Malayalam is one of the four major
Dravidian languagesThe Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
of southern India. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India with
official languageAn official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
status in the state of
Keralaor Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
and the union territories of
LakshadweepLakshadweep , formerly known as the Laccadive, Minicoy, and Amindivi Islands, is a group of islands in the Laccadive Sea, 200 to 440 km off the coast of the South West Indian state of Kerala...
and Pondicherry. It is spoken by 35.9 million people. Malayalam is also spoken in the Nilgiris district,
Kanyakumari districtKanyakumari is a town in the state of Tamil Nadu in India. It is also sometimes referred to as Cape Comorin. Located at the southernmost tip of the Indian Peninsula, it is the geographical end of the Indian mainland. The district in Tamil Nadu where the town is located is called Kanyakumari...
and
CoimbatoreCoimbatore , also known as Kovai , is the second largest city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is a major commercial centre in Tamil Nadu and is known as the "Manchester of South India"....
of
Tamil NaduTamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...
,
Dakshina Kannada- Geography :The district geography consists of sea shore in the west and Western Ghats in the east. The major rivers are Netravathi, Kumaradhara, Phalguni, Shambhavi, Nandini or Pavanje and Payaswini which all join Arabian sea. Vast areas of evergreen forests which once covered this district, have...
,
MangaloreMangalore is the chief port city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It is located about west of the state capital, Bangalore. Mangalore lies between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghat mountain ranges, and is the administrative headquarters of the Dakshina Kannada district in south western...
and
KodaguKodagu , also known by its anglicised former name of Coorg, is an administrative district in Karnataka, India. It occupies an area of in the Western Ghats of southwestern Karnataka. As of 2001, the population was 548,561, 13.74% of which resided in the district's urban centres, making it the least...
districts of
KarnatakaKarnataka , the land of the Kannadigas, is a state in South West India. It was created on 1 November 1956, with the passing of the States Reorganisation Act and this day is annually celebrated as Karnataka Rajyotsava...
. Overseas it is also used by a large population of Indian
expatriateAn expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...
s living around the globe in the
Middle EastThe Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
,
North AmericaNorth America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
,
Malaysia,
SingaporeSingapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
,
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, and
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
.
Malayalam most likely originated from ancient Tamil in the 6th century, of which
Modern TamilTamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
was also derived. An alternative theory proposes a split in even more ancient times. In either case, Malayalam imbibed many elements from
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
through the ages and today over eighty percent of the vocabulary of Malayalam in scholarly usage is from Sanskrit. Before Malayalam came into being, Old Tamil was used in literature and courts of a region called
TamilakamThe Sangam period is the classical period in the history of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and other parts of South India, spanning about the 3rd century BCE to the 3rd century CE...
, a famous example being
Silappatikaram. The earliest script used to write Malayalam was the Vattezhuttu script, and later the
KolezhuthuKolezhuthu is one of the oldest writing systems in south India. It was mainly used to write Malayalam language.Kolezhuthu belongs to the same script family like Malayanma and Vattezhuthu....
, which derived from it. As Malayalam began to freely borrow words as well as the rules of grammar from
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
, Grantha script was adopted for writing and came to be known as
Arya Ezhuthu. This developed into the modern
Malayalam scriptThe Malayalam script is a Brahmic script used commonly to write the Malayalam language—which is the principal language of the Indian state of Kerala, spoken by 36 million people in the world. Like many other Indic scripts, it is an abugida, or a writing system that is partially “alphabetic” and...
. Many medieval liturgical texts were written in an admixture of Sanskrit and early Malayalam, termed as
ManipravalamManipravalam was a literary style used in medieval liturgical texts in South India, which used an admixture of Tamil and Sanskrit. Manipravalam is termed a mixture of Sanskrit and Tamil...
. The oldest literary work in Malayalam, distinct from the Tamil tradition, is dated between the 9th and 11th century.
Due to its lineage to both Sanskrit and Tamil, the Malayalam alphabet has the largest number of letters among the Indian languages. Malayalam script includes letters capable of representing all the sounds of Sanskrit and all Dravidian languages.
Evolution
The word Malayalam is derived from two words of early Malayalam -
mala meaning mountain, and
alam meaning place. Malayalam thus translates as "mountain region" and used to refer to the land itself, and only later became the name of the language. The language Malayalam is alternatively called as Alealum, Malayalani, Malayali, Malean, Maliyad, Mallealle, and Mopla.
The origin of Malayalam, whether it was a from a dialect of
TamilTamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
or an independent offshoot of the Proto Dravidian language, has been and continues to be an engaging pursuit among comparative historical linguists.
Robert CaldwellBishop Robert Caldwell was an Evangelist missionary and linguist, who academically established the Dravidian family of languages. He served as Assistant Bishop of Tirunelveli from 1877. He was described in The Hindu as a 'pioneering champion of the downtrodden' and an 'avant-garde social reformer'...
, in his book
A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Languages opines that Malayalam branched from
classical Tamil that over time gained a large amount of
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
vocabulary and lost the personal terminations of verbs. Either way, its generally agreed that by the end of 13th century a written form of the language emerged which was definitely different from Tamil.
The earliest known poem in Malayalam,
Ramacharitam, dated to 12th century C.E, was completed before the introduction of the Sanskrit alphabet. It shows the same phase of the language as in Jewish and Syrian
Saasanas (dated to mid eighth century C.E). But the period of the earliest available literary document cannot be the sole criterion used to determine the antiquity of a language. In its early literature, Malayalam has songs,
Paattu, for various subjects and occasions, such as harvesting, love songs, heroes, Gods, etc. A form of writing called
Champu emerged from the 14th century onwards. It mixed poetry with prose and used a vocabulary strongly influenced by Sanskrit, with themes from epics and
Puranas.
In the 16th – 17th centuries,
Thunchaththu Ramanujan EzhuthachanThunjathu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan was an Indian poet from around the 16th century, known as the father of the Malayalam language — the principal language of the Indian state of Kerala, spoken by 36 million people in the world...
was the first to substitute Grantha-Malayalam script for the Tamil
VatteluttuVatteluttu alphabet, also spelled Vattezhuttu alphabet is an abugida writing system originating from the Tamil people of Southern India...
. Ezhuthachan, regarded as the father of modern Malayalam language, undertook an elaborate translation of the epics
Ramayana and
Mahabharata into Malayalam. His
Adhyatma Ramayana and
Mahabharata are still read with religious reverence by Malayalis. Kunchan Nambiar, the founder of
Thullal, was a prolific literary figure of the 18th century.
Together with
TamilTamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
,
TodaToda is a Dravidian language well known for its many fricatives and trills. It is spoken by the Toda people, a population of about one thousand who live in the Nilgiri Hills of southern India.-Vowels:...
,
KannadaKannada or , is a language spoken in India predominantly in the state of Karnataka. Kannada, whose native speakers are called Kannadigas and number roughly 50 million, is one of the 30 most spoken languages in the world...
and
TuluThe Tulu language |?]]]) is a Dravidian language spoken by 1.95 million native speakers mainly in the southwest part of Indian state Karnataka known as Tulu Nadu. In India, 1.72 million people speak it as their mother tongue , increased by 10 percent over the 1991 census...
, Malayalam belongs to the southern group of
Dravidian languagesThe Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
. Some believe Proto-Tamil, the common stock of ancient Tamil and Malayalam, diverged over a period of four or five centuries from the 9th century on, resulting in the emergence of Malayalam as a language distinct from Proto-Tamil. As the language of scholarship and administration, Proto-Tamil, which was written in
Tamil-BrahmiTamil-Brahmi, or Damili is an early phonetic script used to write Tamil characters. It is a variant of many Brahmi scripts used throughout South Asia, namely Ashokan Brahmi, Southern Brahmi, Bhattiprolu script and the Sri Lankan based Sinhala-Brahmi. It is known from surviving inscribed cave beds,...
script and
VatteluttuVatteluttu alphabet, also spelled Vattezhuttu alphabet is an abugida writing system originating from the Tamil people of Southern India...
later, greatly influenced the early development of Malayalam. Later the inroads the Nairs and the Namboothiris made into the
cultural life of KeralaThe culture of Kerala is a synthesis of Dravidian and Aryan cultures, developed and mixed for centuries, under influences from other parts of India and abroad. It is defined by its antiquity and the organic continuity sustained by the Malayali people. Modern Kerala society took shape owing to...
, the Namboothiri-
NairNair , also known as Nayar , refers to "not a unitary group but a named category of castes", which historically embody several castes and many subdivisions, not all of whom bore the Nair title. These people historically live in the present-day Indian state of Kerala...
dominated society and politics, their trade relationships with Arabs, and the invasion of Kerala by the
PortuguesePortugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
affected the languages. The Portuguese established vassal states, which accelerated the assimilation of many Roman,
SemiticIn linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages...
and
Indo-AryanThe Indo-Aryan languages constitutes a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family...
features into Malayalam; these occurred at different levels, particularly among the religious communities, such as
MuslimA Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
s,
ChristianA Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
s,
JewsThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
and
JainsJainism is an Indian religion that prescribes a path of non-violence towards all living beings. Its philosophy and practice emphasize the necessity of self-effort to move the soul towards divine consciousness and liberation. Any soul that has conquered its own inner enemies and achieved the state...
.
T.K. Krishna Menon, in his book
A Primer of Malayalam Literature, describes four distinct epochs of the evolution of the language:
- Karintamil (3100 BCE – 100 BCE): There is a strong Tamil element, and Sanskrit has not yet made an influence on the language.
- Old Malayalam (100 BCE – 325 CE): Malayalam seems to have been influenced by Sanskrit as numerous Sanskrit words have been absorbed in the language. Personal terminations are made for verbs conjugated according to gender and number. Tamil Sangams produced Tamil Sangam literature
Sangam literature refers to a body of classical Tamil literature created between the years c. 600 BCE to 300 CE. This collection contains 2381 poems composed by 473 poets, some 102 of whom remain anonymous The period during which these poems were composed is commonly referred to as the Sangam...
in the same era. Tamil-BrahmiTamil-Brahmi, or Damili is an early phonetic script used to write Tamil characters. It is a variant of many Brahmi scripts used throughout South Asia, namely Ashokan Brahmi, Southern Brahmi, Bhattiprolu script and the Sri Lankan based Sinhala-Brahmi. It is known from surviving inscribed cave beds,...
script was used to write inscriptions in that era.
- Middle Malayalam (325 CE – 1425): Malayalam from this time period is represented by works such as Ramacharitram. Traces of the adjuncts of verbs have disappeared by this period. The Jains seem to have encouraged the study of the language. Kulasekhara Alwar wrote Perumal Thirumozhi in Tamil while writing Mukundamala in Sanskrit. A strong elememt of Tamil influence is found until this period, as evidenced in Perumal Thirumozhi.
- Modern Malayalam (1425 onwards): Malayalam seems to have become distinctly separate as a language from classical Tamil and Sanskrit. This period can be divided into two categories: from 1425 to 1795, and from 1795, onward. 1795 is the year the British gained complete control over Kerala.
The first printed book in Kerala was
Doctrina Christam, written by Henrique in
Lingua Malabar TamulMalabar Thamozhi, known to Portuguese as Malabar Tamul and as Malabar language to British was a writing scheme adopted to print books in the spoken language of early indigenous Christians in Malabar..Lingua Malabar Tamul or Malayalam-Tamil was a dialect of Tamil spoken by majority of people of...
. It was transliterated and translated into Malayalam, and printed by the Portuguese in 1578.
In 1821 the
Church Mission SocietyThe Church Mission Society, also known as the Church Missionary Society, is a group of evangelistic societies working with the Anglican Communion and Protestant Christians around the world...
(CMS) at
KottayamKottayam is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative capital of the Kottayam district. Kottayam Kottayam (Malayalam: കോട്ടയം) is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative...
started printing books in Malayalam when Benjamin Bailey, an Anglican priest, made the first Malayalam types. In addition, he contributed to standardizing the prose.
Hermann GundertRev. Dr. Hermann Gundert was a German missionary and scholar, who compiled a Malayalam grammar book, Malayalabhaasha Vyakaranam , the first Malayalam-English dictionary , and translated the Bible into Malayalam. He worked primarily at Tellicherry on the Malabar coast, in Kerala, India...
from
StuttgartStuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
, Germany started the first Malayalam newspaper,
Rajya Samacharam in 1847 at Thalassery. It was printed at
Basel MissionThe Basel Mission is a Christian missionary society active from 1815 to 2001, when it was merged into Mission 21, the successor organization of Kooperation Evangelischer Kirchen und Missione founded in 2001....
.
Development of literature
The earliest written record resembling Malayalam is the Vazhappalli inscription (ca. 830 CE).
