Malayalam

In a 7th-century poem written by the Tamil poet Sambandar the people of Kerala are referred to as malaiyāḷar (mountain people). The word is also said to originate from the words , meaning 'mountain', and , meaning 'region' or '-ship' (as in "township"); thus translates directly as 'the mountain region'. The term Malabar was used as an alternative term for Malayalam in foreign trade circles to denote the southwestern coast of the Indian peninsula, which also means The land of hills. The term originally referred to the western hilly land of the Chera dynasty (later Zamorins and the Kingdom of Cochin), Kingdom of Ezhimala (later Kolathunadu), and Ay kingdom (later Travancore), and only later became the name of its language. The earliest extant literary works in the regional language of present-day Kerala probably date back to as early as the 12th century. At that time, the language was differentiated by the name Kerala Bhasha. The earliest mention of Malayalam as a language is found outside of Kerala in the 15th century Telugu work Śrībhīmēśvarapurāṇamu by Śrīnātha. The distinctive "Malayalam" named identity of this language appears to have come into existence in Kerala only around the 16th century, when it was known as "Malayayma" or "Malayanma"; the words were also used to refer to the script and the region. According to Duarte Barbosa, a Portuguese visitor who visited Kerala in the early 16th century CE, the people in the southwestern Malabar coast of India from Kumbla in north to Kanyakumari in south had a unique language, which was called "Maliama" by them. Prior to this period, the people of Kerala usually referred to their language as "Tamil", and both terms overlapped into the colonial period. == History ==

(849/850 CE) are considered as the oldest available inscription written in Old Malayalam. Besides Old Malayalam, the copper plate also contains signatures in Arabic (Kufic script), Middle Persian (cursive Pahlavi script) and Judeo-Persian (standard square Hebrew) scripts. Tamil-Brahmi inscription (ca. 2nd cent. BCE) from Pulimaankombai, raised in memory of tīyaṉ antavaṉ, who died in a cattle raid in a village called kūṭal ūr. The words 'peṭu' and 'tīyaṉ' are regarded by Iravatham Mahadevan as pre-Malayalam terms, with "tīyaṉ" (thiyyar) being the name for a caste from Kerala. The inscription contributed to Malayalam being granted classical language status by the Government of India, a status which is granted to languages deemed older than 2,000 years by the "Linguistic Expert Committee." Due to the geographical isolation of the Malabar Coast from the rest of the Indian peninsula due to the presence of the Western Ghats mountain ranges which lie parallel to the coast, the dialect of Old Tamil spoken in Kerala was different from that spoken in Tamil Nadu. and the linguistic separation completed sometime between the 9th and 13th centuries. The renowned poets of Classical Tamil such as Paranar (1st century CE), Ilango Adigal (2nd–3rd century CE), and Kulasekhara Alvar (9th century CE) were Keralites. Despite this, Malayalam shares many common innovations with Tamil that emerged during the early Middle Tamil period, thus making independent descent untenable. Robert Caldwell, in his 1856 book "A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages", opined that literary Malayalam branched from Classical Tamil and over time gained a large amount of Sanskrit vocabulary and lost the personal terminations of verbs. As the language of scholarship and administration, Old-Tamil, which was written in Tamil-Brahmi and the Vatteluttu alphabet later, greatly influenced the early development of Malayalam as a literary language. The Malayalam script began to diverge from the Vatteluttu and the Western Grantha scripts in the 8th and 9th centuries of Common Era. By the end of the 13th century, a written form of the language emerged which was unique from the Vatteluttu script that was used to write Tamil on the eastern coast. Old Malayalam Old Malayalam (), an inscriptional language found in Kerala from the 9th to the 13th century CE, is the earliest attested form of Malayalam. The development of Old Malayalam from a western coastal dialect of Middle Tamil began around the 8th century CE. It remained a west coast dialect until circa 9th century CE or a little later. The origin of Malayalam calendar dates back to year 825 CE. It is generally agreed that the western coastal dialect of Tamil began to separate, diverge, and grow as a distinct language due to geographical separation of Kerala from the Tamil country Ramacharitam and Thirunizhalmala are the possible literary works of Old Malayalam found so far. Middle Malayalam Old Malayalam gradually developed into Middle Malayalam (Madhyakaala Malayalam) by the 13th century CE. Malayalam literature also completely diverged from Tamil literature during this period. Works including Unniyachi Charitham, Unnichiruthevi Charitham, and Unniyadi Charitham, are written in Middle Malayalam, and date back to the 13th and 14th centuries of the Common Era. The Champu Kavyas written by Punam Nambudiri, one among the Pathinettara Kavikal (Eighteen and a half poets) in the court of the Zamorin of Calicut, also belong to Middle Malayalam. The scripts of Kolezhuthu and Malayanma were also used to write Middle Malayalam. In addition to Vatteluthu and Grantha script, those were used to write Old Malayalam. Kunchan Nambiar introduced a new literary form called Thullal, and Unnayi Variyar introduced reforms in Attakkatha literature. Ulloor S. Parameswara Iyer and Vallathol Narayana Menon. In the second half of the 20th century, Jnanpith winning poets and writers like G. Sankara Kurup, S. K. Pottekkatt, Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, M. T. Vasudevan Nair, O. N. V. Kurup, and Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri, had made valuable contributions to the modern Malayalam literature. Later, writers like O. V. Vijayan, Kamaladas, M. Mukundan, Arundhati Roy, and Vaikom Muhammed Basheer, have gained international recognition. Malayalam has also borrowed a lot of its words from various foreign languages: mainly from the Semitic languages including Arabic, and the European languages including Dutch and Portuguese, due to the long heritage of Indian Ocean trade and the Portuguese-Dutch colonization of the Malabar Coast. Malayalam is taught in public schools of Kerala, Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé) (India).The language is also taught in Indian schools in the Middle East. == Dialects ==

