Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
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. [8] The script is also used to write several minority languages such as Paniya, Betta Kurumba, and Ravula. [9]
From the 11th century AD onwards the Tamil script displaced the Pallava-Grantha as the principal script for writing Tamil. [6] [2] In what is now Kerala, Vatteluttu continued for a much longer period than in Tamil Nadu by incorporating characters from Pallava-Grantha to represent Sanskrit loan words in early Malayalam.
It is a word that was used for books, and the script used to write them. This stems from the practice of binding inscribed palm leaves using a length of thread held by knots. Grantha was widely used to write Sanskrit in the Tamil-speaking parts of South Asia from about the 5th century CE into modern times. [9] [2] A Chera era Grantha inscription.
Text on the left hand side is Arabi-Tamil, text on the right hand side, Arabi Malayalam script. Most of the Mappila Songs were written, for the first time, in Arabi-Malayalam script. The earliest known such work is the Muhyidheen Mala, written in 1607. [6] Copy of the first book in Arabi-Malayalam called "Muhyadheen Mala"
In a 7th century poem written by the Tamil poet Sambandar the people of Kerala are referred to as malaiyāḷar (mountain people). [29] The word Malayalam is also said to originate from the words mala, meaning 'mountain', and alam, meaning 'region' or '-ship' (as in "township"); Malayalam thus translates directly as 'the mountain region'.
Malayalam letter Ma. Ma (മ) is a consonant of the Malayalam abugida. It ultimately arose from the Brahmi letter , via the Grantha letter Ma. Like in other Indic scripts, Malayalam consonants have the inherent vowel "a", and take one of several modifying vowel signs to represent syllables with another vowel or no vowel at all.
The order of the alphabet (strictly abugida) in Tamil closely matches that of the nearby languages both in location and linguistics, reflecting the common origin of their scripts from Brahmi. Tamil language has 18 consonants - mey eluttukkal. Traditional grammarians have classified these 18 into three groups of 6 letters each.
Malayalam is a Unicode block containing characters of the Malayalam script. In its original incarnation, the code points U+0D02..U+0D4D were a direct copy of the Malayalam characters A2-ED from the 1988 ISCII standard.