Malayalam Alphabets
Malayalam Alphabets
Greetings to all aspiring native English speakers who are preparing to learn Malayalam language through English!
“Each letter of the alphabet is a steadfast loyal soldier in a great army of words, sentences, paragraphs, and stories. One letter falls, and the entire language falters”
Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration.
The alphabet is the building block of literacy and so learners must learn to recognize and name the letters, both in and out of order, and the sounds associated with each letter. The modern Malayalam alphabet has 15 vowel letters, 36 consonant letters, and a few other symbols only. Several consonant-consonant ligatures are also used in Malayalam. for instance the consonant “ka” ( ക ) will turn ( ക്ക )when ligated with “ka” to double the sound.
The 14 vowels are അ (a as in alaska), ആ (aa as in amphibian), ഇ (e as in ecology), ഈ (ee as in eel), ഉ (u as in cumulative), ഊ (oo as in tool), ഋ (ru, no exact English equivalent available), എ (a as e in exact), ഏ (long a as in April), ഐ (i as in tight), ഒ (o as in Olympic), ഓ (O as in Ox) ഔ (ow as in Cow), അം (am as in Tam).
The consonants are
ക (Ka as in Kansas), ഖ ഗ and ഘ are variants of Ka, ങ (as ng in string)
ച (cha as in cheese) ഛ (strong cha), ജ (Ja as in Jealous), ഝ (njja)
and ഞ (nha as in ronaldinho)
ട (Ta as in Tire), ഠ (tt as in butt), ഡ (da as in Dallas), ഢ (a variant of da) ണ (Na as in nine)
ത (tha as in thailand), ഥ (Tha as in Gothic), ദ (da as in Davood), ധ (dha as in Dhaka), ന (na as in nano)
പ (pa as in pacify), ഫ (fa as in fact), ബ (ba as in bahrain), ഭ ( a variant of ba), മ (Ma as in Malayalam)
യ (ya as in Yangon), ര (ra as in abrasive), ല (la as in lava) വ (va as in Washington), ശ (sha as in Shabnam) ഷ (Sha as in Shoe)
സ (sa as in sacramento), ഹ (ha as in Halloween), ള (La as in clap) ഴ (zha — no equivalent in English), റ (Ra as in Random)
Once learned, you will find it is easy to read almost all words yourself. At first you may find it little difficult to recognize the combinations of two or more letters like “Ksha” (ക്ഷ) which is a combination of “ka” and “Sha” (ക + ഷ).
To begin with, let us see how Malayalam itself is written in Malayalam letters. It is മലയാളം or മ(ma) + ല(la) + യാ(yaa) + ളം (Lam).
America is written as a+mE+ri+kka or അമേരിക്ക. you may have noticed the use of some symbols as well. We are going to learn all these and more during the course period.
Till then.. Good Bye!