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. According to the Dravidian Encyclopedia, the regional dialects of Malayalam can be divided into fifteen dialect areas. The dialects of Malayalam spoken in the districts like Kasaragod, Kannur, Wayanad, Kozhikode, and Malappuram in the former Malabar District have few influences from Kannada. • The Muslim dialect, also known as Arabi Malayalam, shows maximum divergence from the literary Standard Dialect of Malayalam. It is very much influenced by Arabic and Persian rather than by Sanskrit or by English. The retroflex continuant of the literary dialect is realised in the Muslim dialect as the palatal . In some other dialects of Northern Kerala too, of the literary dialect is realised as . • The Syrian Christian or Nasrani dialect of Malayalam is quite close to the Nair dialect, especially in phonology. The speech of the educated section among Syrian Christians and that of those who are close to the church are peculiar in having a number of assimilated as well as unassimilated loan words from English and Syriac. The few loan words which have found their way into the Christian dialect are assimilated in many cases through the process of de-aspiration. • Tamil spoken in the Kanyakumari district has influences from Malayalam language. External influences and loanwords Malayalam has incorporated many elements from other languages over the years, the most notable of these being Sanskrit and later, English. According to Sooranad Kunjan Pillai who compiled the authoritative Malayalam lexicon, the other principal languages whose vocabulary was incorporated over the ages were Arabic, Dutch, Hindustani, Pali, Persian, Portuguese, Prakrit, and Syriac. • Many medieval liturgical texts were written in an admixture of Sanskrit and early Malayalam, called Manipravalam. The influence of Sanskrit was very prominent in formal Malayalam used in the medieval literature. Malayalam has a substantially high number of Sanskrit loanwords but these are seldom used. • Some Arabic loanwords like adālattŭ (court of justice), jāmyaṃ (bail), japti (foreclosure), jilla (district), tālukkŭ (subdistrict), etc., are used in the formal literary Malayalam for administrative purposes. • Loanwords and influences also 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. • The Muslim dialect known as Mappila Malayalam is predominantly in the northern districts of Kerala. Another Muslim dialect called Beary bashe is used in the extreme northern part of Kerala along with the southern part of Karnataka in a former region called Tulu Nadu. == Geographic distribution and population ==