The early literature of Malayalam comprised three types of composition:
Malayalam Nada, Tamil Nada and Sanskrit Nada.
- Classical songs known as Naadan Paattu
The Music of Kerala has a long and rich history.It is not the same as malayalam poetry although most of it is poetry driven. Kerala has a rich tradition in Carnatic music.Songs formed a major part of early Malayalam literature, which traces its origin to the 9th century CE...
- Manipravalam
Manipravalam was a literary style used in medieval liturgical texts in South India, which used an admixture of Tamil and Sanskrit. Manipravalam is termed a mixture of Sanskrit and Tamil...
of the Sanskrit tradition, which permitted a generous interspersing of Sanskrit with Malayalam. Niranam poetsNiranam is a small village in Southern Kerala in India near Mannar town. In 14th century Niranam gave birth to three poets who became well-known as the Niranam Poets. They were Madhava Panikkar, Sankara Panikkar and Rama Panikkar of the Kannassa family. The first two were uncles of Rama Panikkar...
Manipravalam Madhava Panikkar, Sankara Panikkar and Rama Panikkar wrote Manipravalam poetry in the 14th century.
- The folk song rich in native elements
Malayalam poetryThere are two types of meters used in Malayalam poetry, the classical Sanskrit based and Tamil based ones.- Sanskrit Meters :Sanskrit meters are primarily based on trisyllabic feet. The short sound is called a laghu, a long sound is called a guru. A guru is twice as long as a laghu...
to the late 20th 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 from the 12th century.
The earliest extant prose work in the language is a commentary in simple Malayalam,
Bhashakautaliyam (12th century) on
ChanakyaChānakya was a teacher to the first Maurya Emperor Chandragupta , and the first Indian emperor generally considered to be the architect of his rise to power. Traditionally, Chanakya is also identified by the names Kautilya and VishnuGupta, who authored the ancient Indian political treatise...
’s
Arthasastra.
AdhyathmaramayanamAdhyathmaramayanam is the Malayalam version of Ramayana written by Thunchaththu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan in the early 17th Century. It is considered to be a classic of Malayalam literature...
by
Thunchaththu Ramanujan EzhuthachanThunjathu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan was an Indian poet from around the 16th century, known as the father of the Malayalam language — the principal language of the Indian state of Kerala, spoken by 36 million people in the world...
(known as the father of the Malayalam language) who was born in
TirurTirur is a town and a municipality in Malappuram district in the Indian state of Kerala spread over an area of 16.55 km2 . It is birth place of Thunchathu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan, the father of Malayalam literature. Thunchan Parambu is highly venerated and its sand is believed to be sacred. The...
, one of the most important works in Malayalam literature.
Unnuneeli SandesamUnnuneeli Sandesam is among the oldest literary works in Malayalam language . It is what is called "Sandesa Kavyam" . A "Sandesa Kavyam" is a message written in poetry, on the lines of the famous "Megh Dhoot" of Kalidasa. In the case of this work, it is a message written by a lover to his lady-love...
written in the 14th century is amongst the oldest literary works in Malayalam language.
By the end of 18th century some of the Christian missionaries from Kerala started writing in Malayalam but mostly travelogues, dictionaries and religious books.
Varthamana PusthakamVarthamana Pusthakam or Varthamanapusthakam was written by Paremmakkal Thoma Kathanar is the first travelogue written in Malayalam Language.It gives the history of the journey between Malabar to Rome via Lisbon and there return journey....
(1778), written by
Paremmakkal Thoma KathanarParemmakkal Thoma Kathanar is the author of Varthamanapusthakam , the first ever travelogue in an Indian language . He was Administrator of the Archdiocese of Cranganore from 1786 till his death....
is considered to be the first travelogue in an Indian language.
Church Mission SocietyThe Church Mission Society, also known as the Church Missionary Society, is a group of evangelistic societies working with the Anglican Communion and Protestant Christians around the world...
which started a seminary at
KottayamKottayam is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative capital of the Kottayam district. Kottayam Kottayam (Malayalam: കോട്ടയം) is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative...
in 1819 also started a press which printed Malayalam books in 19th century. Malayalam and
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
were increasingly studied by Christians of
KottayamKottayam is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative capital of the Kottayam district. Kottayam Kottayam (Malayalam: കോട്ടയം) is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative...
and
pathanamthittaPathanamthitta is a large town and a municipality situated in the central Travancore region in the state of Kerala, south India, spread over an area of 23.50 km2. It is the administrative capital of Pathanamthitta district. The city has a population of 38,000...
by the end of
19th centuryThe 19th century was a period in history marked by the collapse of the Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Holy Roman and Mughal empires...
Malayalam replaced Syriac as language of
LiturgyLiturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...
in the church.
Phonology
For the consonants and vowels, the IPA is given, followed by the Malayalam character and the
ISO 15919ISO 15919 Transliteration of Devanagari and related Indic scripts into Latin characters is an international standard for the transliteration of Indic scripts to the Latin alphabet formed in 2001...
transliteration.
Vowels
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Short In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
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Long |
| Front A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...
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Central A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel...
|
Back A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
|
Front A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...
|
Central A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel...
|
Back A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
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| Close A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the...
|
/i/ ഇ i |
/ɨ̆/ * ŭ |
/u/ ഉ u |
/iː/ ഈ ī |
|
/uː/ ഊ ū |
| Mid A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel...
|
/e/ എ e |
/ə/ * a |
/o/ ഒ o |
/eː/ ഏ ē |
|
/oː/ ഓ ō |
| Open An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue...
|
|
/a/ അ a |
|
|
/aː/ ആ ā |
|
- */ɨ̆/ is the , an epenthentic vowel
In phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence, for the addition of a consonant, and anaptyxis for the addition of a vowel....
in Malayalam. Therefore, it has no independent vowel letter (because it never occurs at the beginning of words) but, when it comes after a consonant, there are various ways of representing it. In medieval times, it was just represented with the symbol for /u/, but later on it was just completely omitted (that is, written as an inherent vowel). In modern times, it is written in two different ways – the Northern style, in which a chandrakkala is used, and the Southern or TravancoreKingdom of Travancore was a former Hindu feudal kingdom and Indian Princely State with its capital at Padmanabhapuram or Trivandrum ruled by the Travancore Royal Family. The Kingdom of Travancore comprised most of modern day southern Kerala, Kanyakumari district, and the southernmost parts of...
style, in which the diacritic for a /u/ is attached to the preceding consonant and a chandrakkala is written above.
- */a/ (phonetically central: [ä]) and /ə/ are both represented as basic or "default" vowels in the abugida script (although /ə/ never occurs word-initially and therefore does not make use of the letter അ), but they are distinct vowels.
Malayalam has also borrowed the
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
diphthongs of /äu/ (represented in Malayalam as ഔ, au) and /ai/ (represented in Malayalam as ഐ, ai), although these mostly occur only in Sanskrit loanwords. Traditionally (as in Sanskrit), four vocalic consonants (usually pronounced in Malayalam as consonants followed by the , which is not officially a vowel, and not as actual vocalic consonants) have been classified as vowels: vocalic r (ഋ, /rɨ̆/), long vocalic r (ൠ, /rɨː/), vocalic l (ഌ, /lɨ̆/) and long vocalic l (ൡ, /lɨː/). Except for the first, the other three have been omitted from the current script used in Kerala as there are no words in current Malayalam that use them.
Consonants
LabialIn phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
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Dental |
AlveolarAlveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...
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Retroflex A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology...
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PalatalPalatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...
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VelarVelars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
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GlottalGlottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
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| Nasal A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
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/m/ മ m |
/n̪/ ന n |
/n/ ന * n |
/ɳ/ ണ |
/ɲ/ ഞ ñ |
/ŋ/ ങ |
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| Stop In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
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plain |
/p/ പ p |
/b/ ബ b |
/t̪/ ത t |
/d̪/ ദ d |
/t/ * t |
|
/ʈ/ ട |
/ɖ/ ഡ |
/t͡ʃ/ ച c |
/d͡ʒ/ ജ j |
/k/ ക k |
/ɡ/ ഗ g |
|
| aspirated In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
|
/pʰ/ ഫ ph |
/bʱ/ ഭ bh |
/t̪ʰ/ ഥ th |
/d̪ʱ/ ധ dh |
|
|
/ʈʰ/ ഠ |
/ɖʱ/ ഢ |
/t͡ʃʰ/ ഛ ch |
/d͡ʒʱ/ ഝ jh |
/kʰ/ ഖ kh |
/ɡʱ/ ഘ gh |
|
| Fricative Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
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/f/ ഫ* f |
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/s̪/ സ s |
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/ʂ/ ഷ |
/ɕ/ ശ ś |
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/h/ ഹ h |
| Approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...
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central |
/ʋ/ വ v |
|
|
/ɻ/ ഴ l |
/j/ യ y |
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|
lateralA lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....
|
|
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/l/ ല l |
/ɭ/ ള |
|
|
|
| Rhotic In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet...
|
|
|
/ɾʲ/ ര r |
/r/ റ r |
|
- The unaspirated alveolar plosive stop once had a separate character but it has become obsolete, as the sound only occurs in geminate form (when geminated it is written with a റ below another റ) or immediately following other consonants (in these cases, റ or ററ is usually written in small size underneath the first consonant). The archaic letter can be found in the "t" row here.
- The alveolar nasal
The alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in numerous spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar nasals is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is n....
also had a separate character that is now obsolete (it can be seen in the "n" row here) and the sound is now almost always represented by the symbol that was originally used only for the dental nasalThe dental nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is .-Features:Features of the dental nasal:- Occurrence :...
. However, both sounds are extensively used in current colloquial and official Malayalam, and although they were allophones in Old Malayalam, they now occasionally contrast in gemination – for example, "ennāl" ("by me", first person singular pronoun in the instrumental case) and ennāl ("if that is so", elided from the original "entāl"), which are both written "ennāl".
- The letter ഫ represents both /pʰ/, a phoneme occurring in Sanskrit loanwords, and /f/, which is mostly found in comparatively recent borrowings from European languages.
- The voiceless unaspirated plosives, the nasals and the laterals can be geminated.
Grammar
Malayalam has a canonical word order of SOV (subject–object–verb) as do other Dravidian languages. Both
adjectiveIn grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s and
possessive pronounA possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitutes for a noun phrase that begins with a possessive determiner . For example, in the sentence These glasses are mine, not yours, the words mine and yours are possessive pronouns and stand for my glasses and your glasses, respectively...
s precede the
nounIn linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s they modify. Malayalam has 6 or 7
grammatical caseIn grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
s. Verbs are conjugated for tense, mood and aspect, but not for person, gender or number except in archaic or poetic language.
Writing system
Historically, several scripts were used to write Malayalam. Among these scripts were
VattezhuthuVatteluttu alphabet, also spelled Vattezhuttu alphabet is an abugida writing system originating from the Tamil people of Southern India...
,
KolezhuthuKolezhuthu is one of the oldest writing systems in south India. It was mainly used to write Malayalam language.Kolezhuthu belongs to the same script family like Malayanma and Vattezhuthu....
and
MalayanmaMalayanma script was a writing system used in Thiruvananthapuram. It was used to write the Malayalam language. Malayanma belongs to the same script family like Kolezhuthu and Vattezhuthu....
scripts. But it was the Grantha script, another Southern Brahmi variation, which gave rise to the modern
Malayalam scriptThe Malayalam script is a Brahmic script used commonly to write the Malayalam language—which is the principal language of the Indian state of Kerala, spoken by 36 million people in the world. Like many other Indic scripts, it is an abugida, or a writing system that is partially “alphabetic” and...
. 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 script consists of a total of 578 characters. The script contains 52 letters including 16 vowels and 36 consonants, which forms 576 syllabic characters, and contains two additional diacritic characters named
AnusvāraAnusvara is the diacritic used to mark a type of nasalization used in a number of Indic languages. Depending on the location of the anusvara in the word and the language within which it is used, its exact pronunciation can vary greatly....
and
VisargaVisarga is a Sanskrit word meaning "sending forth, discharge". In Sanskrit phonology , is the name of a phone, , written as IAST , Harvard-Kyoto , Devanagari . Visarga is an allophone of and in pausa...
. 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 fewer than 90. This was mainly done to include Malayalam in the keyboards of typewriters and computers.
In 1999 a group named "Rachana Akshara Vedi", produced a set of free
fontsIn typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
containing the entire character repertoire of more than 900
glyphA glyph is an element of writing: an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. A glyph is made up of one or more graphemes....
s. This was announced and released along with a
text editorA text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files.Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code....
in the same year at
ThiruvananthapuramThiruvananthapuram , formerly known as Trivandrum, is the capital of the Indian state of Kerala and the headquarters of the Thiruvananthapuram District. It is located on the west coast of India near the extreme south of the mainland...
