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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'.
These forms are derived from "one (less than) ten". Proto-Dravidian *toḷ/*toṇ (which could mean 9 or 9/10) is still used in Tamil and Malayalam as the basis of numbers such as 90 and 900, toṇṇūṟu (9 ⁄ 10 *100 = 90) as well as the Kannada tombattu (9*10 = 90).
Kannada lost clusivity. Old Tamil retained the PD like tense system of past vs non past but none currently do, all have past, present, future. Common plural marker is -kaḷ(u) in Tamil-Kannada while Tulu uses -ḷŭ, -kuḷŭ, certain Malayalamoid languages use other methods like -ya in Ravula and having kuṟe before the word in Eranadan.
Pariah, a social outcast; partially from Tamil paṟaiyar (பறையர்) and partially from Malayalam paṟayan(പറയൻ), "drummer". [36] Peacock, a type of bird; from Old English pawa, the earlier etymology is uncertain, but one possible source is Tamil tokei (தோகை) "peacock feather", via Latin or Greek [37]
In Amaravati in present-day Andhra Pradesh there is an inscription referring to a Dhamila-vaniya (Tamil trader) datable to the 3rd century CE. [34] Another inscription of about the same time in Nagarjunakonda seems to refer to a Damila. A third inscription in Kanheri Caves refers to a Dhamila-gharini (Tamil house-holder).
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] The Malayalam language itself was historically written in several different scripts.
The history of ancient Kerala is deeply intertwined with ancient Tamilagam, and the Tamil and Malayalam languages are closely related. The dialect of Malayalam spoken today in the taluks of Chittur and Palakkad in Kerala has slight tamil influence due to mixing with tamil migrants living in the region and the tamil spoken by Palakkad iyers has large number of Malayalam loanwords, has been ...
Tamil Brahmi and Vaṭṭeḻuttu, into which it evolved, were the main scripts used in Old Tamil inscriptions. From the 8th century onwards, however, the Pallavas began using a new script, derived from the Pallava Grantha script which was used to write Sanskrit, which eventually replaced Vaṭṭeḻuttu. [32]