96-512: Manathe Kottaram ( transl. The Castle in the Sky ) is a 1994 Indian Malayalam -language comedy-drama film directed by Sunil and written by Kalabhavan Ansar and Robin. The film was produced by Hameed under the banner of Gemi Movies and distributed by Star Plus Release. It stars Dileep , Nadirshah, Indrans , Harisree Ashokan , and Khushbu . Suresh Gopi makes a cameo appearance. The movie
192-509: A Bhashya (language) where "Dravida and Sanskrit should combine together like ruby and coral, without the least trace of any discord". 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 . The literary works written in Middle Malayalam were heavily influenced by Sanskrit and Prakrit , while comparing them with
288-403: 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 കേരളം ( Kēraḷam ), the vowel sign േ ( ē ) visually appears in the leftmost position, though the vowel ē logically follows the consonant k . The following tables show the independent vowel letters and
384-512: A 7th century poem written by the Tamil poet Sambandar the people of Kerala are referred to as malaiyāḷar (mountain people). The word Malayalam is also said to originate from the words mala , meaning ' mountain ', and alam , meaning ' region ' or '-ship' (as in "township"); Malayalam thus translates directly as 'the mountain region'. The term Malabar was used as an alternative term for Malayalam in foreign trade circles to denote
480-469: 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
576-425: A consonant by default is called an inherent vowel . In Malayalam, its phonetic value is unrounded [ ɐ ] , or [ ə ] 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. Malayalam alphabet is unicase , or does not have
672-668: A distinct language due to geographical separation of Kerala from the Tamil country and the influence of Sanskrit and Prakrit from the Nambudiri Brahmins of the Malabar Coast . The Old Malayalam language was employed in several official records and transactions (at the level of the Chera Perumal kings, as well as the upper-caste ( Nambudiri ) village temples). Most of the inscriptions in Old Malayalam were found from
768-501: A distinct literary language from the western coastal dialect of Middle Tamil 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 . The Sangam works can be considered as the ancient predecessor of Malayalam. Some scholars however believe that both Tamil and Malayalam developed during
864-409: A doubled consonant is denoted by a triangle sign below a consonant letter. In kya ക്യ , a variant form of ya ( ്യ ) is placed after the full form of ka ക , just like ki കി is written ka ക followed by the vowel sign i ി . In other words, the variant form of ya ( ്യ ) used after a consonant letter can be considered as a diacritic. Since it is placed after the base character, it
960-620: 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 ( Paḻaya Malayāḷam ), an inscriptional language found in Kerala from circa 9th to circa 13th century CE,
1056-574: 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 . Variations in intonation patterns, vocabulary, and distribution of grammatical and phonological elements are observable along
SECTION 10
#17331158371471152-672: A poet from around the 16th century, used Arya-eluttu to write his Malayalam poems based on Classical Sanskrit literature. For a few letters missing in Arya-eluttu ( ḷa , ḻa , ṟa ), he used Vatteluttu. His works became unprecedentedly popular to the point that the Malayali people eventually started to call him the father of the Malayalam language, which also popularised Arya-eluttu as a script to write Malayalam. However, Grantha did not have distinctions between e and ē , and between o and ō , as it
1248-410: A pure consonant, but represents a consonant + a short vowel /a/ by default. For example, ക 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
