LANGUAGES OF KERALA Major Languages : Malayalam, English, Hindi Official Language : Malayalam Belongs to : Dravidian Family of Languages Unique Feature : Most Sanskratised Language

Man at a Library - Kerala

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Language - It Is How They Speak

It is believed in India, that the way you speak emulates the background you are form. Kerala is no exception. In a land where the dawn breaks with the euphony of "Swamiye saranam, saranam Ayyappa" (Oh Lord Ayyappa, I surrender to thee), it is not unique that the voice of every individual will exude honey in tones and dialects. The sweetness of Malayalam augments because of two reasons; firstly that it originated as an offshoot of Tamil, the principal native language of neighbouring Tamil Nadu, and secondly that it is a palindrome, a magic in itself. Malayalam (/mala/- mountain + /aLam/-place in Tamil) as a composite phrase connotes the 'inhabitants of mountains'. This phrase, which once elucidated the geographical location of the region, was later replaced by Kerala.

Malayalam is probably the most sanskratised of all the languages, with a strong influence of the Dravidian forum. Although only 10% of Sanskrit words are used in the verbal language, the written language imbibes more than 40% of them, including direct borrowals and derivatives. Besides Sanskrit, one can also find many paronyms from Portuguese, Dutch, English, Arabic, Marathi and Persian absorbed which points to their rippleless influence on the culture. However, English is widely spoken and understood throughout the state (and sometime you can even see English subheads below Malayali hoardings in remotest of the villages).

The Sweetness of The Language That Enthralls Its Visitors

The Malayalam Alphabet

Imagine a holiday vacation in a land where you will get enough tongue-twisters to bewilder your friends. Malayalam has a series of retroflex consonants (e.g., t, d, n; sounds pronounced by curling the tongue tip and sticking it against the roof of the palate), and grammatical categories such as tense, number, person, and case with suffixes in alpha. Try to memorise 3-4 words of Malayali origin and you can actually rock the table. Though the writing know-how dates its inception to the late 9th century, but Thunchathu Ramanujam Ezhuthachan is considered to be the father of Malayalam language, because of his literary work 'Adhyatma Ramayanam' and 'Mahabharatham', regional adaptations of the great Indian epics, which gave a distinct style of writing during the 16th century.

The whole concept of newspapers drastically changed with the arrival of printing in the 19th century. Dr. Herman Gundert, a German missionary, compiled the first Malayalam-English lexicon and is said to have started the first Malayalam newspaper. Today, the most circulated daily newspaper in India is in Malyalam and Kerala boasts of printing 170 daily papers, 235 weekly and over 600 monthly periodicals alone in Malayalam.

Soak In Malayalam

No doubt, Malayalam is extraordinarily rich in every genre of literature. In 1945, Prof. M.P. Paul and Karoor Neelkantha Pillai took awe-inspiring measures and set the substratum of the Sahitya Pravarthak Sahakarana Sangham (SPCS), the first ever cooperative society of literati in India. Established with the aim of catering Malayalam to the globe, this much adored institution also provided economic stability to the writers. Tourists can pick up Malayalam translation of many masterpiece of Indian or international literature, displayed as books or magazines in numerous book stalls dotting the state. Putting Kerala on the world tourist map has also promoted the language significantly. Malayalam, now, is presently taught in many universities outside India including some in the United States.