, the capital of
Keralaor Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
. In 2004, the fonts were released under the GNU GPL license by
Richard StallmanRichard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
of the
Free Software FoundationThe Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
at the
Cochin University of Science and TechnologyCochin University of Science and Technology is a government owned autonomous university in Kochi , Kerala, India. Founded in 1971, the university consists of three campuses, two in Kochi and one in Kuttanad, Alappuzha, 66 km inland. The university awards degrees in engineering and allied...
in Kochi, Kerala.
Malayalam has been written in other scripts like
RomanThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
and
Arabic scriptsArabi Malayalam is a system of writing Malayalam language language in a variant form of Arabic script.It is a blend of Malayalam grammatical base, Arabic script with special orthographic features, and vocabulary from Malayalam , Arabic, Tamil, Urdu and Persian...
; Arabic script particularly were taught in
MadrassasMadrasah is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, whether secular or religious...
in the Lakshadweep Islands.
Dialects and external influences
Variations in
intonationIn linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation does distinguish words. Intonation, rhythm, and stress are the three main elements of linguistic prosody...
patterns, vocabulary, and distribution of grammatical and
phonologicalPhonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
elements are observable along the parameters of region, religion, community, occupation, social stratum, style and register. Influence of
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
is very prominent in formal Malayalam used in literature. Malayalam has a substantially high amount of Sanskrit loan words. Loan words and influences also from
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, Syriac and Ladino abound in the
Jewish Malayalam dialectsJudeo-Malayalam is the traditional language of the Cochin Jews , from Kerala, in southern India, spoken today by a few dozens of people in Israel and by probably fewer than 25 in India....
, as well as
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
,
PortuguesePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Syriac and
GreekGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
in the
ChristianA Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
dialects, while Arabic and Persian elements predominate in the
MuslimA Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
dialects. This Muslim dialect known as Mappila Malayalam is used in the Malabar region of Kerala. Another Muslim dialect called
Beary basheBeary bashe is a dialect mainly spoken by the Muslim communities of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts of Karnataka known as Bearys and a small number of Hindus in the District of Kasargod in Kerala state....
is used in the extreme northern part of Kerala.
The regional
dialectThe term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s of Malayalam can be divided into thirteen dialect areas.
They are as follows:
| South Travancore |
Central Travancore |
West Vempanad |
| North Travancore |
Kochi (Cochin) |
South Malabar |
| South Eastern Palghat |
North Western Palghat |
Central Malabar |
| Wayanad |
North Malabar |
Kasaragod |
|
Lakshadweep |
|
According to Ethnologue, the dialects are:
Malabar, Nagari-Malayalam, South Kerala, Central Kerala, North Kerala, Kayavar, Namboodiri, Nair,
Moplah (Mapilla)The Malayalam language spoken mostly by Mappila Muslim community of Kerala state, India is called Mappila dialect of Malayalam or simply as Mappila Malayalam...
, Pulaya, Nasrani, Kasargod.
Community dialects: Namboodiri, Nair,
Moplah (Mapilla)The Malayalam language spoken mostly by Mappila Muslim community of Kerala state, India is called Mappila dialect of Malayalam or simply as Mappila Malayalam...
, Pulaya, Nasrani.
While, Namboothiri and Nair dialects have a common nature,
Mapilla dialectThe Malayalam language spoken mostly by Mappila Muslim community of Kerala state, India is called Mappila dialect of Malayalam or simply as Mappila Malayalam...
is among the most divergent dialects, differing considerably from literary Malayalam.
Words adopted from Sanskrit
When words are adopted from Sanskrit, their endings are usually changed to conform to Malayalam norms:
Nouns
1. Masculine
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
nouns with a
Word stemIn linguistics, a stem is a part of a word. The term is used with slightly different meanings.In one usage, a stem is a form to which affixes can be attached. Thus, in this usage, the English word friendships contains the stem friend, to which the derivational suffix -ship is attached to form a new...
ending in a short "a" take the ending "an" in the nominative singular. For example,
{{Malayalam transliteration}}
Malayalam , is one of the four major Dravidian languagesThe Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
of southern India. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India with
official languageAn official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
status in the state of
Keralaor Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
and the union territories of
LakshadweepLakshadweep , formerly known as the Laccadive, Minicoy, and Amindivi Islands, is a group of islands in the Laccadive Sea, 200 to 440 km off the coast of the South West Indian state of Kerala...
and Pondicherry. It is spoken by 35.9 million people. Malayalam is also spoken in the Nilgiris district,
Kanyakumari districtKanyakumari is a town in the state of Tamil Nadu in India. It is also sometimes referred to as Cape Comorin. Located at the southernmost tip of the Indian Peninsula, it is the geographical end of the Indian mainland. The district in Tamil Nadu where the town is located is called Kanyakumari...
and
CoimbatoreCoimbatore , also known as Kovai , is the second largest city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is a major commercial centre in Tamil Nadu and is known as the "Manchester of South India"....
of
Tamil NaduTamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...
,
Dakshina Kannada- Geography :The district geography consists of sea shore in the west and Western Ghats in the east. The major rivers are Netravathi, Kumaradhara, Phalguni, Shambhavi, Nandini or Pavanje and Payaswini which all join Arabian sea. Vast areas of evergreen forests which once covered this district, have...
,
MangaloreMangalore is the chief port city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It is located about west of the state capital, Bangalore. Mangalore lies between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghat mountain ranges, and is the administrative headquarters of the Dakshina Kannada district in south western...
and
KodaguKodagu , also known by its anglicised former name of Coorg, is an administrative district in Karnataka, India. It occupies an area of in the Western Ghats of southwestern Karnataka. As of 2001, the population was 548,561, 13.74% of which resided in the district's urban centres, making it the least...
districts of
KarnatakaKarnataka , the land of the Kannadigas, is a state in South West India. It was created on 1 November 1956, with the passing of the States Reorganisation Act and this day is annually celebrated as Karnataka Rajyotsava...
. Overseas it is also used by a large population of Indian
expatriateAn expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...
s living around the globe in the
Middle EastThe Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
,
North AmericaNorth America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
,
Malaysia,
SingaporeSingapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
,
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, and
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
.
Malayalam most likely originated from ancient Tamil in the 6th century, of which
Modern TamilTamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
was also derived. An alternative theory proposes a split in even more ancient times. In either case, Malayalam imbibed many elements from
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
through the ages and today over eighty percent of the vocabulary of Malayalam in scholarly usage is from Sanskrit. Before Malayalam came into being, Old Tamil was used in literature and courts of a region called
TamilakamThe Sangam period is the classical period in the history of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and other parts of South India, spanning about the 3rd century BCE to the 3rd century CE...
, a famous example being
Silappatikaram. The earliest script used to write Malayalam was the Vattezhuttu script, and later the
KolezhuthuKolezhuthu is one of the oldest writing systems in south India. It was mainly used to write Malayalam language.Kolezhuthu belongs to the same script family like Malayanma and Vattezhuthu....
, which derived from it. As Malayalam began to freely borrow words as well as the rules of grammar from
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
, Grantha script was adopted for writing and came to be known as
Arya Ezhuthu. This developed into the modern
Malayalam scriptThe Malayalam script is a Brahmic script used commonly to write the Malayalam language—which is the principal language of the Indian state of Kerala, spoken by 36 million people in the world. Like many other Indic scripts, it is an abugida, or a writing system that is partially “alphabetic” and...
. Many medieval liturgical texts were written in an admixture of Sanskrit and early Malayalam, termed as
ManipravalamManipravalam was a literary style used in medieval liturgical texts in South India, which used an admixture of Tamil and Sanskrit. Manipravalam is termed a mixture of Sanskrit and Tamil...
. The oldest literary work in Malayalam, distinct from the Tamil tradition, is dated between the 9th and 11th century.
Due to its lineage to both Sanskrit and Tamil, the Malayalam alphabet has the largest number of letters among the Indian languages. Malayalam script includes letters capable of representing all the sounds of Sanskrit and all Dravidian languages.
Evolution
{{toofewopinions|date=January 2011}}
The word Malayalam is derived from two words of early Malayalam -
mala meaning mountain, and
alam meaning place. Malayalam thus translates as "mountain region" and used to refer to the land itself, and only later became the name of the language. The language Malayalam is alternatively called as Alealum, Malayalani, Malayali, Malean, Maliyad, Mallealle, and Mopla.
The origin of Malayalam, whether it was a from a dialect of
TamilTamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
or an independent offshoot of the Proto Dravidian language, has been and continues to be an engaging pursuit among comparative historical linguists.
Robert CaldwellBishop Robert Caldwell was an Evangelist missionary and linguist, who academically established the Dravidian family of languages. He served as Assistant Bishop of Tirunelveli from 1877. He was described in The Hindu as a 'pioneering champion of the downtrodden' and an 'avant-garde social reformer'...
, in his book
A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Languages opines that Malayalam branched from
classical Tamil that over time gained a large amount of
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
vocabulary and lost the personal terminations of verbs. Either way, its generally agreed that by the end of 13th century a written form of the language emerged which was definitely different from Tamil.
The earliest known poem in Malayalam,
Ramacharitam, dated to 12th century C.E, was completed before the introduction of the Sanskrit alphabet. It shows the same phase of the language as in Jewish and Syrian
Saasanas (dated to mid eighth century C.E). But the period of the earliest available literary document cannot be the sole criterion used to determine the antiquity of a language. In its early literature, Malayalam has songs,
Paattu, for various subjects and occasions, such as harvesting, love songs, heroes, Gods, etc. A form of writing called
Champu emerged from the 14th century onwards. It mixed poetry with prose and used a vocabulary strongly influenced by Sanskrit, with themes from epics and
Puranas.
In the 16th – 17th centuries,
Thunchaththu Ramanujan EzhuthachanThunjathu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan was an Indian poet from around the 16th century, known as the father of the Malayalam language — the principal language of the Indian state of Kerala, spoken by 36 million people in the world...
was the first to substitute Grantha-Malayalam script for the Tamil
VatteluttuVatteluttu alphabet, also spelled Vattezhuttu alphabet is an abugida writing system originating from the Tamil people of Southern India...
. Ezhuthachan, regarded as the father of modern Malayalam language, undertook an elaborate translation of the epics
Ramayana and
Mahabharata into Malayalam. His
Adhyatma Ramayana and
Mahabharata are still read with religious reverence by Malayalis. Kunchan Nambiar, the founder of
Thullal, was a prolific literary figure of the 18th century.
Together with
TamilTamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
,
TodaToda is a Dravidian language well known for its many fricatives and trills. It is spoken by the Toda people, a population of about one thousand who live in the Nilgiri Hills of southern India.-Vowels:...
,
KannadaKannada or , is a language spoken in India predominantly in the state of Karnataka. Kannada, whose native speakers are called Kannadigas and number roughly 50 million, is one of the 30 most spoken languages in the world...
and
TuluThe Tulu language |?]]]) is a Dravidian language spoken by 1.95 million native speakers mainly in the southwest part of Indian state Karnataka known as Tulu Nadu. In India, 1.72 million people speak it as their mother tongue , increased by 10 percent over the 1991 census...
, Malayalam belongs to the southern group of
Dravidian languagesThe Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
. Some believe Proto-Tamil, the common stock of ancient Tamil and Malayalam, diverged over a period of four or five centuries from the 9th century on, resulting in the emergence of Malayalam as a language distinct from Proto-Tamil. As the language of scholarship and administration, Proto-Tamil, which was written in
Tamil-BrahmiTamil-Brahmi, or Damili is an early phonetic script used to write Tamil characters. It is a variant of many Brahmi scripts used throughout South Asia, namely Ashokan Brahmi, Southern Brahmi, Bhattiprolu script and the Sri Lankan based Sinhala-Brahmi. It is known from surviving inscribed cave beds,...
script and
VatteluttuVatteluttu alphabet, also spelled Vattezhuttu alphabet is an abugida writing system originating from the Tamil people of Southern India...
later, greatly influenced the early development of Malayalam. Later the inroads the Nairs and the Namboothiris made into the
cultural life of KeralaThe culture of Kerala is a synthesis of Dravidian and Aryan cultures, developed and mixed for centuries, under influences from other parts of India and abroad. It is defined by its antiquity and the organic continuity sustained by the Malayali people. Modern Kerala society took shape owing to...