1344-685: A spirit of brotherhood. മനുഷ്യരെല്ലാവരും തുല്യാവകാശങ്ങളോടും അന്തസ്സോടും സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യത്തോടുംകൂടി ജനിച്ചിട്ടുള്ളവരാണ്. അന്യോന്യം ഭ്രാതൃഭാവത്തോടെ പെരുമാറുവാനാണ് മനുഷ്യന് വിവേകബുദ്ധിയും മനസാക്ഷിയും സിദ്ധമായിരിക്കുന്നത്. manuṣyarellāvaruṁ tulyāvakāśaṅṅaḷōṭuṁ antassōṭuṁ svātantryattōṭuṅkūṭi janicciṭṭuḷḷavarāṇŭ. anyōnyaṁ bhrātr̥bhāvattōṭe perumāṟuvānāṇŭ manuṣyanŭ vivēkabuddhiyuṁ manasākṣiyuṁ siddhamāyirikkunnatŭ. /manuʂjaɾellaːʋaɾum t̪uljaːʋakaːʃaŋŋaɭoːʈum an̪t̪assoːʈum sʋaːt̪an̪tɾjat̪t̪oːʈuŋkuːʈi d͡ʒanit͡ʃt͡ʃiʈʈuɭɭaʋaɾaːɳɨ̆ ǁ anjoːnjam bʱraːt̪rɨ̆bʱaːʋat̪t̪oːʈe peɾumaːruʋaːnaːɳɨ̆ manuʂjanɨ̆ ʋiʋeːkabud̪d̪ʱijum manasaːkʂijum sid̪d̪ʱamaːjiɾikkun̪ːat̪ɨ̆ ǁ/ Malayalam has
1440-755: Is a Brahmic script used commonly to write Malayalam , which is the principal language of Kerala , India , spoken by 45 million people in the world. It is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic . Malayalam script is also widely used for writing Sanskrit texts in Kerala. The Malayalam script bears high similarity with Tulu Script and Tigalari script , which
1536-444: Is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry ( Mahé district ) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam was designated a " Classical Language of India " in 2013. Malayalam has official language status in Kerala, Lakshadweep and Puducherry ( Mahé ), and is also the primary spoken language of Lakshadweep. Malayalam
1632-537: Is a Vatteluttu alphabet extended with symbols from the Grantha alphabet to represent Indo-Aryan loanwords . The script is also used to write several minority languages such as Paniya , Betta Kurumba , and Ravula . The Malayalam language itself was historically written in several different scripts. Malayalam was first written in the Tamil-Brahmi script, an ancient script of Tamil and Malayalam languages. However,
1728-649: Is about four young men who are huge admirers of actress Khushboo. The four meeting the actress and a series of events taking place form the crux of the movie. Four struggling young men who were big fans of movie actress Khushboo finally get a chance to meet and befriend her when she moves into the mansion next door. Through her, Dileep also gets a chance to star in a movie. The film's soundtrack contains five songs, all composed by Berny Ignatius , with lyrics by Gireesh Puthenchery . Malayalam Malayalam ( / ˌ m æ l ə ˈ j ɑː l ə m / ; മലയാളം , Malayāḷam , IPA: [mɐlɐjaːɭɐm] )
1824-752: Is also a considerable Malayali population in the Persian Gulf regions, especially in Dubai , Kuwait and Doha . For the consonants and vowels, the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbol is given, followed by the Malayalam character and the ISO 15919 transliteration. The current Malayalam script bears high similarity with Tigalari script , which was used for writing the Tulu language , spoken in coastal Karnataka ( Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts) and
1920-537: Is also credited with developing the Malayalam script into the current form through the intermixing and modification of the erstwhile scripts of Vatteluttu , Kolezhuthu , and Grantha script , which were used to write the inscriptions and literary works of Old and Middle Malayalam. He further eliminated excess and unnecessary letters from the modified script. Hence, Ezhuthachan is also known as The Father of modern Malayalam . The development of modern Malayalam script
2016-412: Is based on the book Kerala Panineeyam written by A. R. Raja Raja Varma in late 19th century CE. The declensional paradigms for some common nouns and pronouns are given below. As Malayalam is an agglutinative language, it is difficult to delineate the cases strictly and determine how many there are, although seven or eight is the generally accepted number. Alveolar plosives and nasals (although
SECTION 20
#17331158371472112-415: Is further followed by another consonant letter, for example, ma മ , the result may look like ന്മ , which represents nma as na + virama + ma . In this case, two elements n ന് and ma മ are simply placed one by one, side by side. Alternatively, nma can be also written as a ligature ന്മ . Generally, when a dead consonant letter C 1 and another consonant letter C 2 are conjoined,
2208-512: Is influenced by Tamil. Labels such as "Nampoothiri Dialect", "Mappila Dialect", and "Nasrani Dialect" refer to overall patterns constituted by the sub-dialects spoken by the subcastes or sub-groups of each such caste. The most outstanding features of the major communal dialects of Malayalam are summarized below: 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
