- Not to be confused with the Malay language. The Malay language ( ISO 639-1 code MS is an Austronesian language spoken by the Malay people and people of other ethnic groups who reside in the
| Malayalam മലയാളം malayāḷaṁ |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | India | |||
| Region: | Predominantly in Kerala, Lakshadweep, Mahé (Mayyazhii) in Puducherry, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Europe, Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, Sri Lanka. India, officially the Republic of India (भारत गणराज्य inc-Latn Bhārat Gaṇarājya; see also other Indian languages) is a country Kerala ( Malayalam: {{Kerala in Malayalam}}; Lakshadweep ( (ലക്ഷദ്വീപ്,) the smallest Union territory of India, is a group of islands 200 to 300 km off of the coast of WikipediaWikiProject Indian cities for details --> Mahé, a small town (9 km² in the south of India on the Arabian Sea, has the official The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, KSA ( المملكة العربية السعودية, al-Mamlaka al-ʻArabiyya as-Suʻūdiyya) or Suudi The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located Singapore For the biogeographical region see Malesia Malaysia (məˈleɪʒə or /məˈleɪziə/ is a country that consists of thirteen states and Country to "Dominion of Canada" or "Canadian Federation" or anything else please read the Talk Page Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka ( Sinhalese:, இலங்கை known as Ceylon before 1972 is an Island | |||
| Total speakers: | 35,757,100. [1] 35,351,000 in India, 37,000[2] in Malaysia, and 10,000 in Singapore |
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| Ranking: | 29 | |||
| Language family: | Dravidian Southern Tamil-Kannada Tamil-Kodagu Tamil-Malayalam Malayalam |
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| Writing system: | Malayalam script, historically written in Vattezhuthu script, Kolezhuthu script , Karzoni script. This is a list of languages, ordered by the number of native-language speakers, with some data for second-language use List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 73 languages (including the four literary languages of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 73 languages (including the four literary languages of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada Tamil-Kannada is a hypothetical inner branch (Zvelebil 199056 of the South Dravidian I (SDr I subfamily of the Southern Dravidian languages that include Tamil The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 73 languages (including the four literary languages of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 73 languages (including the four literary languages of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada A writing system is a type of Symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in Language. The Malayalam script is an Abugida of the Brahmic family, used to write the Malayalam language. Vatteluttu () or "rounded writing" is an Abugida Writing system originating from the Dravidian peoples of Southern India and Kolezhuthu is one of the oldest Writing systems in South India. Also Arabic script (Arabi Malayalam), Indian alphabet (Roman alphabet) | |||
| Official status | ||||
| Official language in: |  India (Kerala State and the Union Territories of Lakshadweep & Puducherry) |
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| Regulated by: | no official regulation | |||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-1: | ml | |||
| ISO 639-2: | mal | |||
| ISO 639-3: | mal | |||
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Malayalam (മലയാളം malayāḷaṁ) is the language used predominantly in the state of Kerala, in southern India. India is a union of states comprising twenty-eight states and seven union territories. Kerala ( Malayalam: {{Kerala in Malayalam}}; South India is the area encompassing India 's states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as the union India, officially the Republic of India (भारत गणराज्य inc-Latn Bhārat Gaṇarājya; see also other Indian languages) is a country It is one of the 22 official languages of India, and it is used by around 36 million people [1]. Malayalam is also widely used in the union territories of Lakshadweep and Mahé, the Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu and the Kodagu[1] and Dakshina Kannada districts of Karnataka. Lakshadweep ( (ലക്ഷദ്വീപ്,) the smallest Union territory of India, is a group of islands 200 to 300 km off of the coast of WikipediaWikiProject Indian cities for details --> Mahé, a small town (9 km² in the south of India on the Arabian Sea, has the official Tamil Nadu ( Tamil:, Country of the Tamils, t̪ɐmɨɻ n̪aːɽɯ is one of the 28 states of India. Kodagu ( Kannada:ಕೊಡಗು is a district of Karnataka State in Southern India. Dakshina Kannada ( Kannada & Tulu:ದಕ್ಷಿಣ ಕನ್ನಡ (earlier known as South Kanara, or South Canara) is a coastal Karnataka (ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ pronounced) is a state in the southern part of India Malayalam is also used by a large population of Indian expatriates living in Arab States, the United Kingdom the United States and Canada. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Country to "Dominion of Canada" or "Canadian Federation" or anything else please read the Talk Page
Malayalam is thought to have developed from Proto-Tamil and began developing a body of literature by the 9th century CE [3]. Tamil (ta தமிழ்; t̪əmɨɻ is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. The language became heavily Sanskritized during this period, and even to this day, the language gathers a large proportion of its vocabulary from Sanskrit. Loans have also been made from Portuguese, Arabic and, in more recent times, English. Portuguese ( or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia (Spain and northern Portugal. Arabic (ar الْعَرَبيّة (informally ar عَرَبيْ) in terms of the number of speakers is the largest living member of the Semitic language English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States
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Etymology
The term "Malayalam" comes from the Tamil words malai (Mountain), ala (People) and the Sanskrit appendix -am. Hence malayali means Mountain people who lived beyond the Western Ghats, and Malayalam the language that was spoken there. The Western Ghats ( Kannada ಸಹ್ಯಾದ್ರಿ Marathi / Konkani - सह्याद्री Sahyadri Malayalam സഹ്യപര്വ്വതം
Another etymology is that it comes from malai (Mountain) and azham (Ocean) - referring to the Sahya mountains and Arabian Sea that bound Kerala. The Arabian Sea ( Arabic: بحر العرب transliterated: Baḥr al-'Arab Sanskrit: सिन्धु सागर transliterated: Kerala ( Malayalam: {{Kerala in Malayalam}}; Malayazham later became Malayalam.
The word "Malayalam" is an apparent palindrome; however, strictly, it is not, as the next to last vowel is long and should properly be spelled double or written ā (an a with a macron), and the 'l' consonants represent different sounds: the first is dental ([l], Malayalam ല, Roman l) and the second is retroflex ([ɭ], Malayalam ള, Roman ḷ). A palindrome is a word phrase number or other sequence of units that can be read the same way in either direction (the adjustment of punctuation and spaces between words A macron, from Greek el μακρόv ( makrón) meaning "long" is a Diacritic ¯ placed over or under a Vowel which was originally In Phonetics, retroflex consonants are Consonant sounds used in some Languages (They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants
Evolution
The language belongs to the family of Dravidian languages. The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 73 languages (including the four literary languages of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada There are conflicting theories concerning the origin of the language. Robert Caldwell, in his book A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Languages considers Malayalam an ancient off-shoot of classical Tamil that over time gained a large amount of Sanskrit vocabulary and lost the personal terminations of verbs. Tamil (ta தமிழ்; t̪əmɨɻ is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical [4] However, linguists like Hermann Gundert regard Malayalam as having diverged from Proto-Tamil-Malayalam, or Proto-Dravidian. Rev Dr Hermann Gundert ( Stuttgart, February 4, 1814 &ndash April 25, 1893 in Calw, Germany) was a German Malayalam has a script of its own, covering all the symbols of Sanskrit as well as special letters for Dravidian-specific sounds. The Malayalam script is an Abugida of the Brahmic family, used to write the Malayalam language. Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical Recent archaeological evidence points to Malayalam being as old a language as the other Dravidian languages and that it evolved over the centuries, with its versions having different names. This is unlike the case of Tamil. Although Classical Tamil and Modern Tamil are very different, both are still referred to as Tamil.
