In 1829, Bailey ushered in a momentous change in the history of Malayalam by replacing these with the round script that is used to date. Until Benjamin Bailey, a British missionary brought the printing press to Kerala, Malayalam was written and printed in the Grantha script with square type fonts. These changes made so as to accommodate the needs of making moulds for the printing press. The original Malayalam script that began as what is called the Vattelettu, has undergone significant changes. The Malayalam script was literally and figuratively ‘moulded’ for the printing press However, in the equivalent Malayalam word ‘Sundaram’, the d sound becomes silent in the NDA cluster and instead pronounced as ‘sunnaram’, producing a distinct nasal tone in its place. Several words that may have equivalent forms in other Indian languages like Hindi, take on a nasal tone in pronunciation in Malayalam.įor example in the Hindi word ‘Sundar’, the d sound distinctly pronounced in the NDA cluster. So is the nasal sound ‘ng’ as in ‘sing’ used extensively. The most basic pronoun ‘me’ is a nasal tone, pronounced as ‘ñaan’, where the ‘ña’ sounds like the NY in ‘canyon’. Nasal sounds form an indispensable part of the spoken form of the Malayalam language. There are 2 separate consonants for the sound ‘l’ – one for ‘l’ (ല) as in ‘language’ and the other for ḷ (ള ) as in ‘plumber’.This rhotic consonant is absent in almost all other Indian languages. Malayalam also has the alphabet ‘ഴ’(zha) which pronounced like the rhotic r as in ‘purse’ in English.Equivalent pronunciation differences do not exist in English or Hindi. There are 2 separate alphabets to denote the sound ‘r’- one for ‘r’ (ര) as in Spanish tres and the other for ‘ṟ’ (റ) as in Spanish Rojo.Equivalent differences hardly exist in other Indian languages. In fact, the language has some of the most specific and complicated sounds represented in letters. Written in the Brahmic script, Malayalam has 15 vowels, 42 consonants, and certain other symbols. Malayalam has some of the most complicated alphabets In 2013 Malayalam accorded the status of classical language by the Government of India.Īlso Read: Languages of North East India 3. The Manipravalam language and its script influence the modern form of the language greatly, so much so that Malayalam continues to be the one Dravidian language with extensive Sanskrit influence. It was a combination of Tamil and Sanskrit. ‘Manipravalam’ was a macaronic language used in certain Malayalam language texts before it established its modern form in the 16th century. Rather, both Malayalam and Tamil evolved from a common ancestor known as ‘Proto Tamil-Malayalam’. However, there is also a contrary view that Malayalam did not originate from Tamil. Until then it was a western coastal dialect of Tamil. The popularly held opinion is that the Malayalam language evolved from Middle Tamil between the 9th and 13th centuries. A classical language with origins in Tamil Until the 16th century, Malayalam, referred to by several other closely related names, including Malayanma and Malayalama.
Later on, it became the name of the region’s language. The term originally refers to the land under the Chera dynasty. Thus the word literally means ‘the mountain region’. The word Malayalam is a combination of 2 words – ‘ Mala’ meaning ‘mountain’ and ‘ Alam’ meaning ‘region’. This means that the word is read the same when spelled forwards and backward. Malayalam is perhaps the world’s only language that is a palindrome when written in English. Let’s look at some of the most interesting facts about the Malayalam language. From the history of its evolution to its dialects, words, and nasal tones, there’s a lot to explore in the language. In fact, there’s a local joke that you’ll find a Malayali even on the moon.Ī language set apart by its script, sound, and vocabulary, Malayalam proudly boasts of a uniqueness that makes it distinct from other languages in the region. Not just that, given the huge Malayali diaspora, the language has a global spread, with speakers living in almost every part of the world. With close to 45 million native speakers, Malayalis tend to be emphatically proud of their language. An indispensable part of what makes the land what it is? It’s the Malayalam Language. Kerala, sets apart not just its lush green fields, languishing backwaters, traditional sadya, and its iconic golden bordered kasavu sarees.
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