2304-511: Is inserted, as in നു് (= ന + ു + ് ). According to one author, this alternative form is historically more correct, though the simplified form without a vowel sign u is common nowadays. This means that the same spelling ന് may represent either n or nŭ depending on the context. Generally, it is nŭ at the end of a word, and n elsewhere; നു് always represents nŭ . The virama of Tigalari script behave similarly to Malayalam. Virama has three functions: to suppress
2400-425: Is neither ISO tha nor Unicode THA , but tha in this sense ( ത ). The ISCII (IS 13194:1991) character names are given in parentheses when different from the above. A chillu , or a chillaksharam ( ചില്ലക്ഷരം , cillakṣaram ), 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
2496-518: 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, however, chillu letters are treated as independent characters, encoded atomically. Six independent chillu letters (0D7A..0D7F) had been encoded in Unicode 5.1., three additional chillu letters (0D54..0D56) were encoded with
2592-651: Is phonemic and all of the vowels have minimal pairs for example kaṭṭi "thickness", kāṭṭi "showed", koṭṭi "tapped", kōṭṭi "twisted, stick, marble", er̠i "throw", ēr̠i "lots" Some speakers also have /æː/, /ɔː/, /ə/ from English loanwords e.g. /bæːŋgɨ̆/ "bank" but most speakers replace it with /aː/, /eː/ or /ja/; /oː/ or /aː/ and /e/ or /a/. The following text is Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . 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
2688-456: Is sometimes disputed by scholars. They regard the Chera Perumal inscriptional language as a diverging dialect or variety of contemporary Tamil . The oldest extant literary work in Malayalam distinct from the Tamil tradition is Ramacharitam (late 12th or early 13th century). The earliest script used to write Malayalam was the Vatteluttu script . The current Malayalam script is based on
2784-399: Is sometimes referred to as a post-base form. An exception is yya യ്യ (see above). An exception is vva വ്വ (see above). The ligature nṯa is written as n ന് + ṟa റ and pronounced /nda/ . The ligature ṯṯa is written as ṟ റ് + ṟa റ . In those two ligatures, a small ṟa റ is written below the first letter ( chillu-n if it is a dead n ). Alternatively,
2880-555: Is spoken by 35 million people in India. Malayalam is also spoken by linguistic minorities in the neighbouring states; with a significant number of speakers in the Kodagu and Dakshina Kannada districts of Karnataka , and Kanyakumari , Coimbatore and Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu. It is also spoken by the Malayali Diaspora worldwide, especially in the Persian Gulf countries , due to
2976-531: Is the Malayalam Varthamanappusthakam , written by Paremmakkal Thoma Kathanar in 1785. Robert Caldwell describes the extent of Malayalam in the 19th century as extending from the vicinity of Kumbla in the north where it supersedes with Tulu to Kanyakumari in the south, where it begins to be superseded by Tamil , beside the inhabited islands of Lakshadweep in the Arabian Sea . In
Manathe Kottaram - Misplaced Pages Continue
3072-438: Is the earliest attested form of Malayalam. The beginning of the development of Old Malayalam from a western coastal dialect of Middle Tamil can be dated to circa 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
3168-571: Is the earliest example, dating from about 830 CE. During the medieval period, the Tigalari script that was used for writing Tulu in South Canara , and Sanskrit in the adjacent Malabar region , was very similar to the modern Malayalam script. In the Tamil state, the modern Tamil script had supplanted Vattezhuthu by the 15th century, but in the Malabar region, Vattezhuthu remained in general use up to
3264-674: The saṁvr̥tōkāram , 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. Some authors say that Malayalam has no diphthongs and /ai̯, au̯/ are clusters of V+glide j/ʋ while others consider all V+glide clusters to be diphthongs /ai̯, aːi̯, au̯, ei̯, oi̯, i̯a/ as in kai, vāypa, auṣadhaṁ, cey, koy and kāryaṁ Vowel length
3360-430: 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 ,
