Malayalam alphabet

Origin

Malayalam first appeared in writing in the vazhappalli inscription which dates from about 830 AD. In the early thirteenth century the Malayalam script began to develop from a script known as vattezhuthu (round writing), a descendant of the Brahmi script.

As a result of the difficulties of printing Malayalam, a simplified or reformed version of the script was introduced during the 1970s and 1980s. The main change involved writing consonants and diacritics separately rather than as complex characters. These changes are not applied consistently applied so the modern script is often mixture of traditional and simplified characteres

Malayalam is also regularly written with a version of the Arabic script by Muslims in Singapore and Malaysia, and occasionally by Muslims in Kerala.

Notable features

This is a syllabic alphabet in which all consonants have an inherent vowel. Diacritics, which can appear above, below, before or after the consonant they belong to, are used to change the inherent vowel.
When they appear the the beginning of a syllable, vowels are written as independent letters.
When certain consonants occur together, special conjunct symbols are used which combine the essential parts of each letter.

Used to write:

Malayalam, a Dravidian language with about 35 million speakers. It is spoken mainly in the south west of India, particularly in Kerala, the Laccadive Islands and neighboring states, and also in Bahrain, Fiji, Israel, Malaysia, Qatar, Singapore, UAE and the UK.

Malayalam alphabet

Vowels (svaram)

Malayalam vowels

Vowel diacritics with ka

Malayalam vowel diacritics ka

Note

When combined with vowel diacritics some consonants change shape. This doesn't happen in the simplified version of the script (in blue)

Consonants (vyanjanam)

Malayalam consonants

A selection of conjunct consonants

Malayalam conjunct consonants

Numerals

Malayalam numerals

The simplified versions are shown in blue.

Sample text

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Malayalam

Transliteration

Manuṣyarellāvarum tulyāvakāśan̄n̄aḷōṭum antassōṭum svātantryattōtumkūṭi janiccavarāṇ. Anyōnyam bhrātrubāvattoṭe perumāṛuvānāṇa manuṣyannu vivēkabuddhiyum manaṣṣākṣiyum siddhamāyirikkunnat.

Listen to a recording of this text by Vijay Prabhu

Translation

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 a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Longer sample text (Tower of Babel)

Links

Free Malayalam fonts
http://www.keralax.com/font/font.htm
http://varamozhi.sourceforge.net
http://www.clickeralam.org/product.html

Your Friendly Malayalam Tutor - basic Malayalam lessons
http://www.geocities.com/malatutor/

Online English-Malayalam dictionary
http://malayalamdictionary.com

The Bible in Malayalam (Unicode)
http://216.156.35.218/Default.asp

Malayalam Manorama Newspaper
http://www.malayalamanorama.com

Online Malayalam transliterator
http://www.writeka.com

Send email in Indian languages
http://www.rediff.com
http://www.sify.com

Other syllabic alphabets

Ahom, Balinese, Batak, Bengali, Brahmi, Buhid, Burmese, Cham, Dehong Dai, Devanagari, Ethiopic, Grantha, Gujarati, Gurmukhi (Punjabi), Hanuno'o, Hmong, Javanese, Kannada, Kharosthi, Khmer, Lanna, Lao, Lepcha, Limbu, Lontara/Makasar, Malayalam, Manpuri, Modi, New Tai Lue, Oriya, Phags-pa, Ranjana, Redjang, Sharda, Siddham, Sinhala, Sorang Sompeng, Sourashtra, Soyombo, Syloti Nagri, Tagalog, Tagbanwa, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Tocharian, Varang Kshiti