Malayalam

"The Union Cabinet decided to grant the coveted recognition to the language, spoken by 40 million Malayalis all over the world. Malayalam now joins Tamil, Kannada and Telugu, all members of the Dravidian linguistic family, as a classical language of India."

"The Grantha alphabet is a descendant of the Brahmi alphabet and started to emerge during the 5th century AD....Total alphabets are about 48 in number, without the Dravidian characters like the ra and zha. Granthakshara was used to write Sanskrit in Kerala before Ezhuthachan's time. Vattezhuthu used as Malayalam alphabet during that time is similar to Tamil."

"Vattezhuthu was the early script used to write Malayalam. Total alphabets|alphabets were about 30."

"From the Vattezhuthu was derived another script called the kolezhuthu. This script was more commonly used in the Cochin and Malabar areas than in Travancore. Yet another script derived from the vattezhuthu was the Malayanma, which was commonly used south to Thiruvananthapuram. Malayanma also does not differ fundamentally from the vattezhuthu."

"The absence of character combinations, the vowels a and o and conventions for symbols were real difficulties in Vattezhuthu. The trouble with kolezhuthu was still more, for it had regional variations also. And in the case Malayanma, the complexity of the script, Tamil usage and conventional abbreviations for words made it unintelligible to the rest of the region. With all these three scripts in current use the writing and reading of Malayalam must indeed have been a difficult affair."

"Malayalam is an Indian language spoken by 40 million people with its own script spoken in the south western state of Kerala."

"Malayalam has a rich literary tradition. The Malayalam script has a large number of similar characters making the recognition pattern challenging."

"Malayalam is one of the five major languages of the Dravidian language family, which also includes Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Tulu."

"The Malayalam speakers – referred to as Malayalis – have been strongly peripatetic. Hence, the language is heard widely all over India as well as in the Persian Gulf countries, Europe, Australia, and the North America."

"The language started as a variant of Tamil that was spoken in regions of Kerala, and evolved its own form, grammar, and vocabulary by 500 CE. A significant transition from Tamil happened with the introduction of a form of literature called Manipravalam, which freely mixed words from Sanskrit into the language."

"Most words in traditional Malayalam has its roots in either Tamil or Sanskrit. Due to its lineage to both Sanskrit and Tamil, the w:Malayalam alphabetMalayalam alphabet has the largest number of letters among the Indian languages."

"Kerala had a flourishing spice trade with Europe, Middle east and Egypt for over 2000 years. This long-standing exposure led to words and expressions being borrowed from a variety of languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Latin. The most significant influence in the recent past has been English language, which has contributed a large number of words in everyday use, mostly in its original form."

"Malayalam has a strong literary history, which is centuries old and is very rich in several genres of literature. The earliest known literary composition in the language is from the 13th century. Notably, the work Ramacharitam by Cheeraman is recognized by scholars as the first book in Malayalam. The first Malayalam grammar/literary treatise, Leelathilakam, was compiled in the 14th century. Malayalam also has a rich vocabulary, with around 90,000 words, listed in the dictionary ShabdathArAvalli."

"The script and the linguistic structure of Malayalam was formalized by Thunchathu Ramanujan Ezhuthassan, who lived in the 16th century."

"The intermediate development of the literature was primarily through the lyrics for performing art forms of Kathakali, Koothu, and Thullal and translations of the mythological stories. In fact, one of the first works in the language, Bhashakautilyam, from the 12th century, is a translation of Arthashastra from Sanskrit."

"A variety of literary styles in prose and poems, including mythical, satirical, fictional, narrative, and travelogue, were created in Malayalam before the 18th century. The literary journals such as Bhasha Poshini and Vidya Vinodini, which came into existence towards the end of the 19th century, played a critical role in popularising the literary culture and criticism in the language."

"The modern day literature in Malayalam is as evolved and complex as that of any other languages in the world."

"The recognition of printed or handwritten Malayalam has to deal with a large number of complex glyphs, some of which are highly similar to each other. However, recent advances in classifier design, combined with the increase in processing power of computers have all but solved the primary recognition problem."

"A characteristic of the Malayalam language is the common usage of compound words created from multiple root words, using the sandhi rules. This creates a combinatorial explosion in the number of distinct words in the language."

"Malayalam evolved either from a western dialect of Tamil or from the a branch of Proto-Dravidian from which modern Tamil also evolved. The earliest record of the language is an inscription dated 830 AD."

"An. early extensive influx of Sanskrit words influenced the Malayalam script (derived from the Grantha script, itself derived from Brahmi), it has letters to represent all the Sanskrit sounds besides the Dravidian sounds."

"The language also uses a script called Koleluttu (Rod script), which is derived from the Tamil writing system. The Tamil Grantha script is used as well."

"Like the Dravidian languages generally, its clause has a subject-object verb word order; it has a nominative-accusative case-marking pattern; its Malayalam language pronominal system has “natural” gender, non-human is a neuter and masculine/feminine is distinguished (fir humans) according to sex."

"But unlike other Dravidian languages, its finite verb is inflected only for tense, not for person, number, and gender."

"Malayalam is spoken mainly in the southwestern southern coast of Kerala and the Union Territory of Lakshadweep; but bilingual communities in contiguous parts of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu also speak it.... It has regional and caste-based dialects. A distinction, called diglossia, exists between the formal, literary language and the colloquial tongue."