Together with Tamil, Toda, Kannada and Tulu, Malayalam belongs to the southern group of Dravidian languages. Tamil (ta தமிழ்; t̪əmɨɻ is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. Toda is a Dravidian language well known for its many fricatives and trills. Kannada (kn [[wiktಕನ್ನಡ ಕನ್ನಡ]] Kannaḍa) is one of the major Dravidian languages of India, spoken predominantly in the state The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 73 languages (including the four literary languages of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada Proto-Tamil-Malayalam, the common stock of Tamil and Malayalam, apparently diverged over a period of four or five centuries from the ninth century on, resulting in the emergence of Malayalam as a language distinct from Proto-Tamil. As the language of scholarship and administration, Proto-Tamil greatly influenced the early development of Malayalam. Later the irresistible inroads the Namboothiris made into the cultural life of Kerala, the Namboothiri-Nair dominated social & political setup, the trade relationships with Arabs, and the invasion of Kerala by the Portuguese, establishing vassal states accelerated the assimilation of many Romance, Semitic and Indo-Aryan features into Malayalam at different levels spoken by different castes and religious communities like Muslims, Christians, Jews and Jainas. The Nambudiri Brahmins ( Malayalam: ml നമ്പൂതിരി ml-Latn nambũdiri, also transliterated Namputiri, Namboothiri) are the Kerala is a southern most state of India. Kerala can largely trace its non-prehistoric cultural genesis to its membership (around the 3rd century CE in a vaguely-defined The araB gene Promoter is a bacterial promoter activated by e L-arabinose binding Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic (República Portuguesa is a country on the Iberian Peninsula. The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages, or Neolatin languages) are a branch of the Indo-European language family comprising all In Linguistics and Ethnology, Semitic (from the Biblical " Shem " Hebrew שם translated as "name" Arabic: ساميّ The Indo-Aryan languages (within the context of Indo-European studies also Indic) are a branch of the Indo-European language family A Muslim (مسلم pronounced Muslim, not Muzlim) is an adherent of the Religion A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic Religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth PLEASE TAKE NOTE************ Jainism, traditionally known as Jain Dharma / Shraman Dharma (जैन धर्म is an ancient religion of India.
T. K. Krishna Menon, in his book "A Primer of Malayalam Literature" describes four distinct epochs concerning the evolution of the language:[5]
- Karintamil (3100 BCE - 100 BCE): Malayalam from this period is represented by the works of Kulashekara Alvar and Pakkanar. 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 there are numerous Sanskrit words in the language. There are personal terminations for verbs that were conjugated according to gender and number.
- Middle Malayalam (325 CE - 1425 CE): 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 also seemed to have encouraged the study of the language.
- Modern Malayalam (1425 CE onwards): Malayalam seems to have established itself as a language separate from Tamil by this point in time. This period can be divided into two categories: from 1425 CE to 1795 CE, and from 1795 CE, onwards. 1795 CE is the year the English gained complete control over Kerala.
Development of literature
The earliest written record of Malayalam is the Vazhappalli inscription (ca. 830 CE). The early literature of Malayalam comprised three types of composition:
- Classical songs known as Naadan Paattu of the Tamil tradition
- Manipravalam of the Sanskrit tradition, which permitted a generous interspersing of Sanskrit with Malayalam
- The folk song rich in native elements
Malayalam poetry to the late twentieth century betrays varying degrees of the fusion of the three different strands. Tamil people (also called Tamils or Tamilians) ( are an Ethnic group native to Tamil Nadu, a state in India, and the north-eastern Manipravalam ( maṇi-pravāḷa - 'ruby coral' was a literary style used in medieval liturgical texts in South India, in which a Dravidian language is The are two types of meters used in Malayalam poetry, the classical Sanskrit based and Tamil based ones The oldest examples of Pattu and Manipravalam, respectively, are Ramacharitam and Vaishikatantram, both of the twelfth century.
The earliest extant prose work in the language is a commentary in simple Malayalam, Bhashakautaliyam (12th century) on Chanakya’s Arthasastra. Adhyathmaramayanam by Thunchaththu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan (known as the father of the Malayalam language) who was born in Tirur, one of the most important works in Malayalam literature. Adhyathmaramayanam is the Malayalam version of Ramayana written by Thunchaththu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan in the early 17th Century Thunchaththu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan Malayalam തുഞ്ചത്തു രാമാനുജന് എഴുത്തച്ഛന് is considered as the Father of the WikipediaWikiProject Indian cities for details --> Tirur is a town and a Municipality in Malappuram district in the Indian state Malayalam prose of different periods exhibit various levels of influence from different languages such as Tamil, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali, Hebrew, Hindi, Urdu, Arabic, Persian, Syriac, Portuguese, Dutch, French and English. Tamil (ta தமிழ்; t̪əmɨɻ is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical Prakrit (also transliterated as Pracrit) ( Sanskrit: prākṛta प्राकृत (from pra-kṛti प्रकृति according to one Pali ( ISO 15919 / ALA-LC: Pāḷi is a Middle Indo-Aryan language or Prakrit of India. Hindi ( Devanāgarī: hi [[wiktहिन्दी हिन्दी]] or hi [[wiktहिंदी हिंदी]] IAST:, IPA:) is Urdu ( ur '''{{Nastaliq اردو}}''' trans Urdū, historically spelled Ordu) is a Central Indo-Aryan language Urdu is a standardised Arabic (ar الْعَرَبيّة (informally ar عَرَبيْ) in terms of the number of speakers is the largest living member of the Semitic language See Syriac (disambiguation for other uses Syriac (syr ܠܫܢܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ leššānā Suryāyā) is an Eastern Aramaic language Portuguese ( or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia (Spain and northern Portugal. Dutch ( is a West Germanic language spoken by around 24 million people 22 million of which are from the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States Although this may be true, Malayalam is strikingly similar to Tamil, considerably more than the similarity between modern Dutch and German. Modern literature is rich in poetry, fiction, drama, biography, and literary criticism.