Malayalam is a language spoken by the native people of southwestern India and the islands of Lakshadweep in the Arabian Sea. According to the Indian census of 2011, there were 32,413,213 speakers of Malayalam in Kerala, making up 93.2% of the total number of Malayalam speakers in India, and 97.03% of the total population of the state. There were a further 7,74,057 (2.22% of the total number) in Karnataka, 7,26,096 (2.05%) in Tamil Nadu, and 406,358 (1.2%) in Maharashtra. The number of Malayalam speakers in Lakshadweep is 51,100, which is only 0.15% of the total number, but is as much as about 84% of the population of Lakshadweep. Malayalam was the most spoken language in erstwhile Gudalur taluk (now Gudalur and Panthalur taluks) of Nilgiris district in Tamil Nadu which accounts for 48.8% population and it was the second most spoken language in Mangalore and Puttur taluks of South Canara accounting for 21.2% and 15.4% respectively according to 1951 census report. 25.57% of the total population in the Kodagu district of Karnataka are Malayalis, and they form the single largest linguistic group accounting for 35.5% in the Virajpet Taluk. Around one-third of the Malayalis in Kodagu district speak the Yerava dialect according to the 2011 census, which is native to Kodagu and Wayanad. As per the 1991 census data, 28.85% of all Malayalam speakers in India spoke a second language and 19.64% of the total knew three or more languages. Just before independence, Malaya attracted many Malayalis. Large numbers of Malayalis have settled in Chennai, Bengaluru, Mangaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Pune, Mysuru and Delhi. Many Malayalis have also emigrated to the Middle East, the United States, and Europe. There were 179,860 speakers of Malayalam in the United States, according to the 2000 census, with the highest concentrations in Bergen County, New Jersey, and Rockland County, New York. There are 144,000 of Malayalam speakers in Malaysia. There were 11,687 Malayalam speakers in Australia in 2016. The 2001 Canadian census reported 7,070 people who listed Malayalam as their mother tongue, mainly in Toronto. The 2006 New Zealand census reported 2,139 speakers. 134 Malayalam speaking households were reported in 1956 in Fiji. There is also a considerable Malayali population in the Persian Gulf regions, especially in Dubai, Kuwait and Doha. == Phonology ==

s of the Namboodiri dialect of Malayalam, from Namboodiripad (2016) For the consonants and vowels, the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbol is given, followed by the Malayalam character and the ISO 15919 transliteration. Vowels Consonants == Sample text ==

The following text is Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. English All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Malayalam Romanisation (ISO 15919) manuṣyarellāvaruṁ tulyāvakāśaṅṅaḷōṭuṁ antassōṭuṁ svātantryattōṭuṅkūṭi janicciṭṭuḷḷavarāṇ‌ŭ. anyōnyaṁ bhrātr̥bhāvattōṭe perumāṟuvānāṇ‌ŭ manuṣyanŭ vivēkabuddhiyuṁ manasākṣiyuṁ siddhamāyirikkunnat‌ŭ. IPA /manuʂjaɾellaːʋaɾum t̪uljaːʋakaːʃaŋŋaɭoːʈum an̪t̪assoːʈum sʋaːt̪an̪t̪rjat̪t̪oːʈuŋkuːʈi d͡ʒanit͡ʃt͡ʃiʈʈuɭɭaʋaɾaːɳɨ̆ ǁ anjoːnjam bʱraːt̪rɨ̆bʱaːʋat̪t̪oːʈe peɾumaːruʋaːnaːɳɨ̆ manuʂjanɨ̆ ʋiʋeːkabud̪d̪ʱijum manasaːkʂijum sid̪d̪ʱamaːjiɾikkun̪ːat̪ɨ̆ ǁ/ == Grammar ==

Malayalam has a canonical word order of SOV (subject–object–verb), as do other Dravidian languages. A rare OSV word order occurs in interrogative clauses when the interrogative word is the subject. Both adjectives and possessive adjectives precede the nouns they modify. Malayalam has 6 or 7 grammatical cases. Verbs are conjugated for tense, mood and aspect, but not for person, gender nor number except in archaic or poetic language. The modern Malayalam grammar is based on the book Kerala Panineeyam written by A. R. Raja Raja Varma in late 19th century CE. 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"). • Sanskrit words describing things or animals rather than people with a stem in short /a/ end with an /m/ in Malayalam. For example, "Rāmāyaṇa" → "Rāmāyaṇam". In most cases, this is actually the same as the Sanskrit accusative case ending, which is also /m/ (or, allophonically, anusvara due to the requirements of the sandhi word-combining rules) 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, "Narasimha" 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. • Nouns with short vowel stems other than /a/, such as "Viṣṇu", "Prajāpati" 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., as in "Viṣṇuḥ") • The original Sanskrit vocative is often used in formal or poetic Malayalam, e.g. "Harē" (for "Hari") 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" or "mine") and "tava" ("thy" or "thine"). Other cases are less common and generally restricted to the realm of Maṇipravāḷam. • Along with these tatsama borrowings, there are also many tadbhava words in common use. These were incorporated via borrowing before the separation of Malayalam and 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 "Kr̥ṣṇa" → "Kaṇṇan". Most of his works are oriented on the basic Malayalam family and cultures and many of them were path-breaking in the history of Malayalam literature == Writing system ==