, the Namboothiri-
NairNair , also known as Nayar , refers to "not a unitary group but a named category of castes", which historically embody several castes and many subdivisions, not all of whom bore the Nair title. These people historically live in the present-day Indian state of Kerala...
dominated society and politics, their trade relationships with Arabs, and the invasion of Kerala by the
PortuguesePortugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
affected the languages. The Portuguese established vassal states, which accelerated the assimilation of many Roman,
SemiticIn linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages...
and
Indo-AryanThe Indo-Aryan languages constitutes a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family...
features into Malayalam; these occurred at different levels, particularly among the religious communities, such as
MuslimA Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
s,
ChristianA Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
s,
JewsThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
and
JainsJainism is an Indian religion that prescribes a path of non-violence towards all living beings. Its philosophy and practice emphasize the necessity of self-effort to move the soul towards divine consciousness and liberation. Any soul that has conquered its own inner enemies and achieved the state...
.
T.K. Krishna Menon, in his book
A Primer of Malayalam Literature, describes four distinct epochs of the evolution of the language:
- Karintamil (3100 BCE – 100 BCE): There is a strong Tamil element, and Sanskrit has not yet made an influence on the language.
- Old Malayalam (100 BCE – 325 CE): Malayalam seems to have been influenced by Sanskrit as numerous Sanskrit words have been absorbed in the language. Personal terminations are made for verbs conjugated according to gender and number. Tamil Sangams produced Tamil Sangam literature
Sangam literature refers to a body of classical Tamil literature created between the years c. 600 BCE to 300 CE. This collection contains 2381 poems composed by 473 poets, some 102 of whom remain anonymous The period during which these poems were composed is commonly referred to as the Sangam...
in the same era. Tamil-BrahmiTamil-Brahmi, or Damili is an early phonetic script used to write Tamil characters. It is a variant of many Brahmi scripts used throughout South Asia, namely Ashokan Brahmi, Southern Brahmi, Bhattiprolu script and the Sri Lankan based Sinhala-Brahmi. It is known from surviving inscribed cave beds,...
script was used to write inscriptions in that era.
- Middle Malayalam (325 CE – 1425): Malayalam from this time period is represented by works such as Ramacharitram. Traces of the adjuncts of verbs have disappeared by this period. The Jains seem to have encouraged the study of the language. Kulasekhara Alwar wrote Perumal Thirumozhi in Tamil while writing Mukundamala in Sanskrit. A strong elememt of Tamil influence is found until this period, as evidenced in Perumal Thirumozhi.
- Modern Malayalam (1425 onwards): Malayalam seems to have become distinctly separate as a language from classical Tamil and Sanskrit. This period can be divided into two categories: from 1425 to 1795, and from 1795, onward. 1795 is the year the British gained complete control over Kerala.
The first printed book in Kerala was
Doctrina Christam, written by Henrique in
Lingua Malabar TamulMalabar Thamozhi, known to Portuguese as Malabar Tamul and as Malabar language to British was a writing scheme adopted to print books in the spoken language of early indigenous Christians in Malabar..Lingua Malabar Tamul or Malayalam-Tamil was a dialect of Tamil spoken by majority of people of...
. It was transliterated and translated into Malayalam, and printed by the Portuguese in 1578.
In 1821 the
Church Mission SocietyThe Church Mission Society, also known as the Church Missionary Society, is a group of evangelistic societies working with the Anglican Communion and Protestant Christians around the world...
(CMS) at
KottayamKottayam is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative capital of the Kottayam district. Kottayam Kottayam (Malayalam: കോട്ടയം) is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative...
started printing books in Malayalam when Benjamin Bailey, an Anglican priest, made the first Malayalam types. In addition, he contributed to standardizing the prose.
Hermann GundertRev. Dr. Hermann Gundert was a German missionary and scholar, who compiled a Malayalam grammar book, Malayalabhaasha Vyakaranam , the first Malayalam-English dictionary , and translated the Bible into Malayalam. He worked primarily at Tellicherry on the Malabar coast, in Kerala, India...
from
StuttgartStuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
, Germany started the first Malayalam newspaper,
Rajya Samacharam in 1847 at Thalassery. It was printed at
Basel MissionThe Basel Mission is a Christian missionary society active from 1815 to 2001, when it was merged into Mission 21, the successor organization of Kooperation Evangelischer Kirchen und Missione founded in 2001....
.
Development of literature
{{main|Malayalam literature}}
{{Dravidian languages genealogy}}
The earliest written record resembling Malayalam is the Vazhappalli inscription (ca. 830 CE).
The early literature of Malayalam comprised three types of composition:
Malayalam Nada, Tamil Nada and Sanskrit Nada.
- Classical songs known as Naadan Paattu
The Music of Kerala has a long and rich history.It is not the same as malayalam poetry although most of it is poetry driven. Kerala has a rich tradition in Carnatic music.Songs formed a major part of early Malayalam literature, which traces its origin to the 9th century CE...
- Manipravalam
Manipravalam was a literary style used in medieval liturgical texts in South India, which used an admixture of Tamil and Sanskrit. Manipravalam is termed a mixture of Sanskrit and Tamil...
of the Sanskrit tradition, which permitted a generous interspersing of Sanskrit with Malayalam. Niranam poetsNiranam is a small village in Southern Kerala in India near Mannar town. In 14th century Niranam gave birth to three poets who became well-known as the Niranam Poets. They were Madhava Panikkar, Sankara Panikkar and Rama Panikkar of the Kannassa family. The first two were uncles of Rama Panikkar...
Manipravalam Madhava Panikkar, Sankara Panikkar and Rama Panikkar wrote Manipravalam poetry in the 14th century.
- The folk song rich in native elements
Malayalam poetryThere are two types of meters used in Malayalam poetry, the classical Sanskrit based and Tamil based ones.- Sanskrit Meters :Sanskrit meters are primarily based on trisyllabic feet. The short sound is called a laghu, a long sound is called a guru. A guru is twice as long as a laghu...
to the late 20th 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 from the 12th century.
The earliest extant prose work in the language is a commentary in simple Malayalam,
Bhashakautaliyam (12th century) on
ChanakyaChānakya was a teacher to the first Maurya Emperor Chandragupta , and the first Indian emperor generally considered to be the architect of his rise to power. Traditionally, Chanakya is also identified by the names Kautilya and VishnuGupta, who authored the ancient Indian political treatise...
’s
Arthasastra.
AdhyathmaramayanamAdhyathmaramayanam is the Malayalam version of Ramayana written by Thunchaththu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan in the early 17th Century. It is considered to be a classic of Malayalam literature...
by
Thunchaththu Ramanujan EzhuthachanThunjathu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan was an Indian poet from around the 16th century, known as the father of the Malayalam language — the principal language of the Indian state of Kerala, spoken by 36 million people in the world...
(known as the father of the Malayalam language) who was born in
TirurTirur is a town and a municipality in Malappuram district in the Indian state of Kerala spread over an area of 16.55 km2 . It is birth place of Thunchathu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan, the father of Malayalam literature. Thunchan Parambu is highly venerated and its sand is believed to be sacred. The...
, one of the most important works in Malayalam literature.
Unnuneeli SandesamUnnuneeli Sandesam is among the oldest literary works in Malayalam language . It is what is called "Sandesa Kavyam" . A "Sandesa Kavyam" is a message written in poetry, on the lines of the famous "Megh Dhoot" of Kalidasa. In the case of this work, it is a message written by a lover to his lady-love...
written in the 14th century is amongst the oldest literary works in Malayalam language.
By the end of 18th century some of the Christian missionaries from Kerala started writing in Malayalam but mostly travelogues, dictionaries and religious books.
Varthamana PusthakamVarthamana Pusthakam or Varthamanapusthakam was written by Paremmakkal Thoma Kathanar is the first travelogue written in Malayalam Language.It gives the history of the journey between Malabar to Rome via Lisbon and there return journey....
(1778), written by
Paremmakkal Thoma KathanarParemmakkal Thoma Kathanar is the author of Varthamanapusthakam , the first ever travelogue in an Indian language . He was Administrator of the Archdiocese of Cranganore from 1786 till his death....
is considered to be the first travelogue in an Indian language.
Church Mission SocietyThe Church Mission Society, also known as the Church Missionary Society, is a group of evangelistic societies working with the Anglican Communion and Protestant Christians around the world...
which started a seminary at
KottayamKottayam is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative capital of the Kottayam district. Kottayam Kottayam (Malayalam: കോട്ടയം) is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative...
in 1819 also started a press which printed Malayalam books in 19th century. Malayalam and
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
were increasingly studied by Christians of
KottayamKottayam is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative capital of the Kottayam district. Kottayam Kottayam (Malayalam: കോട്ടയം) is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative...
and
pathanamthittaPathanamthitta is a large town and a municipality situated in the central Travancore region in the state of Kerala, south India, spread over an area of 23.50 km2. It is the administrative capital of Pathanamthitta district. The city has a population of 38,000...
by the end of
19th centuryThe 19th century was a period in history marked by the collapse of the Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Holy Roman and Mughal empires...
Malayalam replaced Syriac as language of
LiturgyLiturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...
in the church.
Phonology
For the consonants and vowels, the IPA is given, followed by the Malayalam character and the
ISO 15919ISO 15919 Transliteration of Devanagari and related Indic scripts into Latin characters is an international standard for the transliteration of Indic scripts to the Latin alphabet formed in 2001...
transliteration.
Vowels
| |
Short In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
|
Long |
| Front A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...
|
Central A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel...
|
Back A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
|
Front A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...
|
Central A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel...
|
Back A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
|
| Close A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the...
|
/i/ ഇ i |
/ɨ̆/ * ŭ |
/u/ ഉ u |
/iː/ ഈ ī |
|
/uː/ ഊ ū |
| Mid A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel...
|
/e/ എ e |
/ə/ * a |
/o/ ഒ o |
/eː/ ഏ ē |
|
/oː/ ഓ ō |
| Open An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue...
|
|
/a/ അ a |
|
|
/aː/ ആ ā |
|
- */ɨ̆/ is the {{Unicode|saṁvr̥tōkāram}}, an epenthentic vowel
In phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence, for the addition of a consonant, and anaptyxis for the addition of a vowel....
in Malayalam. Therefore, it has no independent vowel letter (because it never occurs at the beginning of words) but, when it comes after a consonant, there are various ways of representing it. In medieval times, it was just represented with the symbol for /u/, but later on it was just completely omitted (that is, written as an inherent vowel). In modern times, it is written in two different ways – the Northern style, in which a chandrakkala is used, and the Southern or TravancoreKingdom of Travancore was a former Hindu feudal kingdom and Indian Princely State with its capital at Padmanabhapuram or Trivandrum ruled by the Travancore Royal Family. The Kingdom of Travancore comprised most of modern day southern Kerala, Kanyakumari district, and the southernmost parts of...
style, in which the diacritic for a /u/ is attached to the preceding consonant and a chandrakkala is written above.
- */a/ (phonetically central: [ä]) and /ə/ are both represented as basic or "default" vowels in the abugida script (although /ə/ never occurs word-initially and therefore does not make use of the letter അ), but they are distinct vowels.
Malayalam has also borrowed the
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
diphthongs of /äu/ (represented in Malayalam as ഔ, au) and /ai/ (represented in Malayalam as ഐ, ai), although these mostly occur only in Sanskrit loanwords. Traditionally (as in Sanskrit), four vocalic consonants (usually pronounced in Malayalam as consonants followed by the {{Unicode|
saṁvr̥tōkāram}}, which is not officially a vowel, and not as actual vocalic consonants) have been classified as vowels: vocalic r (ഋ, /rɨ̆/, {{Unicode|r̥}}), long vocalic r (ൠ, /rɨː/, {{Unicode|r̥̄}}), vocalic l (ഌ, /lɨ̆/, {{Unicode|l̥}}) and long vocalic l (ൡ, /lɨː/, {{Unicode|l̥̄}}). Except for the first, the other three have been omitted from the current script used in Kerala as there are no words in current Malayalam that use them.
Consonants
LabialIn phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
|
Dental |
AlveolarAlveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...
|
Retroflex A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology...
|
PalatalPalatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...
|
VelarVelars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
|
GlottalGlottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
|
| Nasal A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
|
/m/ മ m |
/n̪/ ന n |
/n/ ന * n |
/ɳ/ ണ {{Unicode|ṇ}} |
/ɲ/ ഞ ñ |
/ŋ/ ങ {{Unicode|ṅ}} |
|
| Stop In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
|
plain |
/p/ പ p |
/b/ ബ b |
/t̪/ ത t |
/d̪/ ദ d |
/t/ * t |
|
/ʈ/ ട {{Unicode|ṭ}} |
/ɖ/ ഡ {{Unicode|ḍ}} |
/t͡ʃ/ ച c |
/d͡ʒ/ ജ j |
/k/ ക k |
/ɡ/ ഗ g |
|
| aspirated In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
|
/pʰ/ ഫ ph |
/bʱ/ ഭ bh |
/t̪ʰ/ ഥ th |
/d̪ʱ/ ധ dh |
|
|
/ʈʰ/ ഠ {{Unicode|ṭh}} |
/ɖʱ/ ഢ {{Unicode|ḍh}} |
/t͡ʃʰ/ ഛ ch |
/d͡ʒʱ/ ഝ jh |
/kʰ/ ഖ kh |
/ɡʱ/ ഘ gh |
|
| Fricative Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
|
/f/ ഫ* f |
|
/s̪/ സ s |
|
/ʂ/ ഷ {{Unicode|ṣ}} |
/ɕ/ ശ ś |
|
/h/ ഹ h |
| Approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...
|
central |
/ʋ/ വ v |
|
|
/ɻ/ ഴ l |
/j/ യ y |
|
|
lateralA lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....
|
|
|
/l/ ല l |
/ɭ/ ള {{Unicode|ḷ}} |
|
|
|
| Rhotic In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet...
|
|
|
/ɾʲ/ ര r |
/r/ റ r |
|
- The unaspirated alveolar plosive stop once had a separate character but it has become obsolete, as the sound only occurs in geminate form (when geminated it is written with a റ below another റ) or immediately following other consonants (in these cases, റ or ററ is usually written in small size underneath the first consonant). The archaic letter can be found in the "t" row here.