Phonology
For the consonants and vowels, the IPA is given, followed by the Malayalam character and the ISO 15919 transliteration. ISO 15919 Transliteration of Devanagari and related Indic scripts into Latin characters is an international standard for the Transliteration of Indic scripts to the
Vowels
| Short | Long | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Central | Back | Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | /i/ ഇ i | /ɨ̆/ * ŭ | /u/ ഉ u | /iː/ ഈ ī | /uː/ ഊ ū | |
| Mid | /e/ എ e | /ə/ * a | /o/ ഒ o | /eː/ ഏ ē | /oː/ ഓ ō | |
| Open | /a/ അ a | /aː/ ആ ā | ||||
- */ɨ̆/ is the samvr̥tokāram, an epenthentic vowel in Malayalam. In Linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a Vowel sound 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 forward 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 back vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as 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 forward 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 back vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as 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 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 An open vowel is a Vowel sound of a type used in most spoken Languages The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as In Phonology, epenthesis (/əˈpɛnθəsɪs/ Ancient Greek ἐπένθεσις - epenthesis from epi "on" + en "in" 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 Travancore style, in which the diacritic for a /u/ is attached to the preceding consonant and a chandrakkala is written above. Virama is a generic term for the Diacritic character in many Brahmic scripts that is used to suppress an inherent Vowel sound that occurs with every consonant Travancore or Thiruvithaamkoor ( Malayalam: തിരുവിതാങ്കൂര് "Thiru" (respectful prefix which suggests either royal or
- */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 Sanskrit 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 samvr̥tokāram, which is not officially a vowel, and not as actual vocalic consonants) have been classified as vowels: vocalic r (ഋ, /rɨ̆/, r̥), long vocalic r (ൠ, /rɨː/, r̥̄), vocalic l (ഌ, /lɨ̆/, l̥) and long vocalic l (ൡ, /lɨː/, 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
| Bilabial | Labiodental | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | Unaspirated | /p/ പ p | /b/ ബ b | /t̪/ ത t | /d̪/ ദ d | /t/ * t | /ʈ/ ട ṭ | /ɖ/ ഡ ḍ | /ʧ/ ച c | /ʤ/ ജ j | /k/ ക k | /g/ ഗ g | ||||||
| Aspirated | /pʰ/ ഫ ph | /bʱ/ ഭ bh | /t̪ʰ/ ഥ th | /d̪ʱ/ ധ dh | /ʈʰ/ ഠ ṭh | /ɖʱ/ ഢ ḍh | /ʧʰ/ ഛ ch | /ʤʱ/ ഝ jh | /kʰ/ ഖ kh | /gʱ/ ഘ gh | ||||||||
| Nasal | /m/ മ m | /n̪/ ന n | /n/ ന * n | /ɳ/ ണ ṇ | /ɲ/ ഞ ñ | /ŋ/ ങ ṅ | ||||||||||||
| Approximant | /ʋ/ വ v | /ɻ/ ഴ l | /j/ യ y | |||||||||||||||
| Liquid | /r/ റ r | |||||||||||||||||
| Fricative | /f/ ഫ* f | /s̪/ സ s | /ʂ/ ഷ ṣ | /ɕ/ ശ ś | /ɦ/ ഹ h | |||||||||||||
| Tap | /ɾ/ ര r | |||||||||||||||||
| Lateral approximant | /l/ ല l | /ɭ/ ള ḷ | ||||||||||||||||
- The unaspirated alveolar plosive stop used to have a separate character but it has become obsolete because it 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). In Phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a Consonant articulated with both Lips The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet In Phonetics, labiodentals are Consonants articulated with the lower Lip and the upper Teeth. In Linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a Consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth such as /t/ /d/ /n/ and Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior Alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets In Phonetics, retroflex consonants are Consonant sounds used in some Languages (They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants Palatal consonants are Consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the Hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth Glottal consonants are Consonants articulated with the Glottis. A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. Description Voiceless consonants are produced with the Vocal cords open and voiced consonants are produced when the vocal folds are fractionally closed Description Voiceless consonants are produced with the Vocal cords open and voiced consonants are produced when the vocal folds are fractionally closed A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the Approximants are speech sounds ( Phonemes) that could be regarded as intermediate between Vowels and typical Consonants In the articulation of approximants Liquid consonants, or liquids, are Approximant Consonants that are not classified as Semivowels (glides because they do not correspond phonetically Fricatives are Consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together In Phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of Consonantal sound which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator (such as the Laterals are "L"-like Consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both To see how the archaic letter looked, find the Malayalam letter in the row for t here. In current Malayalam, this sound is used only for words borrowed from European languages (such as English, French, Portuguese or Dutch).
