Malayalam script

Malayalam script (; / ) is a Brahmic abugida used to write Malayalam, the principal language of Kerala, India, spoken by 45 million people. Malayalam 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 India

The Malayalam script resembles Tulu script and Tigalari script, used to write the Tulu language, spoken in coastal Karnataka (Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts) and the northernmost Kasargod district of Kerala. Like many 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 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 has been historically written in several different scripts.

History

Malayalam was first written in Vattezhuthu script, an ancient script of Tamil and Malayalam languages. Modern Malayalam script evolved from the Grantha alphabet, and Vattezhuthu, both of which evolved independently from Tamil-Brahmi script.

Vatteluttu () 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 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. 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. It later evolved into Tigalari-Malayalam script was used by the Malayali, Havyaka Brahmins and Tulu Brahmin people, but was originally only used 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).

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 systematised to some extent by the first half of the 13th century. Hence, Ezhuthachan is also known as The Father of modern Malayalam. used Arya-eluttu to write his Malayalam poems based on Classical Sanskrit literature.

Orthography reform

In 1961, 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 the 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 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.

Recommendations by the committees

1. Use non-ligating vowel signs for u, ū, and r̥

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 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:

ku →
kū →
kr̥ →
nu →
śu →

2. Split uncommon conjuncts with Chandrakkala

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:

g + da → gda
l + ta → lta
ś + na → śna
ś + ma → śma

The ligature () śma is required as an additional letter. For examples, , śmaśanam, is the word for cemetery.

3. Use non-ligating sign for conjoining ra

Any consonant or consonant ligature followed by 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.

kra →
kru →

Current status

Today the reformed orthography, is commonly called put̪iya lipi () and traditional system, pazhaya lipi (). Current print media almost entirely uses reformed orthography. The state-run primary education introduces 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.

Letters

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).

{|class="wikitable" style="margin-left:30px;font-family:sans-serif,'Arial Unicode MS','Noto Sans Malayalam';"

|+Monophthongs

!rowspan="3" style="width:4em"| !!colspan="3"|Short!!colspan="3"|Long

!rowspan="2"|Independent!!colspan="2"|Dependent!!rowspan="2"|Indep.!!colspan="2"|Dependent

!Vowel sign!!Example!!Vowel sign!!Example

|<big></big> a

|(none)

|<big></big> pa

|<big></big> ā

|<big></big>

|<big></big> pā

|<big></big> i

|<big></big>

|<big></big> pi

|<big></big> ī

|<big></big>

|<big></big> pī

|<big></big> u

|<big></big>

|<big></big> pu

|<big></big> ū

|<big></big>

|<big></big> pū

!r̥

|<big></big> r̥

|<big></big>

|<big></big> pr̥

|style="background:#ddd"|<big></big> r̥̄

|style="background:#ddd"|<big></big>

|style="background:#ddd"|<big></big> pr̥̄

|-style="background:#ddd"

!l̥

|<big></big> l̥

|<big style="margin-left:1em"></big>

|<big></big> pl̥

|<big></big> l̥̄

|<big style="margin-left:1em"></big>

|<big></big> pl̥̄

|<big></big> e

|<big></big>

|<big></big> pe

|<big></big> ē

|<big></big>

|<big></big> pē

|<big></big> o

|<big></big>

|<big></big> po

|<big></big> ō

|ോ

|<big></big> pō

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.

{|class="wikitable" style="margin-left:30px;font-family:sans-serif,'Arial Unicode MS','Noto Sans Malayalam'"

|+Diphthongs

!rowspan="2" style="width:4em"| !!rowspan="2"|Independent!!colspan="2"|Dependent

!Vowel sign!!Example

!ai

|<big></big> ai

|<big></big>

|<big></big> pai

!rowspan="2"|au

|rowspan="2"|<big></big> au

|style="background:#ddd;font-family:sans-serif,'Arial Unicode MS','Noto Sans Malayalam'"|<big></big> (archaic)

|style="background:#ddd;font-family:sans-serif,'Arial Unicode MS','Noto Sans Malayalam'"|<big></big> pau

|<big></big> (modern)

|<big></big> pau

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

{|class="wikitable" style="margin-left:30px;font-family:sans-serif,'Arial Unicode MS','Noto Sans Malayalam'"

|+Anusvaram

!Example with അ

!Sign

!Example with consonant

!style="width:4em"|aṁ

|<big></big> aṁ

|<big></big> m̐

|<big></big> paṁ

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

{|class="wikitable" style="margin-left:30px;font-family:sans-serif,'Arial Unicode MS','Noto Sans Malayalam'"

|+Visargam

!Example with അ

!Sign

!Example with consonant

!style="width:4em"|aḥ

|<big></big> aḥ

|<big></big> ḥ

|<big></big> paḥ

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.

thumb|center|800px|Malayalam vowel signs combined with letter <big></big> (ka)

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 ordinary texts both are represented by na .