- The alveolar nasal
The alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in numerous spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar nasals is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is n....
also had a separate character that is now obsolete (it can be seen in the "n" row here) and the sound is now almost always represented by the symbol that was originally used only for the dental nasalThe dental nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is .-Features:Features of the dental nasal:- Occurrence :...
. However, both sounds are extensively used in current colloquial and official Malayalam, and although they were allophones in Old Malayalam, they now occasionally contrast in gemination – for example, "ennāl" ("by me", first person singular pronoun in the instrumental case) and ennāl ("if that is so", elided from the original "entāl"), which are both written "ennāl".
- The letter ഫ represents both /pʰ/, a phoneme occurring in Sanskrit loanwords, and /f/, which is mostly found in comparatively recent borrowings from European languages.
- The voiceless unaspirated plosives, the nasals and the laterals can be geminated.
Grammar
{{main|Malayalam grammar}}
Malayalam has a canonical word order of SOV (subject–object–verb) as do other Dravidian languages. Both
adjectiveIn grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s and
possessive pronounA possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitutes for a noun phrase that begins with a possessive determiner . For example, in the sentence These glasses are mine, not yours, the words mine and yours are possessive pronouns and stand for my glasses and your glasses, respectively...
s precede the
nounIn linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s they modify. Malayalam has 6 or 7
grammatical caseIn grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
s. Verbs are conjugated for tense, mood and aspect, but not for person, gender or number except in archaic or poetic language.
Writing system
{{Main|Malayalam script}}
Historically, several scripts were used to write Malayalam. Among these scripts were
VattezhuthuVatteluttu alphabet, also spelled Vattezhuttu alphabet is an abugida writing system originating from the Tamil people of Southern India...
,
KolezhuthuKolezhuthu is one of the oldest writing systems in south India. It was mainly used to write Malayalam language.Kolezhuthu belongs to the same script family like Malayanma and Vattezhuthu....
and
MalayanmaMalayanma script was a writing system used in Thiruvananthapuram. It was used to write the Malayalam language. Malayanma belongs to the same script family like Kolezhuthu and Vattezhuthu....
scripts. But it was the Grantha script, another Southern Brahmi variation, which gave rise to the modern
Malayalam scriptThe Malayalam script is a Brahmic script used commonly to write the Malayalam language—which is the principal language of the Indian state of Kerala, spoken by 36 million people in the world. Like many other Indic scripts, it is an abugida, or a writing system that is partially “alphabetic” and...
. 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 script consists of a total of 578 characters. The script contains 52 letters including 16 vowels and 36 consonants, which forms 576 syllabic characters, and contains two additional diacritic characters named
AnusvāraAnusvara is the diacritic used to mark a type of nasalization used in a number of Indic languages. Depending on the location of the anusvara in the word and the language within which it is used, its exact pronunciation can vary greatly....
and
VisargaVisarga is a Sanskrit word meaning "sending forth, discharge". In Sanskrit phonology , is the name of a phone, , written as IAST , Harvard-Kyoto , Devanagari . Visarga is an allophone of and in pausa...
. 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 fewer than 90. This was mainly done to include Malayalam in the keyboards of typewriters and computers.
In 1999 a group named "Rachana Akshara Vedi", produced a set of free
fontsIn typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
containing the entire character repertoire of more than 900
glyphA glyph is an element of writing: an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. A glyph is made up of one or more graphemes....
s. This was announced and released along with a
text editorA text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files.Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code....
in the same year at
ThiruvananthapuramThiruvananthapuram , formerly known as Trivandrum, is the capital of the Indian state of Kerala and the headquarters of the Thiruvananthapuram District. It is located on the west coast of India near the extreme south of the mainland...
, the capital of
Keralaor Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
. In 2004, the fonts were released under the GNU GPL license by
Richard StallmanRichard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
of the
Free Software FoundationThe Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
at the
Cochin University of Science and TechnologyCochin University of Science and Technology is a government owned autonomous university in Kochi , Kerala, India. Founded in 1971, the university consists of three campuses, two in Kochi and one in Kuttanad, Alappuzha, 66 km inland. The university awards degrees in engineering and allied...
in Kochi, Kerala.
Malayalam has been written in other scripts like
RomanThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
and
Arabic scriptsArabi Malayalam is a system of writing Malayalam language language in a variant form of Arabic script.It is a blend of Malayalam grammatical base, Arabic script with special orthographic features, and vocabulary from Malayalam , Arabic, Tamil, Urdu and Persian...
; Arabic script particularly were taught in
MadrassasMadrasah is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, whether secular or religious...
in the Lakshadweep Islands.
Dialects and external influences
Variations in
intonationIn linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation does distinguish words. Intonation, rhythm, and stress are the three main elements of linguistic prosody...
patterns, vocabulary, and distribution of grammatical and
phonologicalPhonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
elements are observable along the parameters of region, religion, community, occupation, social stratum, style and register. Influence of
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
is very prominent in formal Malayalam used in literature. Malayalam has a substantially high amount of Sanskrit loan words. Loan words and influences also from
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, Syriac and Ladino abound in the
Jewish Malayalam dialectsJudeo-Malayalam is the traditional language of the Cochin Jews , from Kerala, in southern India, spoken today by a few dozens of people in Israel and by probably fewer than 25 in India....
, as well as
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
,
PortuguesePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Syriac and
GreekGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
in the
ChristianA Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
dialects, while Arabic and Persian elements predominate in the
MuslimA Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
dialects. This Muslim dialect known as Mappila Malayalam is used in the Malabar region of Kerala. Another Muslim dialect called
Beary basheBeary bashe is a dialect mainly spoken by the Muslim communities of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts of Karnataka known as Bearys and a small number of Hindus in the District of Kasargod in Kerala state....
is used in the extreme northern part of Kerala.
The regional
dialectThe term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s of Malayalam can be divided into thirteen dialect areas.
They are as follows:
| South Travancore |
Central Travancore |
West Vempanad |
| North Travancore |
Kochi (Cochin) |
South Malabar |
| South Eastern Palghat |
North Western Palghat |
Central Malabar |
| Wayanad |
North Malabar |
Kasaragod |
|
Lakshadweep |
|
According to Ethnologue, the dialects are:
Malabar, Nagari-Malayalam, South Kerala, Central Kerala, North Kerala, Kayavar, Namboodiri, Nair,
Moplah (Mapilla)The Malayalam language spoken mostly by Mappila Muslim community of Kerala state, India is called Mappila dialect of Malayalam or simply as Mappila Malayalam...
, Pulaya, Nasrani, Kasargod.
Community dialects: Namboodiri, Nair,
Moplah (Mapilla)The Malayalam language spoken mostly by Mappila Muslim community of Kerala state, India is called Mappila dialect of Malayalam or simply as Mappila Malayalam...
, Pulaya, Nasrani.
While, Namboothiri and Nair dialects have a common nature,
Mapilla dialectThe Malayalam language spoken mostly by Mappila Muslim community of Kerala state, India is called Mappila dialect of Malayalam or simply as Mappila Malayalam...
is among the most divergent dialects, differing considerably from literary Malayalam.
Words adopted from Sanskrit
When words are adopted from Sanskrit, their endings are usually changed to conform to Malayalam norms:
Nouns
1. Masculine
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
nouns with a
Word stemIn linguistics, a stem is a part of a word. The term is used with slightly different meanings.In one usage, a stem is a form to which affixes can be attached. Thus, in this usage, the English word friendships contains the stem friend, to which the derivational suffix -ship is attached to form a new...
ending in a short "a" take the ending "an" in the nominative singular. For example,
{{Malayalam transliteration}}
Malayalam , is one of the four major Dravidian languagesThe Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
of southern India. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India with
official languageAn official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
status in the state of
Keralaor Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
and the union territories of
LakshadweepLakshadweep , formerly known as the Laccadive, Minicoy, and Amindivi Islands, is a group of islands in the Laccadive Sea, 200 to 440 km off the coast of the South West Indian state of Kerala...
and Pondicherry. It is spoken by 35.9 million people. Malayalam is also spoken in the Nilgiris district,
Kanyakumari districtKanyakumari is a town in the state of Tamil Nadu in India. It is also sometimes referred to as Cape Comorin. Located at the southernmost tip of the Indian Peninsula, it is the geographical end of the Indian mainland. The district in Tamil Nadu where the town is located is called Kanyakumari...
and
CoimbatoreCoimbatore , also known as Kovai , is the second largest city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is a major commercial centre in Tamil Nadu and is known as the "Manchester of South India"....
of
Tamil NaduTamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...
,
Dakshina Kannada- Geography :The district geography consists of sea shore in the west and Western Ghats in the east. The major rivers are Netravathi, Kumaradhara, Phalguni, Shambhavi, Nandini or Pavanje and Payaswini which all join Arabian sea. Vast areas of evergreen forests which once covered this district, have...
,
MangaloreMangalore is the chief port city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It is located about west of the state capital, Bangalore. Mangalore lies between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghat mountain ranges, and is the administrative headquarters of the Dakshina Kannada district in south western...
and
KodaguKodagu , also known by its anglicised former name of Coorg, is an administrative district in Karnataka, India. It occupies an area of in the Western Ghats of southwestern Karnataka. As of 2001, the population was 548,561, 13.74% of which resided in the district's urban centres, making it the least...
districts of
KarnatakaKarnataka , the land of the Kannadigas, is a state in South West India. It was created on 1 November 1956, with the passing of the States Reorganisation Act and this day is annually celebrated as Karnataka Rajyotsava...
. Overseas it is also used by a large population of Indian
expatriateAn expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...
s living around the globe in the
Middle EastThe Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
,
North AmericaNorth America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
,
Malaysia,
SingaporeSingapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
,
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, and
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
.
Malayalam most likely originated from ancient Tamil in the 6th century, of which
Modern TamilTamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
was also derived. An alternative theory proposes a split in even more ancient times. In either case, Malayalam imbibed many elements from
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
through the ages and today over eighty percent of the vocabulary of Malayalam in scholarly usage is from Sanskrit. Before Malayalam came into being, Old Tamil was used in literature and courts of a region called
TamilakamThe Sangam period is the classical period in the history of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and other parts of South India, spanning about the 3rd century BCE to the 3rd century CE...
, a famous example being
Silappatikaram. The earliest script used to write Malayalam was the Vattezhuttu script, and later the
KolezhuthuKolezhuthu is one of the oldest writing systems in south India. It was mainly used to write Malayalam language.Kolezhuthu belongs to the same script family like Malayanma and Vattezhuthu....
, which derived from it. As Malayalam began to freely borrow words as well as the rules of grammar from
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
, Grantha script was adopted for writing and came to be known as
Arya Ezhuthu. This developed into the modern
Malayalam scriptThe Malayalam script is a Brahmic script used commonly to write the Malayalam language—which is the principal language of the Indian state of Kerala, spoken by 36 million people in the world. Like many other Indic scripts, it is an abugida, or a writing system that is partially “alphabetic” and...
. Many medieval liturgical texts were written in an admixture of Sanskrit and early Malayalam, termed as
ManipravalamManipravalam was a literary style used in medieval liturgical texts in South India, which used an admixture of Tamil and Sanskrit. Manipravalam is termed a mixture of Sanskrit and Tamil...
. The oldest literary work in Malayalam, distinct from the Tamil tradition, is dated between the 9th and 11th century.
Due to its lineage to both Sanskrit and Tamil, the Malayalam alphabet has the largest number of letters among the Indian languages. Malayalam script includes letters capable of representing all the sounds of Sanskrit and all Dravidian languages.
