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Malayalam is a language spoken by the native people of southwestern India and the islands of Lakshadweep in the Arabian Sea. According to the Indian census of 2011, there were 32,413,213 speakers of Malayalam in Kerala, making up 93.2% of the total number of Malayalam speakers in India, and 97.03% of the total population of the state.
Old Malayalam, the inscriptional language found in Kerala from c. 9th to c. 13th century CE, [1] is the earliest attested form of Malayalam. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] The language was employed in several official records and transactions (at the level of the Chera Perumal kings as well as the upper-caste village temples). [ 2 ]
[201] [202] [203] Malayalam originated from Middle Tamil (Sen-Tamil) in the 7th century. [204] As Malayalam began to freely borrow words as well as the rules of grammar from Sanskrit, the Grantha alphabet was adopted for writing and came to be known as Arya Eluttu. [205] This developed into the modern Malayalam script. [206]
Kannada and other languages, however, are totally inert to this change and hence the velar plosives are retained as such or with minimum changes in the corresponding words, e.g. Tamil/Malayalam cey, Irula cē(y)-, Toda kïy-, Kannada key/gey, Badaga gī-, Telugu cēyu , Gondi kīānā .
The origin of this word cannot be conclusively attributed to Malayalam or Tamil. Congee, porridge, water with rice; uncertain origin, possibly from Tamil kanji (கஞ்சி), [7] Telugu or Kannada gañji, or Malayalam kaññi (കഞ്ഞി). [citation needed] Alternatively, possibly from Gujarati, [8] which is not a Dravidian language.
The continental part of the country bore the name Tanah Melayu (literally 'Malay Land') or Malaya until 1963, when Federation of Malaysia was formed together with the territories of Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore (the latter withdrew in 1965). The name change indicated the change of the country's boundaries beyond Malay Peninsula.
The population of Kerala, India is a heterogenous group that comprises many ethnic groups that originated in other parts of India as well as the world, with distinctive cultural and religious traditions. While the majority of Keralites speak the Malayalam language, various ethnic groups may speak other languages as well. [1] [2]
A language that uniquely represents the national identity of a state, nation, and/or country and is so designated by a country's government; some are technically minority languages. (On this page a national language is followed by parentheses that identify it as a national language status.) Some countries have more than one language with this ...