- The alveolar nasal used to have a separate character but this is now obsolete (to see how it looked, find the Malayalam letter in the row for n here) and the sound is now almost always represented by the symbol that was originally used only for the dental nasal. The alveolar nasal is a type of Consonantal sound used in numerous spoken Languages The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents The dental nasal is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents However, both sounds are extensively used in current colloquial and official Malayalam.
- The letter ഫ represents both /pʰ/, a native phoneme, and /f/, which only occurs in adopted words.
The script
In the early ninth century vattezhuthu (round writing) traceable through the Grantha script, to the pan-Indian Brahmi script, gave rise to the Malayalam writing system. The Malayalam script is an Abugida of the Brahmic family, used to write the Malayalam language. 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 language script consists of 51 letters including 16 vowels and 37 consonants. [6] The earlier style of writing is now substituted with a new style from 1981. This new script reduces the different letters for typeset from 900 to less than 90. This was mainly done to include Malayalam in the keyboards of typewriters and computers.
In 1999 a group called Rachana Akshara Vedi, led by Chitrajakumar, and K. H. Hussein, produced a set of free fonts containing the entire character repertoire of more than 900 glyphs. In Typography, a typeface is a set of one or more Fonts designed with stylistic unity each comprising a coordinated set of Glyphs A typeface usually comprises A glyph is an element of writing Two or more glyphs representing the same symbol whether interchangeable or context-dependent are called Allographs the abstract unit they This was announced and released along with an editor in the same year at Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala. Thiruvananthapuram ( Malayalam: തിരുവനന്തപുരം Tiruvanantapuraṁ) also known as Trivandrum, is the capital of the Kerala ( Malayalam: {{Kerala in Malayalam}}; In 2004, the fonts were released under the GNU GPL license by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation at the Cochin University of Science and Technology in Kochi, Kerala.
Dialects and external influences
Variations in intonation patterns, vocabulary, and distribution of grammatical and phonological elements are observable along the parameters of region, religion, community, occupation, social stratum, style and register. In Linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch whilst speaking which is not used to distinguish words Phonology ( Greek φωνή (phōnē voice sound + λόγος (lógos word speech subject of discussion is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning Influence of Sanskrit is very prominent in formal Malayalam used in literature. Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical The Malayalam that is used in talking and older Malayalam have an extremely limited amount of Sanskrit words, and it is almost identical to Tamil. Like in other parts of India, Sanskrit was considered an aristocratic and scholastic language, similar to Latin in European history. Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome.