Evolution
{{toofewopinions|date=January 2011}}
The word Malayalam is derived from two words of early Malayalam -
mala meaning mountain, and
alam meaning place. Malayalam thus translates as "mountain region" and used to refer to the land itself, and only later became the name of the language. The language Malayalam is alternatively called as Alealum, Malayalani, Malayali, Malean, Maliyad, Mallealle, and Mopla.
The origin of Malayalam, whether it was a from a dialect of
TamilTamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
or an independent offshoot of the Proto Dravidian language, has been and continues to be an engaging pursuit among comparative historical linguists.
Robert CaldwellBishop Robert Caldwell was an Evangelist missionary and linguist, who academically established the Dravidian family of languages. He served as Assistant Bishop of Tirunelveli from 1877. He was described in The Hindu as a 'pioneering champion of the downtrodden' and an 'avant-garde social reformer'...
, in his book
A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Languages opines that Malayalam branched from
classical Tamil that over time gained a large amount of
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
vocabulary and lost the personal terminations of verbs. Either way, its generally agreed that by the end of 13th century a written form of the language emerged which was definitely different from Tamil.
The earliest known poem in Malayalam,
Ramacharitam, dated to 12th century C.E, was completed before the introduction of the Sanskrit alphabet. It shows the same phase of the language as in Jewish and Syrian
Saasanas (dated to mid eighth century C.E). But the period of the earliest available literary document cannot be the sole criterion used to determine the antiquity of a language. In its early literature, Malayalam has songs,
Paattu, for various subjects and occasions, such as harvesting, love songs, heroes, Gods, etc. A form of writing called
Champu emerged from the 14th century onwards. It mixed poetry with prose and used a vocabulary strongly influenced by Sanskrit, with themes from epics and
Puranas.
In the 16th – 17th centuries,
Thunchaththu Ramanujan EzhuthachanThunjathu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan was an Indian poet from around the 16th century, known as the father of the Malayalam language — the principal language of the Indian state of Kerala, spoken by 36 million people in the world...
was the first to substitute Grantha-Malayalam script for the Tamil
VatteluttuVatteluttu alphabet, also spelled Vattezhuttu alphabet is an abugida writing system originating from the Tamil people of Southern India...
. Ezhuthachan, regarded as the father of modern Malayalam language, undertook an elaborate translation of the epics
Ramayana and
Mahabharata into Malayalam. His
Adhyatma Ramayana and
Mahabharata are still read with religious reverence by Malayalis. Kunchan Nambiar, the founder of
Thullal, was a prolific literary figure of the 18th century.
Together with
TamilTamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
,
TodaToda is a Dravidian language well known for its many fricatives and trills. It is spoken by the Toda people, a population of about one thousand who live in the Nilgiri Hills of southern India.-Vowels:...
,
KannadaKannada or , is a language spoken in India predominantly in the state of Karnataka. Kannada, whose native speakers are called Kannadigas and number roughly 50 million, is one of the 30 most spoken languages in the world...
and
TuluThe Tulu language |?]]]) is a Dravidian language spoken by 1.95 million native speakers mainly in the southwest part of Indian state Karnataka known as Tulu Nadu. In India, 1.72 million people speak it as their mother tongue , increased by 10 percent over the 1991 census...
, Malayalam belongs to the southern group of
Dravidian languagesThe Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
. Some believe Proto-Tamil, the common stock of ancient Tamil and Malayalam, diverged over a period of four or five centuries from the 9th century on, resulting in the emergence of Malayalam as a language distinct from Proto-Tamil. As the language of scholarship and administration, Proto-Tamil, which was written in
Tamil-BrahmiTamil-Brahmi, or Damili is an early phonetic script used to write Tamil characters. It is a variant of many Brahmi scripts used throughout South Asia, namely Ashokan Brahmi, Southern Brahmi, Bhattiprolu script and the Sri Lankan based Sinhala-Brahmi. It is known from surviving inscribed cave beds,...
script and
VatteluttuVatteluttu alphabet, also spelled Vattezhuttu alphabet is an abugida writing system originating from the Tamil people of Southern India...
later, greatly influenced the early development of Malayalam. Later the inroads the Nairs and the Namboothiris made into the
cultural life of KeralaThe culture of Kerala is a synthesis of Dravidian and Aryan cultures, developed and mixed for centuries, under influences from other parts of India and abroad. It is defined by its antiquity and the organic continuity sustained by the Malayali people. Modern Kerala society took shape owing to...
, the Namboothiri-
NairNair , also known as Nayar , refers to "not a unitary group but a named category of castes", which historically embody several castes and many subdivisions, not all of whom bore the Nair title. These people historically live in the present-day Indian state of Kerala...
dominated society and politics, their trade relationships with Arabs, and the invasion of Kerala by the
PortuguesePortugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
affected the languages. The Portuguese established vassal states, which accelerated the assimilation of many Roman,
SemiticIn linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages...
and
Indo-AryanThe Indo-Aryan languages constitutes a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family...
features into Malayalam; these occurred at different levels, particularly among the religious communities, such as
MuslimA Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
s,
ChristianA Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
s,
JewsThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
and
JainsJainism is an Indian religion that prescribes a path of non-violence towards all living beings. Its philosophy and practice emphasize the necessity of self-effort to move the soul towards divine consciousness and liberation. Any soul that has conquered its own inner enemies and achieved the state...
.
T.K. Krishna Menon, in his book
A Primer of Malayalam Literature, describes four distinct epochs of the evolution of the language:
- Karintamil (3100 BCE – 100 BCE): There is a strong Tamil element, and Sanskrit has not yet made an influence on the language.
- Old Malayalam (100 BCE – 325 CE): Malayalam seems to have been influenced by Sanskrit as numerous Sanskrit words have been absorbed in the language. Personal terminations are made for verbs conjugated according to gender and number. Tamil Sangams produced Tamil Sangam literature
Sangam literature refers to a body of classical Tamil literature created between the years c. 600 BCE to 300 CE. This collection contains 2381 poems composed by 473 poets, some 102 of whom remain anonymous The period during which these poems were composed is commonly referred to as the Sangam...
in the same era. Tamil-BrahmiTamil-Brahmi, or Damili is an early phonetic script used to write Tamil characters. It is a variant of many Brahmi scripts used throughout South Asia, namely Ashokan Brahmi, Southern Brahmi, Bhattiprolu script and the Sri Lankan based Sinhala-Brahmi. It is known from surviving inscribed cave beds,...
script was used to write inscriptions in that era.
- Middle Malayalam (325 CE – 1425): Malayalam from this time period is represented by works such as Ramacharitram. Traces of the adjuncts of verbs have disappeared by this period. The Jains seem to have encouraged the study of the language. Kulasekhara Alwar wrote Perumal Thirumozhi in Tamil while writing Mukundamala in Sanskrit. A strong elememt of Tamil influence is found until this period, as evidenced in Perumal Thirumozhi.
- Modern Malayalam (1425 onwards): Malayalam seems to have become distinctly separate as a language from classical Tamil and Sanskrit. This period can be divided into two categories: from 1425 to 1795, and from 1795, onward. 1795 is the year the British gained complete control over Kerala.
The first printed book in Kerala was
Doctrina Christam, written by Henrique in
Lingua Malabar TamulMalabar Thamozhi, known to Portuguese as Malabar Tamul and as Malabar language to British was a writing scheme adopted to print books in the spoken language of early indigenous Christians in Malabar..Lingua Malabar Tamul or Malayalam-Tamil was a dialect of Tamil spoken by majority of people of...
. It was transliterated and translated into Malayalam, and printed by the Portuguese in 1578.
In 1821 the
Church Mission SocietyThe Church Mission Society, also known as the Church Missionary Society, is a group of evangelistic societies working with the Anglican Communion and Protestant Christians around the world...
(CMS) at
KottayamKottayam is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative capital of the Kottayam district. Kottayam Kottayam (Malayalam: കോട്ടയം) is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative...
started printing books in Malayalam when Benjamin Bailey, an Anglican priest, made the first Malayalam types. In addition, he contributed to standardizing the prose.
Hermann GundertRev. Dr. Hermann Gundert was a German missionary and scholar, who compiled a Malayalam grammar book, Malayalabhaasha Vyakaranam , the first Malayalam-English dictionary , and translated the Bible into Malayalam. He worked primarily at Tellicherry on the Malabar coast, in Kerala, India...
from
StuttgartStuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
, Germany started the first Malayalam newspaper,
Rajya Samacharam in 1847 at Thalassery. It was printed at
Basel MissionThe Basel Mission is a Christian missionary society active from 1815 to 2001, when it was merged into Mission 21, the successor organization of Kooperation Evangelischer Kirchen und Missione founded in 2001....
.
Development of literature
{{main|Malayalam literature}}
{{Dravidian languages genealogy}}
The earliest written record resembling Malayalam is the Vazhappalli inscription (ca. 830 CE).
The early literature of Malayalam comprised three types of composition:
Malayalam Nada, Tamil Nada and Sanskrit Nada.
- Classical songs known as Naadan Paattu
The Music of Kerala has a long and rich history.It is not the same as malayalam poetry although most of it is poetry driven. Kerala has a rich tradition in Carnatic music.Songs formed a major part of early Malayalam literature, which traces its origin to the 9th century CE...
- Manipravalam
Manipravalam was a literary style used in medieval liturgical texts in South India, which used an admixture of Tamil and Sanskrit. Manipravalam is termed a mixture of Sanskrit and Tamil...
of the Sanskrit tradition, which permitted a generous interspersing of Sanskrit with Malayalam. Niranam poetsNiranam is a small village in Southern Kerala in India near Mannar town. In 14th century Niranam gave birth to three poets who became well-known as the Niranam Poets. They were Madhava Panikkar, Sankara Panikkar and Rama Panikkar of the Kannassa family. The first two were uncles of Rama Panikkar...
Manipravalam Madhava Panikkar, Sankara Panikkar and Rama Panikkar wrote Manipravalam poetry in the 14th century.
- The folk song rich in native elements
Malayalam poetryThere are two types of meters used in Malayalam poetry, the classical Sanskrit based and Tamil based ones.- Sanskrit Meters :Sanskrit meters are primarily based on trisyllabic feet. The short sound is called a laghu, a long sound is called a guru. A guru is twice as long as a laghu...
to the late 20th 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 from the 12th century.
The earliest extant prose work in the language is a commentary in simple Malayalam,
Bhashakautaliyam (12th century) on
ChanakyaChānakya was a teacher to the first Maurya Emperor Chandragupta , and the first Indian emperor generally considered to be the architect of his rise to power. Traditionally, Chanakya is also identified by the names Kautilya and VishnuGupta, who authored the ancient Indian political treatise...
’s
Arthasastra.
AdhyathmaramayanamAdhyathmaramayanam is the Malayalam version of Ramayana written by Thunchaththu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan in the early 17th Century. It is considered to be a classic of Malayalam literature...
by
Thunchaththu Ramanujan EzhuthachanThunjathu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan was an Indian poet from around the 16th century, known as the father of the Malayalam language — the principal language of the Indian state of Kerala, spoken by 36 million people in the world...
(known as the father of the Malayalam language) who was born in
TirurTirur is a town and a municipality in Malappuram district in the Indian state of Kerala spread over an area of 16.55 km2 . It is birth place of Thunchathu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan, the father of Malayalam literature. Thunchan Parambu is highly venerated and its sand is believed to be sacred. The...
, one of the most important works in Malayalam literature.
Unnuneeli SandesamUnnuneeli Sandesam is among the oldest literary works in Malayalam language . It is what is called "Sandesa Kavyam" . A "Sandesa Kavyam" is a message written in poetry, on the lines of the famous "Megh Dhoot" of Kalidasa. In the case of this work, it is a message written by a lover to his lady-love...
written in the 14th century is amongst the oldest literary works in Malayalam language.
By the end of 18th century some of the Christian missionaries from Kerala started writing in Malayalam but mostly travelogues, dictionaries and religious books.
Varthamana PusthakamVarthamana Pusthakam or Varthamanapusthakam was written by Paremmakkal Thoma Kathanar is the first travelogue written in Malayalam Language.It gives the history of the journey between Malabar to Rome via Lisbon and there return journey....
(1778), written by
Paremmakkal Thoma KathanarParemmakkal Thoma Kathanar is the author of Varthamanapusthakam , the first ever travelogue in an Indian language . He was Administrator of the Archdiocese of Cranganore from 1786 till his death....
is considered to be the first travelogue in an Indian language.