3456-695: The Government of Kerala reformed the orthography of Malayalam by a government order to the education department. The objective was to simplify the script for print and typewriting technology of that time, by reducing the number of glyphs required. In 1967, the government appointed a committee headed by Sooranad Kunjan Pillai , who was the editor of the Malayalam Lexicon project. It reduced number of glyphs required for Malayalam printing from around 1000 to around 250. Above committee's recommendations were further modified by another committee in 1969. This proposal
3552-959: 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
3648-610: The Namboothiri and Nair dialects have a common nature, the Arabi Malayalam is among the most divergent of dialects, differing considerably from literary Malayalam. Jeseri is a dialect of Malayalam spoken mainly in the Union territory of Lakshadweep and Beary is spoken in Tulu Nadu which are nearer to Kerala. Of the total 33,066,392 Malayalam speakers in India in 2001, 33,015,420 spoke
3744-522: The Pathinettara Kavikal (Eighteen and a half poets) in the court of the Zamorin of Calicut , also belong to Middle Malayalam. The literary works of this period were heavily influenced by Manipravalam , which was a combination of contemporary Tamil and Sanskrit . The word Mani-Pravalam literally means Diamond-Coral or Ruby-Coral . The 14th-century Lilatilakam text states Manipravalam to be
3840-574: The Voiced retroflex approximant (/ɻ/) which is seen in both Tamil and the standard form of Malayalam, are not seen in the northern dialects of Malayalam, as in Kannada . For example, the words Vazhi (Path), Vili (Call), Vere (Another), and Vaa (Come/Mouth), become Bayi , Bili , Bere , and Baa in the northern dialects of Malayalam. Similarly the Malayalam spoken in the southern districts of Kerala, i.e., Thiruvananthapuram - Kollam - Pathanamthitta area
3936-583: The Yerava dialect and 31,329 spoke non-standard regional variations like Eranadan . 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
Manathe Kottaram - Misplaced Pages Continue
4032-463: The nasalization where the preceding vowel was changed into a nasalised vowel , and hence is traditionally treated as a kind of vowel sign. In Malayalam, however, it simply represents a consonant /m/ after a vowel, though this /m/ may be assimilated to another nasal consonant . It is a special consonant letter, different from a "normal" consonant letter, in that it is never followed by an inherent vowel or another vowel. In general, an anusvara at
4128-459: The northern districts of Kerala , those lie adjacent to Tulu Nadu . Old Malayalam was mostly written in Vatteluttu script (with Pallava/Southern Grantha characters). Old Malayalam had several features distinct from the contemporary Tamil, which include the nasalisation of adjoining sounds, substitution of palatal sounds for dental sounds, contraction of vowels, and the rejection of gender verbs. Ramacharitam and Thirunizhalmala are
4224-410: The ്ര was attached to the main consonant, now its detached and placed to the left. ഺ was made by A. R. Raja Raja Varma and it was not used as a single letter, in his orthography റ്റ (ṯṯ) was written as ഺ്ഺ and ന്റ (ṉḏ) as ഩ്ഺ . Before chandrakkala was made, there were two other viramas used simultaneously, the vertical bar virama ഻ and circular virama ഼ . The vertical bar virama
4320-725: The 13th and 14th centuries of the Common Era . The Sandesha Kavya s of 14th century CE written in Manipravalam language include Unnuneeli Sandesam . Kannassa Ramayanam and Kannassa Bharatham by Rama Panikkar of the Niranam poets who lived between 1350 and 1450, are representative of this language. Ulloor has opined that Rama Panikkar holds the same position in Malayalam literature that Edmund Spenser does in English literature . The Champu Kavyas written by Punam Nambudiri, one among
4416-476: The 16th century CE, Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan from the Kingdom of Tanur and Poonthanam Nambudiri from the Kingdom of Valluvanad , followed the new trend initiated by Cherussery in their poems. The Adhyathmaramayanam Kilippattu and Mahabharatham Kilippattu , written by Ezhuthachan, and Jnanappana , written by Poonthanam, are also included in the earliest form of Modern Malayalam. Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan
4512-505: The 17th century, or the 18th century. A variant form of this script, Kolezhuthu , was used until about the 19th century mainly in the Malabar - Cochin area. Another variant form, Malayanma , was used in the south of Thiruvananthapuram . 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
4608-401: 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
4704-517: 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
4800-456: The Malayalam writing to the pupils in reformed script only and the books are printed accordingly. However, the digital media uses both traditional and reformed in almost equal proportions as the fonts for both the orthographies are commonly available. The basic characters can be classified as follows: 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
4896-468: The Vatteluttu script, which was extended with Grantha script letters to adopt Indo-Aryan loanwords. It bears high similarity with the Tigalari script , a historical script that was used to write the Tulu language in South Canara , and Sanskrit in the adjacent Malabar region . The modern Malayalam grammar is based on the book Kerala Panineeyam written by A. R. Raja Raja Varma in late 19th century CE. The first travelogue in any Indian language
SECTION 50
#17331158371474992-456: 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 . 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
5088-521: The authorship of the medieval work Keralolpathi , which describes the Parashurama legend and the departure of the final Cheraman Perumal king to Mecca , to Thunchaththu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan. Kunchan Nambiar introduced a new literary form called Thullal , and Unnayi Variyar introduced reforms in Attakkatha literature . The printing, prose literature, and Malayalam journalism , developed after
5184-552: The basic consonant letters of the Malayalam script, with romanizations in ISO 15919 , transcriptions in IPA , and Unicode CHARACTER NAMES . 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. Those alternative names are based on the traditional romanization used by the Malayali people. For example, tha in " Thiruvanan tha puram "
5280-541: The conjoining ra is represented by a cursive tail attached to the consonant or the consonant-ligature. In the reformed script, this consonant sign would be disconnected from the base and represented as a left-bracket like symbol placed on the left side of the cluster. Today the reformed orthography, is commonly called put̪iya lipi ( Malayalam : പുതിയ ലിപി ) and traditional system, pazhaya lipi ( Malayalam : പഴയ ലിപി ). Current print media almost entirely uses reformed orthography. The state run primary education introduces
5376-720: 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
5472-411: The development of the two languages out of "Proto-Dravidian" or "Proto-Tamil-Malayalam" either in the prehistoric period or in the middle of the first millennium A.D. , although this is generally rejected by historical linguists. The Quilon Syrian copper plates of 849/850 CE are considered by some to be the oldest available inscription written in Old Malayalam . However, the existence of Old Malayalam
5568-494: 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 . Several consonant-consonant ligatures are used commonly even in the new orthography. The ligature mpa മ്പ was historically derived from npa ന്പ . The ligatures cca , bba , yya , and vva are special in that
5664-412: The earliest form of the Malayalam script was used, which seems to have been systematised to some extent by the first half of the 13th century. It is Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan who is also credited with the development of Malayalam script into the current form through the intermixing and modification of the erstwhile scripts of Vatteluttu , Kolezhuthu , and Grantha script , which were used to write
