Malayalam Language Guide

Official language in
India
Script
Malayalam
Speakers
35M (2011)

Where it's spoken

Malayalam is the official language of the Indian state of Kerala: an Act of the Kerala state legislature provides for its adoption as the official language of the State and for its use in all official purposes, subject to the provisions of India's constitution. According to a national census, more than thirty-four million people in India returned Malayalam as their mother tongue.

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Script & pronunciation

Malayalam is written in its own script, a Brahmi-derived South Indian abugida in which most letters stand for a consonant plus an inherent vowel; a sign called virama, known in Malayalam as candrakkala, suppresses that inherent vowel or forms a conjunct with the following consonant. Malayalam's letter shapes closely resemble those of Tamil, though Malayalam has a fuller and more complex set of conjunct consonant forms. The script also has a set of letters, called chillu, that stand for a consonant with no vowel at all and never begin a word; this app's cards represent one such chillu letter with the romanization ṉ, as in ഞാൻ (Ñāṉ, "I").

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Grammar essentials

Malayalam's most typical word order is subject–object–verb. The language has six or seven grammatical cases; this app's cards mark one of them, the dative, on the pronoun എനിക്ക് ("to me"), in the phrase എനിക്ക് മലയാളം അറിയില്ല ("I don't know Malayalam"). Negation is formed with a suffix attached to the verb rather than with a separate word placed before it, as in അറിയില്ല ("don't know"), the negative form of "to know" in that same phrase.

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Politeness & etiquette

Malayalam pronouns mark multiple degrees of politeness. This app's cards give an informal second person, നീ ("you", informal), used only with close friends, and a separate polite second person, നിങ്ങൾ ("you", polite); the card for നിങ്ങൾ notes that using നീ with a stranger is rude.

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