Aside from the Malayalam script, the Malayalam language has been written in other scripts like Latin, Syriac and Arabic. Suriyani Malayalam was used by Saint Thomas Christians (also known as Nasranis) until the 19th century. Malayalam script , Kerala. Malayalam is official language in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puduchery Historically, several scripts were used to write Malayalam. Among these were the Vatteluttu, Kolezhuthu and Malayanma scripts. But it was the Grantha script, another Southern Brahmi variation, which gave rise to the modern Malayalam script. The modern Malayalam script bears high similarity to Tigalari script, which was used for writing Tulu language in Coastal Karnataka (Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts) and the northernmost Kasaragod district of Kerala. The earlier style of writing has been superseded by a new style as of 1981. This new script reduces the different letters for typesetting 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 fonts containing the entire character repertoire of more than 900 glyphs. This was announced and released along with a text editor in the same year at Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala. In 2004, the fonts were released under the GPL license by Richard Stallman. A dedicated Malayalam operating system was released in 2006. Chillu letters A chillu (, ), or a chillaksharam (, ), is a special consonant letter that represents a pure consonant independently, without help of a virama. Unlike a consonant represented by an ordinary consonant letter, this consonant is never followed by an inherent vowel. Anusvara and visarga fit this definition but are not usually included. ISCII and Unicode 5.0 treat a chillu as a glyph variant of a normal ("base") consonant letter. In Unicode 5.1 and later, chillu letters are treated as independent characters, encoded atomically. Number system and other symbols Numerals Malayalam numbers and fractions are written as follows. These are archaic and no longer used. Instead, the common Hindu-Arabic numeral system is followed. There is a confusion about the glyph of Malayalam digit zero. The correct form is oval-shaped, but occasionally the glyph for () is erroneously shown as the glyph for 0. Number "11" is written as "൰൧" and not "൧൧". "32" is written as "൩൰൨" similar to the Tamil numeral system. For example, the number "2013" is read in Malayalam as (). It is split into: • (): 2 – '''''' • (): 1000 – '''''' • (): 10 – '''''' • (): 3 – '''''' Combine them together to get the Malayalam number . And 1,00,000 as "" = hundred(), thousand() (100×1000), 10,00,000 as "" = ten(), hundred(), thousand() (10×100×1000) and 1,00,00,000 as "" = hundred(), hundred(), thousand() (100×100×1000). Later on this system got reformed to be more similar to the Hindu-Arabic numerals so 10,00,000 in the reformed numerals it would be . Fractions In Malayalam you can transcribe any fraction by affixing () after the denominator followed by the numerator, so a fraction like would be read as '''''' () 'out of ten, seven' but fractions like and have distinct names (, , ) and () 'half quarter'. During the medieval period, the Tigalari script that was used for writing Tulu in South Canara, and Sanskrit in the adjacent Malabar region, had a close similarity to the modern Malayalam script. or the 18th century. A variant form of this script, Kolezhuthu, was used until about the 19th century mainly in the Malabar-Cochin area. Vatteluttu was in general use, but was not suitable for literature where many Sanskrit words were used. Like Tamil-Brahmi, it was originally used to write Tamil, and as such, did not have letters for voiced or aspirated consonants used in Sanskrit but not used in Tamil. For this reason, Vatteluttu and the Grantha alphabet were sometimes mixed, as in the Manipravalam. One of the oldest examples of the Manipravalam literature, Vaishikatantram (, Vaiśikatantram), dates back to the 12th century, where the earliest form of the Malayalam script was used, which seems to have been systematized to some extent by the first half of the 13th century. Grantha Grantha inscription|251x251px According to Arthur Coke Burnell, one form of the Grantha alphabet, originally used in the Chola dynasty, was imported into the southwest coast of India in the 8th or 9th century, which was then modified in course of time in this secluded area, where communication with the east coast was very limited. It later evolved into Tigalari-Malayalam script was used by the Malayali, Havyaka Brahmins and Tulu Brahmin people, but was originally only applied to write Sanskrit. This script split into two scripts: Tigalari and Malayalam. While Malayalam script was extended and modified to write vernacular language Malayalam, the Tigalari was written for Sanskrit only. In Malabar, this writing system was termed Arya-eluttu (, Ārya eḻuttŭ), meaning "Arya writing" (Sanskrit is Indo-Aryan language while Malayalam is a Dravidian language). Karshoni , Thrissur, Kerala, India) Suriyani Malayalam (സുറിയാനി മലയാളം, ܣܘܪܝܢܝ ܡܠܝܠܡ), also known as Karshoni, Syro-Malabarica or Syriac Malayalam, is a version of Malayalam written in a variant form of the Syriac alphabet which was popular among the Saint Thomas Christians (also known as Syrian Christians or Nasranis) of Kerala in India. is a writing system – a variant form of the Arabic script with special orthographic features – which was developed during the early medieval period and used to write Arabi Malayalam until the early 20th century CE. Though the script originated and developed in Kerala, today it is predominantly used in Malaysia and Singapore by the migrant Muslim community. == Literature ==