Church Mission SocietyThe Church Mission Society, also known as the Church Missionary Society, is a group of evangelistic societies working with the Anglican Communion and Protestant Christians around the world...
which started a seminary at
KottayamKottayam is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative capital of the Kottayam district. Kottayam Kottayam (Malayalam: കോട്ടയം) is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative...
in 1819 also started a press which printed Malayalam books in 19th century. Malayalam and
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
were increasingly studied by Christians of
KottayamKottayam is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative capital of the Kottayam district. Kottayam Kottayam (Malayalam: കോട്ടയം) is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of 55.40 km2. It is the administrative...
and
pathanamthittaPathanamthitta is a large town and a municipality situated in the central Travancore region in the state of Kerala, south India, spread over an area of 23.50 km2. It is the administrative capital of Pathanamthitta district. The city has a population of 38,000...
by the end of
19th centuryThe 19th century was a period in history marked by the collapse of the Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Holy Roman and Mughal empires...
Malayalam replaced Syriac as language of
LiturgyLiturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...
in the church.
Phonology
For the consonants and vowels, the IPA is given, followed by the Malayalam character and the
ISO 15919ISO 15919 Transliteration of Devanagari and related Indic scripts into Latin characters is an international standard for the transliteration of Indic scripts to the Latin alphabet formed in 2001...
transliteration.
Vowels
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Short In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
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Long |
| Front A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...
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Central A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel...
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Back A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
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Front A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...
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Central A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel...
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Back A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
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| Close A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the...
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/i/ ഇ i |
/ɨ̆/ * ŭ |
/u/ ഉ u |
/iː/ ഈ ī |
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/uː/ ഊ ū |
| Mid A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel...
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/e/ എ e |
/ə/ * a |
/o/ ഒ o |
/eː/ ഏ ē |
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/oː/ ഓ ō |
| Open An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue...
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/a/ അ a |
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/aː/ ആ ā |
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- */ɨ̆/ is the {{Unicode|saṁvr̥tōkāram}}, an epenthentic vowel
In phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence, for the addition of a consonant, and anaptyxis for the addition of a vowel....
in Malayalam. Therefore, it has no independent vowel letter (because it never occurs at the beginning of words) but, when it comes after a consonant, there are various ways of representing it. In medieval times, it was just represented with the symbol for /u/, but later on it was just completely omitted (that is, written as an inherent vowel). In modern times, it is written in two different ways – the Northern style, in which a chandrakkala is used, and the Southern or TravancoreKingdom of Travancore was a former Hindu feudal kingdom and Indian Princely State with its capital at Padmanabhapuram or Trivandrum ruled by the Travancore Royal Family. The Kingdom of Travancore comprised most of modern day southern Kerala, Kanyakumari district, and the southernmost parts of...
style, in which the diacritic for a /u/ is attached to the preceding consonant and a chandrakkala is written above.
- */a/ (phonetically central: [ä]) and /ə/ are both represented as basic or "default" vowels in the abugida script (although /ə/ never occurs word-initially and therefore does not make use of the letter അ), but they are distinct vowels.
Malayalam has also borrowed the
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
diphthongs of /äu/ (represented in Malayalam as ഔ, au) and /ai/ (represented in Malayalam as ഐ, ai), although these mostly occur only in Sanskrit loanwords. Traditionally (as in Sanskrit), four vocalic consonants (usually pronounced in Malayalam as consonants followed by the {{Unicode|
saṁvr̥tōkāram}}, which is not officially a vowel, and not as actual vocalic consonants) have been classified as vowels: vocalic r (ഋ, /rɨ̆/, {{Unicode|r̥}}), long vocalic r (ൠ, /rɨː/, {{Unicode|r̥̄}}), vocalic l (ഌ, /lɨ̆/, {{Unicode|l̥}}) and long vocalic l (ൡ, /lɨː/, {{Unicode|l̥̄}}). Except for the first, the other three have been omitted from the current script used in Kerala as there are no words in current Malayalam that use them.
Consonants
LabialIn phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
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Dental |
AlveolarAlveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...
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Retroflex A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology...
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PalatalPalatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...
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VelarVelars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
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GlottalGlottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
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| Nasal A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
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/m/ മ m |
/n̪/ ന n |
/n/ ന * n |
/ɳ/ ണ {{Unicode|ṇ}} |
/ɲ/ ഞ ñ |
/ŋ/ ങ {{Unicode|ṅ}} |
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| Stop In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
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plain |
/p/ പ p |
/b/ ബ b |
/t̪/ ത t |
/d̪/ ദ d |
/t/ * t |
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/ʈ/ ട {{Unicode|ṭ}} |
/ɖ/ ഡ {{Unicode|ḍ}} |
/t͡ʃ/ ച c |
/d͡ʒ/ ജ j |
/k/ ക k |
/ɡ/ ഗ g |
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| aspirated In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
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/pʰ/ ഫ ph |
/bʱ/ ഭ bh |
/t̪ʰ/ ഥ th |
/d̪ʱ/ ധ dh |
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/ʈʰ/ ഠ {{Unicode|ṭh}} |
/ɖʱ/ ഢ {{Unicode|ḍh}} |
/t͡ʃʰ/ ഛ ch |
/d͡ʒʱ/ ഝ jh |
/kʰ/ ഖ kh |
/ɡʱ/ ഘ gh |
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| Fricative Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
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/f/ ഫ* f |
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/s̪/ സ s |
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/ʂ/ ഷ {{Unicode|ṣ}} |
/ɕ/ ശ ś |
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/h/ ഹ h |
| Approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...
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central |
/ʋ/ വ v |
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/ɻ/ ഴ l |
/j/ യ y |
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lateralA lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....
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/l/ ല l |
/ɭ/ ള {{Unicode|ḷ}} |
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| Rhotic In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet...
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/ɾʲ/ ര r |
/r/ റ r |
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- The unaspirated alveolar plosive stop once had a separate character but it has become obsolete, as the sound only occurs in geminate form (when geminated it is written with a റ below another റ) or immediately following other consonants (in these cases, റ or ററ is usually written in small size underneath the first consonant). The archaic letter can be found in the "t" row here.
- The alveolar nasal
The alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in numerous spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar nasals is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is n....
also had a separate character that is now obsolete (it can be seen in the "n" row here) and the sound is now almost always represented by the symbol that was originally used only for the dental nasalThe dental nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is .-Features:Features of the dental nasal:- Occurrence :...
. However, both sounds are extensively used in current colloquial and official Malayalam, and although they were allophones in Old Malayalam, they now occasionally contrast in gemination – for example, "ennāl" ("by me", first person singular pronoun in the instrumental case) and ennāl ("if that is so", elided from the original "entāl"), which are both written "ennāl".
- The letter ഫ represents both /pʰ/, a phoneme occurring in Sanskrit loanwords, and /f/, which is mostly found in comparatively recent borrowings from European languages.
- The voiceless unaspirated plosives, the nasals and the laterals can be geminated.
Grammar
{{main|Malayalam grammar}}
Malayalam has a canonical word order of SOV (subject–object–verb) as do other Dravidian languages. Both
adjectiveIn grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s and
possessive pronounA possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitutes for a noun phrase that begins with a possessive determiner . For example, in the sentence These glasses are mine, not yours, the words mine and yours are possessive pronouns and stand for my glasses and your glasses, respectively...
s precede the
nounIn linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s they modify. Malayalam has 6 or 7
grammatical caseIn grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
s. Verbs are conjugated for tense, mood and aspect, but not for person, gender or number except in archaic or poetic language.
Writing system
{{Main|Malayalam script}}
Historically, several scripts were used to write Malayalam. Among these scripts were
VattezhuthuVatteluttu alphabet, also spelled Vattezhuttu alphabet is an abugida writing system originating from the Tamil people of Southern India...
,
KolezhuthuKolezhuthu is one of the oldest writing systems in south India. It was mainly used to write Malayalam language.Kolezhuthu belongs to the same script family like Malayanma and Vattezhuthu....
and
MalayanmaMalayanma script was a writing system used in Thiruvananthapuram. It was used to write the Malayalam language. Malayanma belongs to the same script family like Kolezhuthu and Vattezhuthu....
scripts. But it was the Grantha script, another Southern Brahmi variation, which gave rise to the modern
Malayalam scriptThe Malayalam script is a Brahmic script used commonly to write the Malayalam language—which is the principal language of the Indian state of Kerala, spoken by 36 million people in the world. Like many other Indic scripts, it is an abugida, or a writing system that is partially “alphabetic” and...
. 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 script consists of a total of 578 characters. The script contains 52 letters including 16 vowels and 36 consonants, which forms 576 syllabic characters, and contains two additional diacritic characters named
AnusvāraAnusvara is the diacritic used to mark a type of nasalization used in a number of Indic languages. Depending on the location of the anusvara in the word and the language within which it is used, its exact pronunciation can vary greatly....
and
VisargaVisarga is a Sanskrit word meaning "sending forth, discharge". In Sanskrit phonology , is the name of a phone, , written as IAST , Harvard-Kyoto , Devanagari . Visarga is an allophone of and in pausa...
. 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 fewer than 90. This was mainly done to include Malayalam in the keyboards of typewriters and computers.
In 1999 a group named "Rachana Akshara Vedi", produced a set of free
fontsIn typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
containing the entire character repertoire of more than 900
glyphA glyph is an element of writing: an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. A glyph is made up of one or more graphemes....
s. This was announced and released along with a
text editorA text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files.Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code....
in the same year at
ThiruvananthapuramThiruvananthapuram , formerly known as Trivandrum, is the capital of the Indian state of Kerala and the headquarters of the Thiruvananthapuram District. It is located on the west coast of India near the extreme south of the mainland...
, the capital of
Keralaor Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
. In 2004, the fonts were released under the GNU GPL license by
Richard StallmanRichard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
of the
Free Software FoundationThe Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
at the
Cochin University of Science and TechnologyCochin University of Science and Technology is a government owned autonomous university in Kochi , Kerala, India. Founded in 1971, the university consists of three campuses, two in Kochi and one in Kuttanad, Alappuzha, 66 km inland. The university awards degrees in engineering and allied...
in Kochi, Kerala.
Malayalam has been written in other scripts like
RomanThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
and
Arabic scriptsArabi Malayalam is a system of writing Malayalam language language in a variant form of Arabic script.It is a blend of Malayalam grammatical base, Arabic script with special orthographic features, and vocabulary from Malayalam , Arabic, Tamil, Urdu and Persian...
; Arabic script particularly were taught in
MadrassasMadrasah is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, whether secular or religious...
in the Lakshadweep Islands.
Dialects and external influences
Variations in
intonationIn linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation does distinguish words. Intonation, rhythm, and stress are the three main elements of linguistic prosody...
patterns, vocabulary, and distribution of grammatical and
phonologicalPhonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
elements are observable along the parameters of region, religion, community, occupation, social stratum, style and register. Influence of
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
is very prominent in formal Malayalam used in literature. Malayalam has a substantially high amount of Sanskrit loan words. Loan words and influences also from
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, Syriac and Ladino abound in the
Jewish Malayalam dialectsJudeo-Malayalam is the traditional language of the Cochin Jews , from Kerala, in southern India, spoken today by a few dozens of people in Israel and by probably fewer than 25 in India....
, as well as
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
,
PortuguesePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Syriac and
GreekGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
in the
ChristianA Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
dialects, while Arabic and Persian elements predominate in the
MuslimA Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
dialects. This Muslim dialect known as Mappila Malayalam is used in the Malabar region of Kerala. Another Muslim dialect called
Beary basheBeary bashe is a dialect mainly spoken by the Muslim communities of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts of Karnataka known as Bearys and a small number of Hindus in the District of Kasargod in Kerala state....
is used in the extreme northern part of Kerala.
The regional
dialectThe term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s of Malayalam can be divided into thirteen dialect areas.
They are as follows:
| South Travancore |
Central Travancore |
West Vempanad |
| North Travancore |
Kochi (Cochin) |
South Malabar |
| South Eastern Palghat |
North Western Palghat |
Central Malabar |
| Wayanad |
North Malabar |
Kasaragod |
|
Lakshadweep |
|
According to Ethnologue, the dialects are:
Malabar, Nagari-Malayalam, South Kerala, Central Kerala, North Kerala, Kayavar, Namboodiri, Nair,
Moplah (Mapilla)The Malayalam language spoken mostly by Mappila Muslim community of Kerala state, India is called Mappila dialect of Malayalam or simply as Mappila Malayalam...
, Pulaya, Nasrani, Kasargod.
Community dialects: Namboodiri, Nair,
Moplah (Mapilla)The Malayalam language spoken mostly by Mappila Muslim community of Kerala state, India is called Mappila dialect of Malayalam or simply as Mappila Malayalam...
, Pulaya, Nasrani.
While, Namboothiri and Nair dialects have a common nature,
Mapilla dialectThe Malayalam language spoken mostly by Mappila Muslim community of Kerala state, India is called Mappila dialect of Malayalam or simply as Mappila Malayalam...
is among the most divergent dialects, differing considerably from literary Malayalam.