5760-499: The early Middle Tamil period, thus making independent descent impossible. For example, Old Tamil lacks the first and second person plural pronouns with the ending kaḷ . It is in the Early Middle Tamil stage that kaḷ first appears: Indeed, most features of Malayalam morphology are derivable from a form of speech corresponding to early Middle Tamil. Robert Caldwell , in his 1856 book " A Comparative Grammar of
5856-513: The early 19th century CE. 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
SECTION 60
#17331158371475952-432: The end of a word in an Indian language is transliterated as ṁ in ISO 15919 , but a Malayalam anusvara at the end of a word is transliterated as m without a dot. A visargam ( വിസർഗം , visargam ), or visarga , represents a consonant /h/ 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. The following tables show
6048-405: The end of a word, the same symbol sometimes represents a very short vowel, known as "half-u", or "samvruthokaram" ( സംവൃതോകാരം , saṁvr̥tōkāram ), or kuṯṯiyal ukaram ( കുറ്റിയൽ ഉകരം ). The exact pronunciation of this vowel varies from dialect to dialect, but it is approximately [ɯ̽] or [ɨ] , and transliterated as ŭ (for example, ന na → ന് nŭ ). Optionally, a vowel sign u
6144-432: The inherent vowel (as the halant of Devanagari); to form conjunct consonants; to represent the half-u. Devanagari supports half-u for Kashmiri; for example നു് is written as नॖ . 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, If this n ന്
6240-440: The inscriptions and literary works of Old and Middle Malayalam. He further eliminated excess and unnecessary letters from the modified script. Hence, Ezhuthachan is also known as The Father of modern Malayalam . The development of modern Malayalam script was also heavily influenced by the Tigalari script , which was used to write the Tulu language , due to the influence of Tuluva Brahmins in Kerala. Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan,
6336-498: The large populations of Malayali expatriates there. They are a significant population in each city in India including Mumbai , Bengaluru , Chennai , Delhi , Hyderabad etc. The origin of Malayalam remains a matter of dispute among scholars. The mainstream view holds that Malayalam descends from a western coastal dialect of early Middle Tamil and separated from it sometime between the 9th and 13th centuries. A second view argues for
6432-528: The latter-half of the 18th century CE. Modern literary movements in Malayalam literature began in the late 19th century with the rise of the famous Modern Triumvirate consisting of Kumaran Asan , 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
6528-460: The letter ṟa is sometimes written to the right of the first letter, making a digraph (just like ωι used instead of ῳ in Greek). The spelling ൻറ is therefore read either nṟa (two separate letters) or nṯa (digraph) depending on the word like in എൻറോൾ (en̠r̠ōḷ) 'enroll' or ഹെൻറി (hen̠r̠i) 'Henry' but ന്റ is always read nṯa . Similarly, ററ is read either ṟaṟa or ṯṯa . In
6624-462: The modern Malayalam literature . The Middle Malayalam was succeeded by Modern Malayalam ( Aadhunika Malayalam ) by 15th century CE. The poem Krishnagatha written by Cherusseri Namboothiri , who was the court poet of the king Udaya Varman Kolathiri (1446–1475) of Kolathunadu , is written in modern Malayalam. The language used in Krishnagatha is the modern spoken form of Malayalam. During
6720-648: The modern Malayalam script does not distinguish the latter from the dental nasal ) are underlined for clarity, following the convention of the National Library at Kolkata romanization . Vocative forms are given in parentheses after the nominative , as the only pronominal vocatives that are used are the third person ones, which only occur in compounds. വിഭക്തി സംബോധന പ്രതിഗ്രാഹിക സംബന്ധിക ഉദ്ദേശിക പ്രായോജിക ആധാരിക സംയോജിക Malayalam script Malayalam script ( Malayāḷa lipi ; IPA: [mɐlɐjaːɭɐ liβ̞i] / Malayalam : മലയാളമെഴുത്ത് )
6816-399: The modern Malayalam literature. The life and works of Edasseri Govindan Nair have assumed greater socio-literary significance after his death and Edasseri is now recognised as an important poet of Malayalam. Later, writers like O. V. Vijayan , Kamaladas , M. Mukundan , Arundhati Roy , and Vaikom Muhammed Basheer , have gained international recognition. Malayalam has also borrowed
