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Font: Malayalam
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Belonging to the group of Southern Indic scripts, Malayalam script is derived from Grantha script, a descendant of the ancient Brahmi script. Closely related to Tamil, Malayalam script is used in writing the Malayalam language, as well as some minority languages, in the Indian state of Kerala. Malayalam belongs to the Dravidian group of languages which includes Tamil, Kannada and Telugu. Similar to other Brahmi-derived Indic scripts, Malayalam demonstrates the major features of that model.1 It is a syllabic alphabet whose basic unit is the consonant-based syllable with an inherent [a] vowel.
Malayalam is written horizontally from left to right and its basic set of symbols consists of 37 consonants and 13 vowels. In contrast to Tamil which uses a reduced repertoire of consonants suited to its phonology, Malayalam follows the full Brahmic model. At the beginning of a word, vowels appear in initial form. When used to replace the inherent vowel of a consonantal syllable, vowels appear in diacritic (or 'satellite') form before, after, above, below or surrounding the modified syllable. Many consonant-vowel combinations require special ligature forms. Consonant clusters, adjoining consonants without intervening vowels, are written in one of three methods. In the first method, the secondary component is attached as a diacritic to the primary consonant. In the second method, the secondary component is written as a subscript to the primary consonant. Finally, in the third method, the components are written as a fused form of the component symbols. Known as anusvaram, the nasal marker indicates [m] in syllable-final position. Although Malayalam has a native set of symbols for numerals, today Arabic numbers are often used.
During the 1970s and 1980s, simplifications of the Malayalam script were introduced. The reform aimed to reduce the complexity of two particular aspects of Malayalam. First, it recommended the replacement of irregular ligatures by a predictable sequence of invarying components. Second, it recommended the formation of consonant clusters out of invarying 'letter fragments' or by using the vowel suppressor on all but the final part of a concatenated sequence. While it has had some effect on daily practice, this reform has only partially changed the well-established traditional approach.
1 For a fuller description of the features of Brahmi-derived scripts, see 'Devanagari'.
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