Words adopted from Sanskrit
When words are adopted from Sanskrit, their endings are usually changed to conform to Malayalam norms:
Nouns
1. Masculine
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
nouns with a
Word stemIn linguistics, a stem is a part of a word. The term is used with slightly different meanings.In one usage, a stem is a form to which affixes can be attached. Thus, in this usage, the English word friendships contains the stem friend, to which the derivational suffix -ship is attached to form a new...
ending in a short "a" take the ending "an" in the nominative singular. For example,
{{UnicodeKrishna is a central figure of Hinduism and is traditionally attributed the authorship of the Bhagavad Gita. He is the supreme Being and considered in some monotheistic traditions as an Avatar of Vishnu...
-> {{Unicode|Kr̥ṣṇan}}. The final "n" is dropped before masculine surnames, honorifics, or titles ending in "an" and beginning with a consonant other than "n" – e.g. Krishna Menon, Krishna Kaniyaan etc., but Krishnan Ezhutthachan. Surnames ending with "ar" or "aḷ" (where these are plural forms of "an" denoting respect) are treated similarly – Krishna Pothuval, Krishna Chakyar, but Krishnan Nair, Krishnan Nambiar, as are Sanskrit surnames such "Varma(n)", "Sharma(n)", or "Gupta(n)" (rare) – e.g. Krishna Varma, Krishna Sharman. {{Citation needed|date=June 2009}} If a name is a compound, only the last element undergoes this transformation – e.g. Kr̥ṣṇa + dēva = Kr̥ṣṇadēvan, not Kr̥ṣṇandēvan.
2. Feminine words ending in a long "ā" or "ī" are changed so that they now end in a short "a" or "i", for example
SītāSITA is a multinational information technology company specialising in providing IT and telecommunication services to the air transport industry...
-> Sīta and {{Unicode|
LakṣmīLakshmi or Lakumi is the Hindu goddess of wealth, prosperity , light, wisdom, fortune, fertility, generosity and courage; and the embodiment of beauty, grace and charm. Representations of Lakshmi are also found in Jain monuments...
}} -> {{Unicode|Lakṣmi}}. However, the long vowel still appears in compound words, such as Sītādēvi or {{Unicode|Lakṣmīdēvi}}. The long ī is generally reserved for the
vocativeThe vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person being addressed and/or occasionally the determiners of that noun. A vocative expression is an expression of direct address, wherein the identity of the party being spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence...
forms of these names, although in Sanskrit the vocative actually takes a short "i". There are also a small number of nominative "ī" endings that have not been shortened – a prominent example being the word "strī" "woman".
3. Nouns that have a stem in -an and which end with a long "ā" in the masculine nominative singular have a "vŭ" added to them, for example
BrahmāBrahma is the Hindu god of creation and one of the Trimurti, the others being Vishnu and Shiva. According to the Brahma Purana, he is the father of Mānu, and from Mānu all human beings are descended. In the Ramayana and the...
(stem Brahman) -> Brahmāvŭ. When the same nouns are declined in the neuter and take a short "a" ending in Sanskrit, Malayalam adds an additional "m", e.g. Brahma (neuter nominative singular of
BrahmanIn Hinduism, Brahman is the one supreme, universal Spirit that is the origin and support of the phenomenal universe. Brahman is sometimes referred to as the Absolute or Godhead which is the Divine Ground of all being...
) becomes Brahmam. This is again omitted when forming compounds.{{Citation needed|date=July 2007}}
4. Words whose roots end in -an but whose nominative singular ending is -a – for example, the Sanskrit root of "
KarmaKarma in Indian religions is the concept of "action" or "deed", understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh philosophies....
" is actually "Karman" – are also changed. The original root is ignored and "Karma" (the form in Malayalam being "Karmam" because it ends in a short "a") is taken as the basic form of the noun when declining. However, this does not apply to all consonant stems, as "unchangeable" stems such as "manas" ("mind") and "suhr̥t ("friend") are identical to the Malayalam nominative singular forms (although the regularly derived "manam" sometimes occurs as an alternative to "manas").
5. Sanskrit words describing things or animals rather than people with a stem in short "a" end with an "m" Malayalam. For example, {{Unicode|
RāmāyaṇaThe Ramayana is an ancient Sanskrit epic. It is ascribed to the Hindu sage Valmiki and forms an important part of the Hindu canon , considered to be itihāsa. The Ramayana is one of the two great epics of India and Nepal, the other being the Mahabharata...
}} -> {{Unicode|Rāmāyaṇam}}. In most cases, this is actually the same as the Sanskrit ending, which is also "m" (or allophonically anusvara due to Sandhi) in the neuter nominative. However, "things and animals" and "people" are not always differentiated based on whether or not they are sentient beings – for example
NarasimhaNarasimha or Nrusimha , also spelt as Narasingh and Narasingha, whose name literally translates from Sanskrit as "Man-lion", is an avatar of Vishnu described in the Puranas, Upanishads and other ancient religious texts of Hinduism...
becomes Narasiṃham and not Narasiṃhan, whereas Ananta becomes Anantan even though both are sentient. This does not strictly correspond to the Sanskrit neuter gender, as both "Narasiṃha" and "Ananta" are masculine nouns in the original Sanskrit.
6. Nouns with short vowel stems other than "a", such as "{{Unicode|
ViṣṇuVishnu is the Supreme god in the Vaishnavite tradition of Hinduism. Smarta followers of Adi Shankara, among others, venerate Vishnu as one of the five primary forms of God....
}}", "
PrajāpatiIn Hinduism, Prajapati "lord of creatures" is a Hindu deity presiding over procreation, and protector of life. He appears as a creator deity or supreme God Viswakarma Vedic deities in RV 10 and in Brahmana literature...
" etc. are declined with the Sanskrit stem acting as the Malayalam nominative singular (the Sanskrit nominative singular is formed by adding a visarga, e.g. Viṣṇuḥ) {{Citation needed|date=July 2007}}
7. The original Sanskrit vocative is often used in formal or poetic Malayalam, e.g. "Harē" (for
HariHari is an Avatar, another name of and , and appears as the 650th name in the Vishnu sahasranama of Mahabharata. In Sanskrit "hari" sometimes refers to a colour, green, yellow, or fawn-coloured/khaki. It is the colour of the Sun and of Soma...
) or "Prabhō" (for "Prabhu" – "lord"). This is restricted to certain contexts – mainly when addressing deities or other exalted individuals, so a normal man named Hari would usually be addressed using a Malayalam vocative such as "Harī". The Sanskrit genitive is also occasionally found in Malayalam poetry, especially the personal pronouns "mama" (my/ mine) and "tava" (thy/ thine). Other cases are less common and generally restricted to the realm of Maṇipravāḷam.
8. Along with these
tatsamaTatsama are Sanskrit loanwords in modern Indic languages like Bengali, Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati, Sinhala and Central Dravidian language Telugu. They belong to a higher and more erudite register than common words. That register can be compared to the use of words of Greek origin in English Tatsama...
borrowings, there are also many
tadbhava' is one of three etymological classes defined by native grammarians of middle Indo-Aryan languages. A "tadbhava" is a word which had been borrowed from Sanskrit, but which had changed to fit the phonology of the Prakrit or Apabhramsa in question...
words in common use. These were borrowed into Malayalam before it became distinct from Tamil. As the language did not then accommodate Sanskrit phonology as it now does, words were changed to conform to the Old Tamil phonological system. For example: {{Unicode|Kr̥ṣṇa}} -> {{Unicode|Kaṇṇan}}.
Malayalam also has been influenced by Portuguese, as is evident from the use of words like
mēśa for a small table,
janāla for window,
varānta for an open porch, and
alamāra for cupboard.
For a comprehensive list of loan words, see
Loan words in MalayalamLoan words in Malayalam, excluding the huge number of words from Sanskrit and Tamil, originated mostly due to the centuries long interactions between the native population of Kerala and the trading powers of the world...
.
Palindrome
The word "Malayalam" is spelled as a
palindromeA palindrome is a word, phrase, number, or other sequence of units that can be read the same way in either direction, with general allowances for adjustments to punctuation and word dividers....
in English. However, it is not a palindrome in its
own scriptThe Malayalam script is a Brahmic script used commonly to write the Malayalam language—which is the principal language of the Indian state of Kerala, spoken by 36 million people in the world. Like many other Indic scripts, it is an abugida, or a writing system that is partially “alphabetic” and...
, for three reasons: the third
a is long and should properly be transliterated
aa or
ā (an
a with a
macronA macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...
) while the other
a’s are short; the two
l consonants represent different sounds, the first
l being
dental ([l̪], Malayalam {{Unicode|ല}}, Roman
l) (although the consonant chart below lists that sound as alveolar) and the second retroflex ([ɭ], Malayalam {{lang|ml|ള}}, Roman {{Unicode|
ḷ}}); and the final
m is written as an
anusvaraAnusvara is the diacritic used to mark a type of nasalization used in a number of Indic languages. Depending on the location of the anusvara in the word and the language within which it is used, its exact pronunciation can vary greatly....
, which denotes the same phoneme /m/ as in the initial
m in this case, but the two
m’s are spelled differently (the first
m is a normal
ma{{lang|ml|മ}} with an
inherent vowelAn inherent vowel is part of an abugida script. It is the vowel sound which is used with each unmarked or basic consonant symbol....
a, while the last
m {{lang|ml| ം}} is a pure consonant).
See also
- Malayalam calendar
Malayalam calendar is a solar and sidereal Hindu calendar used in Kerala, India. The origin of the calendar has been dated as 825 CE....
- Malayalam cinema
The Cinema of Kerala or Malayalam cinema refers to the film industry in the Indian state of Kerala, which makes films in the Malayalam language. Malayalam movies typically portray social or family issues and are considered more realistic than films from other parts of India. Malayalam cinema has...
- Malayalam journalism
Malayalam journalism refers to journalism in the Malayalam language. It began its history with the publication of the Raajyasamaachaaram and the Pashchimodhayam under the direction of Hermann Gundert in June 1847.-Defunct Malayalam newspapers:...
- Malayalam literature
The term Malayalam literature refers to Literature written in Malayalam language. Malayalam is the language spoken by around 35 million people, mainly the inhabitants of the state of Kerala and the union territory of Lakshadweep Islands in India. Malayalam is a Dravidian language and thus has close...
- Kasaragod Malayalam
- Tulu Script
The Tulu script The Tulu script The Tulu script (Tulu: —written in Tulu script, is the original script of the Tulu language. It evolved from the Grantha script. It bears partial similarity to the Malayalam script, which also evolved from the Grantha....
- Manipravalam
Manipravalam was a literary style used in medieval liturgical texts in South India, which used an admixture of Tamil and Sanskrit. Manipravalam is termed a mixture of Sanskrit and Tamil...
- Lingua Malabar Tamul
Malabar Thamozhi, known to Portuguese as Malabar Tamul and as Malabar language to British was a writing scheme adopted to print books in the spoken language of early indigenous Christians in Malabar..Lingua Malabar Tamul or Malayalam-Tamil was a dialect of Tamil spoken by majority of people of...
- Languages of India
The languages of India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-European languages—Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian languages...
- List of Indian languages by total speakers
- Malayalam poetry
There are two types of meters used in Malayalam poetry, the classical Sanskrit based and Tamil based ones.- Sanskrit Meters :Sanskrit meters are primarily based on trisyllabic feet. The short sound is called a laghu, a long sound is called a guru. A guru is twice as long as a laghu...
, Poetry in Malayalam language
- Malayali
Malayali is the term used to refer to the native speakers of Malayalam, originating from the Indian state of Kerala...
, people with Malayalam language as their mother tongue.
- Mappila dialect of Malayalam
The Malayalam language spoken mostly by Mappila Muslim community of Kerala state, India is called Mappila dialect of Malayalam or simply as Mappila Malayalam...
, a sub dialect of Malayalam language spoken by Muslim communities of Kerala.
- Judeo-Malayalam
Judeo-Malayalam is the traditional language of the Cochin Jews , from Kerala, in southern India, spoken today by a few dozens of people in Israel and by probably fewer than 25 in India....
, a sub dialect of Malayalam spoken by Cochin JewsCochin Jews, also called Malabar Jews , are the oldest group of Jews in India, with roots claimed to date to the time of King Solomon, though historically attested migration dates from the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Historically, they lived in the Kingdom of Cochin in South India, now part of the...
.
- Arabi Malayalam
Arabi Malayalam is a system of writing Malayalam language language in a variant form of Arabic script.It is a blend of Malayalam grammatical base, Arabic script with special orthographic features, and vocabulary from Malayalam , Arabic, Tamil, Urdu and Persian...
, a system in which Malayalam language is written using modified Arabic script.
External links
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{{Dravidian languages}}
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