The basic characters can be classified as follows: •
Vowels (,
svaram) • Independent vowel letters • Dependent vowel signs (,
svarachinnam) •
Consonant letters (,
vyañjanam) An independent vowel letter is used as the first letter of a word that begins with a vowel. A consonant letter, despite its name, does not represent a pure consonant, but represents a consonant + a short vowel /a/ by default. For example, is the first consonant letter of the Malayalam alphabet, which represents /ka/, not a simple /k/. A vowel sign is a
diacritic attached to a consonant letter to indicate that the consonant is followed by a vowel other than /a/. If the following vowel is /a/, no vowel sign is needed. The
phoneme /a/ that follows a consonant by default is called an
inherent vowel. In Malayalam, its phonetic value is
unrounded , or as an
allophone. To denote a pure consonant sound not followed by a vowel, a special diacritic
virama is used to cancel the inherent vowel. The following are examples where a consonant letter is used with or without a diacritic. • /k/ = /k/ which is a consonant sound •
ka = /k/ + vowel sign a •
ki = /
k/ + vowel sign
i •
ku = /
k/ + vowel sign
u •
kai = /
k/ + vowel sign
ai Malayalam alphabet is
unicase, or does not have a
case distinction. It is written from left to right, but certain vowel signs are attached to the left (the opposite direction) of a consonant letter that it logically follows. In the word (
Kēraḷam), the vowel sign (
ē) visually appears in the leftmost position, though the vowel
ē logically follows the consonant
k.
Vowel letters and signs The following tables show the independent vowel letters and the corresponding dependent vowel signs (diacritics) of the Malayalam script, with
romanizations in
ISO 15919, transcriptions in the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
r̥,
r̥̄,
l̥,
l̥̄, used to write
Sanskrit words, are treated as vowels. They are called semi-vowels and are phonetically closer to vowels in Malayalam and in Classical Sanskrit where
Panini, the Sanskrit grammarian, groups them with vowel sounds in his sutras. (see
Proto-Indo-European language and
Vedic Sanskrit). The letters and signs for
r̥̄,
l̥,
l̥̄ are very rare, and are not considered as part of the modern orthography. The vowel signs
ā,
i,
ī are placed to the right of a consonant letter to which it is attached. The vowel signs
e,
ē,
ai are placed to the left of a consonant letter. The vowel signs
o and
ō consist of two parts: the first part goes to the left of a consonant letter and the second part goes to the right of it. In the reformed orthography, the vowel signs
u,
ū,
r̥ are simply placed to the right of the consonant letter, while they often make consonant-vowel ligatures in the traditional orthography. The vowel duration as it can be used to differentiate words that would otherwise be the same. For example, means "earthenware pot" while means "time" or "season".
Anusvaram The
anusvara originally denoted the
nasalization where the preceding vowel was changed into a
nasalised vowel, and hence is traditionally treated as a kind of vowel sign. In the Malayalam script, however, the
anusvāram (, ), which is written as a single dot (ം), represents the consonant sound after a vowel, though this can assimilate to another consonant. It is defined as a special character that, unlike a normal consonant, is never followed by an inherent vowel. In general, an
anusvara at the final position of a word in an Indian language is transliterated as
ṁ in
ISO 15919, but a Malayalam
anusvara at the final position of a word is transliterated as
m, without a dot.
Visargam A
visargam (,
visargam) or
visarga represents a consonant after a vowel, and is transliterated as
ḥ. Like the
anusvara, it is a special symbol, and is never followed by an inherent vowel or another vowel.
Consonants Basic consonant letters The following tables show the basic consonant letters of the Malayalam script, with
romanizations in
ISO 15919, transcriptions in
IPA, and Unicode . The character names used in the report of the Government of Kerala committee (2001) are shown in
lowercase italics when different from Unicode character names. In Unicode 5.1 and later, however,
chillu letters are treated as independent characters, encoded atomically.
Chandrakkala The virama in Malayalam is called candrakkala (chandrakkala), it has two functions: • As virama: used to suppress the inherent vowel • As samvruthokaram: represent the "half-u" sound /ə̆/
As virama Chandrakkala (,
candrakkala) is a diacritic attached to a consonant letter to show that the consonant is not followed by an inherent vowel or any other vowel (for example,
ka →
k). This kind of diacritic is common in Indic scripts, generically called
virama in Sanskrit, or
halant in Hindi.
