Malayalam

Spoken in

• Dravidian languages Süddravidische languages Malayalam

Ml

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Malayalam ( മലയാളം Malayalam ), is a language from the Dravidian language family. It is spoken by 33 million people, mainly in the state of Kerala, on the southwest coast of India and is closely related to Tamil.

Linguistic relationship and history

Malayalam belongs to the family of the mainly popular in South India Dravidian languages. Besides Tamil, Telugu and Kannada Malayalam is one of the four major Dravidian languages. Within this family of languages ​​Malayalam belongs to süddravidischen branch. The closest relative of Tamil is Malayalam, it developed out of which only between 800 and 1000 AD as a separate language. As the oldest of the Malayalam language certificate applies the Vazhappalli inscription from the 9th century. The oldest literary work is the Ramacharitam from the 12th century. The first Malayalam grammar, Lilatilakam was written in Sanskrit in the 14th century. Unlike the closely related Tamil and even more than the other Dravidian languages ​​Telugu and Kannada Malayalam literature is strongly influenced by Sanskrit, the classical language of Hinduism, has been affected.

The name is derived from the Malayalam words malai "mountain" and Al " man " or alam " depth ocean " off and accordingly is either " highlanders " or " the land between mountains and ocean ." In fact, extending the Malayalam - speaking area in Kerala between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea. A spokesman for the Malayalam called " Malayali ".

Geographical Distribution

Malayalam has, according to the Indian census of 2001, about 33 million native speakers. The distribution area of language includes the state of Kerala and located in the Arabian Sea archipelagos of Lakshadweep and amine divas. In addition, Malayalam is used in adjacent areas of the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu ( Kanyakumari district ). Due to immigration, there are greater numbers of Malayalam speakers in other parts of India and among overseas Indians in the Gulf States, Great Britain and the United States today.

In Kerala, the union territory of Lakshadweep and Puducherry enclave belonging to Mahe Malayalam serves as an official language. In addition, it is recognized on a regional level as one of 22 national languages ​​of India.

Font

How many Indian languages ​​Malayalam has its own script, the Malayalam script. This belongs to the family of Indian scriptures. With the other scriptures of India, Tibet and South East Asia it shares the common origin of the Brahmi script dating from the 3rd century BC and a common principle: It is with them to an intermediate form of alphabet and syllabary, called Abugidas in each character consonant has an inherent vowel a, which can be modified by diacritics. The Malayalam script developed in the 8th century to the Grantha script from a South Indian Brahmi variant.

Phonology

In the phonology of Malayalam is to distinguish between the native core inventory and the adopted from the Sanskrit phonemes. In native words voicelessness and voicing and aspiration are not meaningful distinctive. For the plosives ( plosives ) have a large number of allophones, that is, they are pronounced differently depending on their position in the word. In word-initial and in doubling they are unvoiced, voiced after nasals and voiced spoken and spirantisiert between vowels. These allophones are not marked in native words in Scripture, although the Malayalam font has quite different character for voiceless and voiced plosives.

A striking feature of Malayalam is the distinction of the plosives and nasals after six places of articulation (labial, dental, alveolar, retroflex, palatal and velar ). While the contrast between dental and retroflex sounds typical of the languages ​​of South Asia, the threefold distinction dental- alveolar - retroflex is extremely rare. The alveolar plosive [t ] occurs only in doubling or as voiced variant [ d] occurred after the corresponding nasal. Between vowels it is realized as Vibrant [r ], which is distinguished from the flap [ ɾ ]. The alveolar nasal [ n] is not distinguished in Scripture by the dental nasal [n ], although these two phonemes in double contrast (see പന്നി panni [ pʌn̪ ː i] " pig" and കന്നി kanni [ kʌn ː i] "first" ).

Unlike the closely related Tamil Sanskrit loanwords are adapted either in spelling or in pronunciation (at least by educated speakers ) to the Malayalam phonology. Since no distinction is in Sanskrit between voiceless, voiced, unvoiced aspirated and voiced -aspirated plosives, the consonant inventory of Malayalam considerably increased due to the acquisitions from the Sanskrit phonemes.