Loan words and influences from Hebrew, Syriac and Ladino abound in the Jewish Malayalam dialects, as well as English, Portuguese, Syriac and Greek in the Christian dialects, while Arabic and Persian elements predominate in the Muslim dialects (Mappila Malayalam, Beary bashe). See Syriac (disambiguation for other uses Syriac (syr ܠܫܢܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ leššānā Suryāyā) is an Eastern Aramaic language Judeo-Malayalam is the traditional language of the Cochin Jews (also called Malabar Jews) from Kerala, in southern India, spoken today by about English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States Portuguese ( or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia (Spain and northern Portugal. See Syriac (disambiguation for other uses Syriac (syr ܠܫܢܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ leššānā Suryāyā) is an Eastern Aramaic language Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic Religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth Arabic (ar الْعَرَبيّة (informally ar عَرَبيْ) in terms of the number of speakers is the largest living member of the Semitic language A Muslim (مسلم pronounced Muslim, not Muzlim) is an adherent of the Religion The Malayalam language spoken by the Mappila Muslim community of Kerala is called Mappila dialect of Malayalam or simply as Mappila Malayalam ( Malayalam
Words adopted from Sanskrit
When words are adopted from Sanskrit, their endings are usually changed to conform to Malayalam norms:
Nouns
- Masculine Sanskrit nouns ending in a short "a" in the nominative singular change their ending to "an". Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical The nominative case is a Grammatical case for a Noun, which generally marks the subject of a Verb, as opposed to its object or other For example, Kṛṣṇa -> Kṛṣṇan. Krishna (कृष्ण in Devanagari kṛṣṇa in IAST, ˈkr̩ʂɳə in classical Sanskrit is a deity worshiped across many traditions of Hinduism However, there are exceptions - for example, if someone’s first name were a Sanskrit derived name like Kṛṣṇan, a person talking about him might drop the "n" if it were immediately followed by his surname (this only applies for certain surnames, such as Menon but not Nair). Menon was a title of dignity bestowed upon the Nairs of Cochin by its king Nāyar (Malayalam നായര് naːjar most commonly spelt Nair) is the name of a Hindu upper caste from the southern Indian state of Kerala
(Reference : 'Sri Krishna Vilasa'(a Sanskrit work) by poet Sukumara in the 12th Century and translation of the same by Malayalam poet Kunchan Nambiar in his work 'Sri Krishnacharitam' in the 15th Century. )
- Feminine words ending in a long "ā" or "ī" are changed so that they now end in a short "a" or "i", for example Sītā -> Sīta and Lakṣmī -> Lakṣmi. SITA is a multinational Information technology company specialising in providing IT and telecommunication services to the Aviation industry Lakshmi or Mahalakshmi (pronunciation; Sanskrit: लक्ष्मी lakṣmī) is the Hindu Goddess of Wealth However, the long vowel still appears in compound words like Sītādēvi or Lakṣmīdēvi. Some vocative case forms of both Sanskrit and native Malayalam words end in ā or ī, and there are also a small number of nominative ī endings that have not been shortened - a prominent example being the word Śrī,
- Masculine words ending in a long "ā" in the nominative singular have a "vŭ" added to them, for example Brahmā -> Brahmāvŭ. The vocative case is the case used for a Noun identifying the person (animal object etc Brahma is the Hindu god ( deva) of creation and one of the Trimurti, the others being Vishnu and Shiva. This is again omitted when forming compounds. .
- Words whose roots are different from their nominative singular forms - for example, the Sanskrit root of "Karma" is actually "Karman"- are also changed. Karma ( Sanskrit: कर्म, kárman - "act action performance" Pali: kamma) is the concept of "action" 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. [7]
- Sanskrit words describing things or animals rather than people which end in a short "a" take an additional "m" in Malayalam. For example, Rāmāyaṇa -> Rāmāyaṇam. The Rāmāyaṇa ( Devanāgarī: sa रामायण is an ancient Sanskrit epic attributed to the Hindu sage ( Maharishi) Valmiki "Things and animals" and "people" are not always differentiated based on whether or not they are sentient beings - for example Narasimha becomes Narasimham and not Narasimhan whilst Ananta becomes Anantan even though both are sentient. Narasimha ( IAST Narasiṃha Sanskrit नरसिंह (other spellings are Narasingh, Narasinga) is an Avatara of Vishnu This can be explained by saying that "Ananta" can also be a man's name and does not necessarily have to refer to the Hindu serpent-god, whereas "Simha" actually means lion and therefore must be of the neuter gender. A Hindu ( Devanagari: हिन्दू is an adherent of the philosophies and scriptures of Hinduism, a set of religious, Philosophical
- Nouns ending in short vowels like "Viṣṇu", "Prajāpati" etc stay the same. For other meanings see Vishnu (disambiguation. Vishnu ( IAST viṣṇu Devanagari विष्णु (honorific In Hinduism, Prajapati ( Sanskrit prajā-pati sa प्रजापति "lord of creatures" is a Hindu deity presiding over procreation
- Along with these tatsama borrowings, there are also many tadbhava words in common use. Tatsama are Sanskrit Loanwords in modern Indic languages like Bangla or Sinhala. Tadbhava ( Sanskrit tadbhava) is one of three etymological classes defined by native grammarians of Middle Indo-Aryan languages. 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: Kṛṣṇa -> Kaṇṇan [8]
Malayalam also has its influence from Portuguese, as is evident from the use of word like 'mesa' for a small table, and 'janala' for window.
