Malayalam Page

Malayalam

Malayalam (/malayALam/) is the principal language of the South Indian state of Kerala and also of the Lakshadweep Islands (Laccadives) of the west coast of India. Malayalis (speakers of Malayalam), who - males and females alike - are almost totally literate, constitute 4 percent of the population of India and 96 percent of the population of Kerala (29.01 million in 1991). In terms of the number of speakers Malayalam ranks eights among the fifteen major languages of India. The word /malayALam/ originally meant mountainous country) (/mala/- mountain + /aLam/-place). Tamil is its neighbor on the south and east and Kannada on the north and east.

Evolution of the Language

With Tamil, Kota, Kodagu and Kannada, Malayalam belongs to the southern group of Dravidian languages. Its affinity to Tamil is the most striking. Proto-Tamil Malayalam, the common stock of Tamil and Malayalam apparently disintegrated over a period of four of five centuries from the ninth century on, resulting in the emergence of Malayalam as a language distinct from Tamil. As the language of scholarship and administration Tamil greatly influenced the early development of Malayalam. Later the irresistable inroads the Brahmins made into the cultural life of Kerala accelerated the assimilation of many Indo-Aryan features into Malayalam at different levels.

Development of Literature

The earliest written record of Malayalam is the /vazhappaLLi/ inscription (ca. 830 AD). The early literature of Malayalam comprised three types of composition:

Classical songs known as /pATTu/ of the Tamil tradition
/maNipravALam/ of the Sanskrit tradition, which permitted a generous interspersing of Sanskrit with Malayalam
The folk song rich in native elements
Malayalam poetry to the late twentieth century betrays varying degrees of the fusion of the three different strands. The oldest examples of /pattu/ and maniprvAlam respectively are /rAmacharitam/ and /vaishikatantram/, both of the twelveth century.
The earliest extant prose work in the language is a commentary in simple Malayalam, Bhashakautaliyam (12th century) on Chanakya's Arthasastra. Malayalam prose of different periods exibit degree of influence of different languages such as Tamil, Sanskrit, Prakrits, Pali, Hindi, Urdu, Arabi, Persian, Syriac, Portuguese, Dutch, French and English. Modern literature is rich in poetry, fiction, drama, biography, and literary criticism.

Language variation and external influnece

Variations in intonation patterns, vocabulary, and distribution of grammatical and phonological elements are observable along the parameters of region, community, occupation, social stratum, style and register. Influence of Sanskrit is most prominent in the Brahimin dialects and least in the Harijan dialects. Loanwords from English, Syriac, Latin, and Portuguese abound in the Christian dialects and those from Arabic and Urdu in the muslim dialects. Malayalam has borrowed from Sanskrit thousands of nouns, hundreds of verbs and some indeclinables. Some items of basic vocabulary (eg/mukhum/ face, /nakham/ nail, /bhArya/ wife, bharthAvu/ husband) also have found their way into Malayalam from Sanskrit.

English stands only second to Sanskrit in its influence in Malayalam. Hundreds of individual lexical items and may idiomatic expressions in modern Malayalam are of English origin.

Collection of Malayalam Songs, Carnatic Classical, Semi Classical, New Songs, Old Hits, Devotional Songs, Kathakali Songs, Panchavaadyam, Assorted Songs.. etc. (Qjada.com)

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