Malayalam – മലയാളം

The word “Malayalam ” originally meant a mountainous country where ‘mala’ means the mountain and ‘alam’ means the place. It belongs to the southern group of Dravidian languages along with Tamil, Kota, Kodagu and Malayalam. This language is predominantly spoken in Kerala, the southern state of Kerala and in the neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu, Lakshadweep Islands, Karnataka, Puducherry which is a Union Territory of India and Mahe which is part of Puducherry. Apart from this, a significant number of expatriate population from Kerala are based out in the Gulf countries. Malayalam started to develop as a separate language from the 13th century onwards. While ‘Vattezhuthu Script’ was the script used for Malayalam from the 9th century onwards, the modern script of Malayalam Language evolved from the ‘Grandha Script’ which came into existence by the 16th century. Malayalam, one among the Dravidian languages, most likely originated as a split from Tamil in even more ancient times and became an independent language by AD 9th century. It also has a history of assimilating loanwords from various foreign tongues. Words from English, Dutch, Portuguese, Arabic, Hebrew and several other languages made their way into the local dialect due to the colonial rule and trade history of Kerala with these regions. Today, Malayalam is spoken by almost 38 million people and. has been granted official status in India which is amongst the 22 constitutionally recognized languages.