For a comprehensive list of loan words, see Loan words in Malayalam. Loan words in Malayalam, excluding the huge number of words from Sanskrit and Tamil, originated mostly due to the centuries long interactions between the
See also
- The lists of Malayalam words and words of Malayalam origin at Wiktionary, the free dictionary and Wikipedia’s sibling project
- How to Configure Computer to view Malayalam Unicode text
- Kerala
- Beary bashe
- Malayalam calendar
- Malayalam literature
- Malayalam cinema
- Malayalam journalism
- List of places in Kerala
- Manipravalam
- Demographics of India for a list of the official languages of India. Wiktionary (a Portmanteau of Wiki and Dictionary) is a multilingual, Web -based project to create a Free Kerala ( Malayalam: {{Kerala in Malayalam}}; Malayalam calendar (also known as Malayalam Era or Kollavarsham) is a solar Sidereal calendar used in the state of Kerala in South India The term Malayalam literature refers to Literature written in Malayalam language Malayalam cinema refers to Films made in the Indian state of Kerala in the Malayalam language. Malayalam journalism refers to Journalism in the Malayalam language. This a list of places in Kerala state, southern India. Alappuzha (previously Alleppey Alwaye Manipravalam ( maṇi-pravāḷa - 'ruby coral' was a literary style used in medieval liturgical texts in South India, in which a Dravidian language is The Demographics of India are overall remarkably diverse India's population of approximately 1
- Languages of India
- List of national languages of India
- List of Indian languages by total speakers
- First Malayalam Literary Portal
References
- ^ a b c Malayalam. India is home to several hundred languages. Most languages spoken in India belong either to the Indo-European ( ca Ethnologue. Retrieved on 2007-05-28. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 585 BC - A Solar eclipse occurs as predicted by Greek philosopher and scientist Thales, while Alyattes is battling
- ^ Languages of Malaysia. Ethnologue. Retrieved on 2007-05-28. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 585 BC - A Solar eclipse occurs as predicted by Greek philosopher and scientist Thales, while Alyattes is battling
- ^ [Kerala Charithram (Malayalam)A. Sreedhara Menon p. 494]
- ^ Caldwell, Robert (1875). A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Languages, 23.
- ^ Menon, T. K. Krishna (1990). A Primer of Malayalam Literature. Asian Educational Services. ISBN 8120606035.
- ^ Language. kerala. gov. in. Retrieved on 2007-05-28. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 585 BC - A Solar eclipse occurs as predicted by Greek philosopher and scientist Thales, while Alyattes is battling
- ^ Varma, A. R. Rajaraja (2005). Keralapanineeyam. Kottayam: D C Books, 303. ISBN 81-713-0672-1.
- ^ Varma, A. R. Rajaraja (2005). Keralapanineeyam. Kottayam: D C Books, 301-302. ISBN 81-713-0672-1.
External links
- Malayalam Keyboard
- Unicode Code Chart for Malayalam (PDF Format)
- Malayalam News - വിവിധ മാധ്യമങ്ങളില് നിന്നുള്ള പ്രധാനപ്പെട്ട വാര്ത്തകള് ഇവിടെ വായിക്കാം.
- Varamozhi: Malayalam Text Editor, Input Method Editor and Unicode Font
- writeKA Scripton: English to Malayalam Online Transliterator - മലയാളം എഴുതാനുള്ള ഓണ്ലൈന് ഉപകരണം.
- Hoozi: Online Malayalam Text Editor using Transliteration
- Useful Malayalam phrases in English and other Indian languages.
- Ethnologue report for Malayalam
- English-Malayalam Dictionary
- Indian Language Converter
- Free Malayalam Online Magzine - Nilaav
- Kerala Recipes in Malayalam - മലയാളം പാചകക്കുറിപ്പുകള്
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