6912-478: The modern Malayalam script evolved from the Grantha alphabet , and Vattezhuthu , both of which evolved from the Tamil-Brahmi , but independently. Vatteluttu ( Malayalam : വട്ടെഴുത്ത് , romanized : Vaṭṭeḻuttŭ , lit. 'round writing') is a script that had evolved from Tamil-Brahmi and was once used extensively in the southern part of present-day Tamil Nadu and in Kerala . The Vazhappally inscription issued by Rajashekhara Varman
7008-434: 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
7104-553: The northernmost Kasargod district of Kerala. Tigalari script was also used for writing Sanskrit in Malabar region . Malayalam has also borrowed the Sanskrit diphthongs of /ai̯/ (represented in Malayalam as ഐ , ai) and /au̯/ (represented in Malayalam as ഔ , au) although these mostly occur only in Sanskrit loanwords. Traditionally (as in Sanskrit), four vocalic consonants (usually pronounced in Malayalam as consonants followed by
7200-633: 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. They are as follows: According to Ethnologue, the dialects are: Malabar, Nagari-Malayalam, North Kerala, Central Kerala, South Kerala, Kayavar, Namboodiri , Nair , Mappila , Beary , Jeseri , Yerava , Pulaya, Nasrani , and Kasargod . The community dialects are: Namboodiri , Nair , Arabi Malayalam , Pulaya, and Nasrani . Whereas both
7296-621: The people of Kerala usually referred to their language as "Tamil", and both terms overlapped into the colonial period . 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 . The mainstream view holds that Malayalam began to grow as
7392-410: The possible literary works of Old Malayalam found so far. 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
7488-493: The prehistoric period from a common ancestor, "Proto-Tamil-Malayalam", and that the notion of Malayalam being a "daughter" of Tamil is misplaced. This is based on the fact that Malayalam and several Dravidian languages on the Western Coast have common archaic features which are not found even in the oldest historical forms of literary Tamil. Despite this, Malayalam shares many common innovations with Tamil that emerged during
7584-567: The publication of Unicode 9.0. The virama in Malayalam is called candrakkala (chandrakkala), it has two functions: Chandrakkala ് ( ചന്ദ്രക്കല , 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, ക ka → ക് k ). This kind of diacritic is common in Indic scripts, generically called virama in Sanskrit, or halant in Hindi. At
7680-404: The result may be either: If the result is fully or half-conjoined, the (conceptual) virama which made C 1 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 C 1 . The glyphs for nma has a visible virama if not ligated ( ന്മ ), but if ligated, the virama disappears ( ന്മ ). Usually
7776-409: The right of the consonant letter, while they often make consonant-vowel ligatures in the traditional orthography. It is important to note the vowel duration as it can be used to differentiate words that would otherwise be the same. For example, /kalam/ means "earthenware pot" while /kaːlam/ means "time" or "season". An anusvaram ( അനുസ്വാരം anusvāram ), or an anusvara , originally denoted
7872-533: 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 . In all, Malayalis made up 3.22% of the total Indian population in 2011. Of the total 34,713,130 Malayalam speakers in India in 2011, 33,015,420 spoke the standard dialects, 19,643 spoke
7968-578: 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 language Malayalam was alternatively called Alealum , Malayalani , Malayali , Malabari , Malean , Maliyad , Mallealle , and Kerala Bhasha until
8064-486: The standard dialects, 19,643 spoke the Yerava dialect and 31,329 spoke non-standard regional variations like Eranadan . 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 . For example, the words those start with the sound "V" in Malayalam become "B" in these districts as in Kannada . Also
8160-573: The total number of Malayalam speakers in India, and 97.03% of the total population of the state. There were a further 701,673 (1.14% of the total number) in Karnataka , 957,705 (2.70%) 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
