmi

refers to the pre-modern members of the Brahmic family [i] of scripts. ... 

 script, gave rise to the Malayalam writing system. It is syllabic in the sense that the sequence of graphic elements means that syllables have to be read as units, though in this system the elements representing individual vowels and consonants are for the most part readily identifiable. In the 1960s Malayalam dispensed with many special letters representing less frequent conjunct consonants and combinations of the vowel /u/ with different consonants.

Malayalam now consists of 56 letters including 20 long and short vowels and the rest consonants. The earlier style of writing is now substituted with a new style from 1981. This new script reduces the different letters for typeset from 900 to less than 90. This was mainly done to include Malayalam in the keyboards of typewriters and computers.

In 1999 a group called Rachana Akshara Vedi, led by Chitrajakumar and K.H. Hussein, produced a set of free font Typeface

In typography [i], a typeface consists of a coordinated set [i] of glyph [i]s designed with stylistic un ... 

s containing the entire character repertoire of more than 900 glyph Glyph

In typography [i], a glyph is the shape given in a particular typeface [i] to a specific grapheme [i] or ... 

s. This was announced and released along with an editor in the same year at Thiruvananthapuram Thiruvananthapuram

Thiruvananthapuram , formerly [i] known as Trivandrum, is the capital... 

, the capital city of Kerala Kerala

Kerala is a state [i] on the tropical Malabar Coast [i] of south ... 

. In 2004, the fonts were released under the GNU GPL GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is a widely used free software license [i], originally written by Richard Stallman [i] ... 

 license by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation at the Cochin University of Science and Technology in Kochi, Kerala.

Language variation and external influence


Variations in intonation patterns, vocabulary, and distribution of grammatical and phonological elements are observable along the parameters of region, religion, community, occupation, social stratum, style and register. Influence of Sanskrit Sanskrit

The Sanskrit language is a classical language [i] of India [i], a liturgical language [i] ... 

 is very prominent in Malayalam like most other Indian languages. Loan words from English, Syriac, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Portuguese abound in the Christian dialects and those from Arabic Arabic language

The Arabic language , or simply Arabic , is the largest member of the Semitic [i] branch of the Afro-Asiatic [i] ... 

 and Urdu Urdu

is an Indo-European language [i] of the Indo-Aryan family [i] ... 

 in the Muslim Muslim

A Muslim is an adherent of Islam [i]. ... 

 dialects. Malayalam has borrowed from Sanskrit thousands of nouns, hundreds of verbs and some indeclinables. Some items of basic vocabulary also have found their way into Malayalam from Sanskrit. Like in other parts of India, Sanskrit Sanskrit

The Sanskrit language is a classical language [i] of India [i], a liturgical language [i] ... 

 was considered an aristocratic and scholastic language, similar to Latin Latin

Latin is an ancient Indo-European language [i] originally spoken in Latium [i], ... 

 in Europe Europe

Europe is one of the seven traditional continent [i]s of the Earth [i]. ... 

an history.

Borrowing words from Sanskrit

When words are borrowed from Sanskrit, they are usually changed to conform to Malayalam norms:
  1. Masculine Sanskrit words ending in a short "a" in the nominative singular change their ending to "an". For example, -> . However, there are exceptions - for example, if someone's first name were a Sanskrit derived name like , a person talking about him might drop the "n" if it were immediately followed by his surname .
  2. Feminine words ending in a long "a" or "i" are changed so that they now end in a short "a" or "i", for example Sita SITA

    SITA is a multinational [i] information technology [i] company specialising i ... 

     -> Sita and -> . However, the long vowel still appears in compound words like Sitadevi or . Some vocative case forms of both Sanskrit and native Malayalam words end in a or i, and there are also a small number of nominative i endings that have not been shortened - a prominent example being the word Sri,
  3. Masculine words ending in a long "a" in the nominative singular have a "vu" added to them, for example Brahma Brahma

    Brahma is the Hindu [i] God of Creation [i], and one of the Hindu Trinity - Trimurti [i], the others bei ... 

     -> Brahmavu.
  4. Words which end in "n" in the Sanskrit nominative singular but have a different root - for example, the Sanskrit root of "Bhagavan" is actually "Bhagavat"- are also changed. The original root is ignored and "Bhagavan" is taken as the basic form of the noun when declining.
  5. Sanskrit words describing things or animals rather than people which end in a short "a" have an "m" added to the end in Malayalam. For example, -> . "Things and animals" and "people" are not differentiated based on whether or not they are sentient beings - for example Narasimha Narasimha

    Narasi?ha is desribed as the fourth incarnation of Lord Vishnu [i] within the Vedic [i]/Puranic [i] ... 

     becomes Narasimham and not Narasimhan whilst Ananta becomes Anantan even though both are sentient - but on purely arbitrary criteria.
  6. A very few people whose Sanskrit names end in "a" are given the plural suffix "-r" rather than normal "n" because they are revered, but this is extremely inconsistent - for example, becomes but Agastya becomes Agastyan.
  7. All other nouns like "", "Prajapati" etc stay the same.

Trivia

  • Malayalam is the longest language name in English which is a palindrome.
  • The first Malayalam dictionary was compiled by a German missionary, Hermann Gundert Hermann Gundert

    Rev. Dr. Hermann Gundert was a German [i] missionary and scholar, who compiled a Malayalam [i] g ... 

     .
  • The first work published in Europe on Malayalam is Alphabetum grandonico-malabaricum sive samscrudonicum, published in 1772. The types were prepared by Clemente Peani.
  • First Malayalam short story was written by Vengayil Kunhiraman Nayanar Vengayil Kunhiraman Nayanar

    Vengayil Kunhiraman Nayanar was a renowned malayali [i] journalist, essay writer, critic and short story ... 

     called Vasanavikriti

See also

  • The lists of and at Wiktionary Wiktionary

    Wiktionary is a Wikimedia Foundation [i] project intended to be a free wiki [i] dictionary [i] in ever ... 

    , the free dictionary and Wikipedia's sibling project
  • Judeo-Malayalam
  • Kerala Kerala

    Kerala is a state [i] on the tropical Malabar Coast [i] of south ... 

  • Beary bashe
  • Malayalam calendar
  • Malayalam literature
  • Malayalam cinema
  • Malayalam journalism
  • List of places in Kerala
  • Demographics of India Demographics of India

    India [i] houses a population [i] of 1.1 billion people , comprising approximately one-six ... 

     for a list of the official languages of India.
  • Languages of India
  • List of national languages of India
  • List of Indian languages by total speakers

External links

  • A means to transliterate romanised to Unicode Malayalam
  • for Windows, Linux and Mac.
  • Download Editor and Malayalam font