Type of writing system: Abugida / Syllabic Alphabet in which all consonants have an inherent vowel.

Kerala used to write Malayalam with the Syriac script and useĪ variety of Malayalam known as Suriyani Malayalam in their liturgy. Malaysia, and occasionally by Muslims in Kerala. Malayalam is also regularly written with a version of theĪrabic script by Muslims in Singapore and These changes are not applied consistently so the modern script is often a mixture of traditional and simplified letters. The main change involved writing consonants and diacritics separately rather than as complex characters. Some changes were made to the alphabet over the following centuries, and by the middle of the 19th century the Malayalam alphabet had attained its current form.Īs a result of the difficulties of printing Malayalam, a simplified or reformed version of the script was introduced during the 1970s and 1980s. By the early 13th century it is thought that a systemised Malayalam alphabet had emerged. Ī version of the Grantha alphabet originally used in the Chola kingdom was brought to the southwest of India in the 8th or 9th century and was adapted to write the Malayalam and Tulu languages. The oldest known writing in Malayalam is known as the Edakal-5 inscription, is in the Vatteluttu alphabet, and dates from late 4th century or the early 5th century AD. Malayalam was first written with the Vatteluttu alphabet (വട്ടെഴുത്ത് Vaṭṭeḻuttŭ), which means 'round writing' and developed from the Brahmi script. Original the name referred to the land of the Chera dynasty (2nd century BC - 3rd century AD), which corresponds to modern Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and was later used to refer to the language. The name Malayalam means 'mountain region', and comes from mala (mountain) and alam (region). Malayalam is also known as Alealum, Malayalani, Malayali, Malean, Maliyad, Mallealle or Mopla.

Status: statutory provincial language in Kerala, Lakshadweep and Mahé, Puducherry in India.

Writing system: Malayalam and Arabic scripts (current), Grantha, Vatteluttu and several other scripts (past).

Language family: Dravidian, Southern Dravidian, Tamil-Kannada, Tamil-Kodagu, Tamil-Malayalam.

Bengali letters marathi alphabets