8256-643: The traditional orthography, a dead consonant r before a consonant sometimes takes an above-base form, known as a dot reph , which looks like a short vertical line or a dot. Generally, a chillu-r is used instead of a dot reph in the reformed orthography. In the pre-1971 orthography, consonant + the vowels u, ū, r̥ were written as ligatures, post-1971 they are written with symbols after the letter. They can be still seen in old signs and used by people who learned to write before 1971. r̥̄ l̥ l̥̄ (which are not part of modern orthography) were also written as ligatures but there were not any words with l̥̄ even in Sanskrit; r̥̄
8352-439: Was also heavily influenced by the Tigalari script , which was used to write Sanskrit , due to the influence of Tuluva Brahmins in Kerala. The language used in the Arabi Malayalam works of the 16th–17th century CE is a mixture of Modern Malayalam and Arabic . They follow the syntax of modern Malayalam, though written in a modified form of Arabic script , which is known as Arabi Malayalam script . P. Shangunny Menon ascribes
8448-422: Was as an alphabet to write a Sanskrit language. The Malayalam script as it is today was modified in the middle of the 19th century when Hermann Gundert invented the new vowel signs to distinguish them. By the 19th century, old scripts like Kolezhuthu had been supplanted by Arya-eluttu – that is the current Malayalam script. Nowadays, it is widely used in the press of the Malayali population in Kerala. In 1971,
8544-482: 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 ( ആര്യ എഴുത്ത് , Ārya eḻuttŭ ), meaning "Arya writing" (Sanskrit is Indo-Aryan language while Malayalam is a Dravidian language ). Vatteluttu was in general use, but was not suitable for literature where many Sanskrit words were used. Like Tamil-Brahmi, it
8640-631: Was later accepted by major newspapers in January 1971. The reformed script came into effect on 15 April 1971 (the Kerala New Year ), by a government order released on 23 March 1971. In the traditional orthography that had been taught in the primary education system before the reforms, any consonant or consonant ligature followed by the vowel sign u , ū , or r̥ were represented by a cursive consonant-vowel ligature. The glyph of each consonant had its own way of ligating with these vowel signs. This irregularity
8736-445: Was only used grammatically instead of r̥ in Sanskrit so it was not used either; there is only one root with l̥ in Sanskrit कॢप्त which was loaned into Malayalam as കൢപ്തം . Although there are consonant-consonant ligatures used even now like ന്ത and ണ്ട almost all clusters were written as ligatures before 1971, most of the time the second consonant was written to the bottom right of the first consonant, in consonant + r clusters
8832-456: 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 ( വൈശികതന്ത്രം , Vaiśikatantram ), dates back to the 12th century, where
8928-434: Was simplified in the reformed script. Thus, a vowel sign or consonant sign would always have a disconnected symbol that did not fuse with the base consonant. Examples: Also, most of traditional consonant-consonant ligatures, especially the less common ones only used to write words of Sanskrit origin, were split into non-ligated forms with explicit chandrakkala . For example: Any consonant or consonant ligature followed by
9024-543: 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
9120-402: Was used exclusively for loanwords and circular virama just for native words. Before the vertical bar virama used to cut through the main consonant and it led to the creation of the chillu letters. It was sometimes confused with the dot reph ൎ since they look similar but both of them are used for different purposes (see above for dot reph). ഁ was like the chandrabindu from other scripts and
9216-433: Was used for writing the Tulu language , spoken in coastal Karnataka ( Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts) and the northernmost Kasargod district of Kerala. Like many other Indic scripts, it is an alphasyllabary ( abugida ), a writing system that is partially "alphabetic" and partially syllable-based. The modern Malayalam alphabet has 15 vowel letters, 42 consonant letters, and a few other symbols. The Malayalam script
#146853