Half-u At the end of a word, the same symbol sometimes represents a very short vowel, known as "half-u", or "samvruthokaram" (, '
), or ' (). The exact pronunciation of this vowel varies from dialect to dialect, but it is approximately
Devanagari supports half-u for Kashmiri; for example is written as .
Ligatures Consonant ligatures Like in other
Indic scripts, a
virama is used in the Malayalam script to cancel—or "kill"—the
inherent vowel of a consonant letter and represent a consonant without a vowel, so-called a "dead" consonant. For example, • is a consonant letter
na, • is a virama; therefore, • (
na + virama) represents a dead consonant
n. If this
n is further followed by another consonant letter, for example,
ma , the result may look like , which represents
nma as
na + virama +
ma. In this case, two elements
n and
ma are simply placed one by one, side by side. Alternatively,
nma can be also written as a
ligature . Generally, when a dead consonant letter C1 and another consonant letter C2 are conjoined, the result may be either: • A fully conjoined ligature of C1+C2; • Half-conjoined— • C1-conjoining: a modified form (half form) of C1 attached to the original form (full form) of C2 • C2-conjoining: a modified form of C2 attached to the full form of C1; or • Non-ligated: full forms of C1 and C2 with a visible virama. If the result is fully or half-conjoined, the (conceptual) virama which made C1 dead becomes invisible, only logically existing in a
character encoding scheme such as Unicode. If the result is non-ligated, a virama is visible, attached to C1. The glyphs for
nma has a visible virama if not ligated (), but if ligated, the virama disappears (). Usually the difference between those forms is superficial and both are semantically identical, just like the meaning of the English word
palaeography does not change even if it is spelled
palæography, with the ligature
æ.
Common consonant ligatures Several consonant ligatures are used commonly even in the post-1971 orthography. The ligature
mpa was historically derived from
npa . The ligatures
cca,
bba,
yya, and
vva are special in that a doubled consonant is denoted by a triangle sign below a consonant letter.
Consonant + ya, va, la, ra • The consonant letter
ya is generally C2-conjoining after a consonant in both orthographies. For example, •
k +
ya =
kya •
p +
ya =
pya In
kya , a variant form of
ya () is placed after the full form of
ka , just like
ki is written
ka followed by the vowel sign
i . In other words, the variant form of
ya () used after a consonant letter can be considered as a diacritic. Since it is placed after the base character, it is sometimes referred to as a
post-base form. An exception is
yya (see above). • Similarly,
va () after a consonant takes a post-base form: •
k +
va =
kva •
p +
va =
pva An exception is
vva (see above). • The consonant letter
la () after a consonant traditionally takes a below-base form. These forms are used also in the new orthography, though some fonts do not support them. •
k +
la =
kla •
p +
la =
pla •
l +
la =
lla • A consonant letter
ra (്ര) after a consonant usually takes a pre-base form in the reformed orthography, while this combination makes a fully conjoined ligature in the traditional orthography. •
k +
ra =
kra •
p +
ra =
pra nṯa and ṯṯa The ligature
nṯa is written as
n +
ṟa and pronounced . The ligature
ṯṯa is written as
ṟ +
ṟa . In those two ligatures, a small
ṟa is written below the first letter (
chillu-n if it is a dead
n). Alternatively, the letter
ṟa is sometimes written to the right of the first letter, making a
digraph (just like used instead of in Greek). The spelling is therefore read either
nṟa (two separate letters) or
nṯa (digraph) depending on the word like in (en̠r̠ōḷ) 'enroll' or (hen̠r̠i) 'Henry' but is always read
nṯa. Similarly, is read either
ṟaṟa or
ṯṯa.
Chandrabindu was like the chandrabindu from other scripts and was used to nasalise the vowel; it was only used for writing Sanskrit and Prakrits. It is archaic.
Other anusvaras was used like the Devanagari and contrasts with the normal anusvara. was not really used in Malayalam but was used in the Grantha script, in it the normal anusvara represents gemination of the next consonant and this anusvara represents an actual linguistic anusvara. Both are archaic. == Numeral system ==