The Sangam literature can be considered as the ancient predecessor of Malayalam. According to Iravatham Mahadevan, the earliest Malayalam inscription discovered until now is the Edakal-5 inscription (ca. late 4th century – early 5th century) reading ( 'this is old'). Although this has been disputed by many scholars who regard it as a regional dialect of Old Tamil. The use of the pronoun and the lack of the literary Tamil ending are archaisms from Proto-Dravidian rather than unique innovations of Malayalam. The early literature of Malayalam comprised three types of composition: Manipravalam Madhava Panikkar, Sankara Panikkar and Rama Panikkar wrote Manipravalam poetry in the 14th century. in the 15th and the 16th centuries of Common Era. Unnayi Variyar, a probable 17th–18th century poet, and Kunchan Nambiar, a poet of 18th century, also greatly influenced Malayalam literature in its early form. The prose literature, criticism, and Malayalam journalism began after the latter half of 18th century CE. Contemporary Malayalam literature deals with social, political, and economic life context. The tendency of the modern poetry is often towards political radicalism. Malayalam poetry 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. Cherusseri Namboothiri of 15th century (Kannur-based poet), Poonthanam Nambudiri of 16th century (Perinthalmanna-based poet), Unnayi Variyar of 17th–18th centuries (Thrissur-based poet), and Kunchan Nambiar of 18th century (Palakkad-based poet), have played a major role in the development of Malayalam literature into current form. is considered to be the first travelogue in an Indian language. The modern Malayalam grammar is based on the book Kerala Panineeyam written by A. R. Raja Raja Varma in late 19th century CE. However the claim that it was written in Southern Kerala is expired on the basis of new discoveries. Other experts, like Chirakkal T Balakrishnan Nair, K.M. George, M. M. Purushothaman Nair, and P.V. Krishnan Nair, state that the origin of the book is in Kasaragod district in North Malabar region. The influence of Ramacharitam is mostly seen in the contemporary literary works of Northern Kerala. by Graham Shaw in 1779 was still in the form of a Tamil-English Dictionary. Paremmakkal Thoma Kathanar wrote the first Malayalam travelogue called Varthamanappusthakam in 1789. Hermann Gundert, (1814–1893), a German missionary and scholar of exceptional linguistic talents, played a distinguishable role in the development of Malayalam literature. His major works are Keralolpathi (1843), Pazhancholmala (1845), Malayalabhaasha Vyakaranam (1851), Paathamala (1860) the first Malayalam school text book, Kerala pazhama (1868), the first Malayalam dictionary (1872), Malayalarajyam (1879) – Geography of Kerala, Rajya Samacharam (1847 June) the first Malayalam news paper, Paschimodayam (1879) – Magazine. He lived in Thalassery for around 20 years. He learned the language from well established local teachers Ooracheri Gurukkanmar from Chokli, a village near Thalassery and consulted them in works. He also translated the Bible into Malayalam. In 1821, the Church Mission Society (CMS) at Kottayam in association with the Syriac Orthodox Church started a seminary at Kottayam in 1819 and 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 Gundert from Stuttgart, Germany, started the first Malayalam newspaper, Rajya Samacaram in 1847 at Talasseri. It was printed at Basel Mission. Malayalam and Sanskrit were increasingly studied by Christians of Kottayam and Pathanamthitta. The Marthomite movement in the mid-19th century called for replacement of Syriac by Malayalam for liturgical purposes. By the end of the 19th century Malayalam replaced Syriac as language of Liturgy in all Syrian Christian churches. 1850–1904 coin Vengayil Kunhiraman Nayanar, (1861–1914) from Thalassery was the author of first Malayalam short story, Vasanavikriti. After him innumerable world class literature works by was born in Malayalam. . The poetry was translated by Kerala Varma as Abhijnanasakuntalam. Later, writers like O. V. Vijayan, Kamaladas, M. Mukundan, Arundhati Roy, and Vaikom Muhammed Basheer, have gained international recognition. Prose The travelogues written by S. K. Pottekkatt were turning point in the travelogue literature. Poetry Contemporary Malayalam poetry deals with social, political, and economic life context. The tendency of the modern poetry is often towards political radicalism. == See also ==