Malayalam language (original) (raw)

Malayalam is the major language of the state of Kerala, in southern India. It is one of the 17 official languages of India, spoken by around 30 million people.

It belongs to the family of Dravidian languages. Both the language and its writing system are closely related to Tamil, although Malayalam has a signficantly larger phoneme inventory. Malayalam has a script of its own.

Malayalam is probably the only language whose name, when spelled in English, is a palindrome. A person who speaks Malayalam is called a "Malayali".

See also:

• Demographics of India for a list of the official languages of India.
• Kathakali
• Kerala
• Malayalam literature

External links

• Information on Malayalam language at Department of Public Relations, Government of Kerala
• Unicode Code Chart for Malayalam (PDF Format)

Not to be confused with the Malay language, spoken in Malaysia.