Malayalam Alphabets & Letters

Malayalam (മലയാളം) has its own script, a member of the Brahmi family that grew out of Grantha, the script South India used for Sanskrit. Like every Indian script it is an abugida: a consonant on its own already carries the vowel a, so ക is read ka, and other vowels are added as signs. The alphabet chart (അക്ഷരമാല, aksharamala) has 13 vowels (സ്വരാക്ഷരങ്ങൾ), അ ആ ഇ ഈ ഉ ഊ ഋ എ ഏ ഐ ഒ ഓ ഔ, closed by അം and അഃ, and 36 consonants (വ്യഞ്ജനാക്ഷരങ്ങൾ). Many school charts also add the Sanskrit vowels ൠ ഌ ൡ or the cluster ക്ഷ, which is why different charts give different totals.

Malayalam keeps short and long e and o apart: എലി (eli, rat) starts with a short e, ഏലം (ēlam, cardamom) with a long one; ഒന്ന് (onnŭ, one) has a short o, ഓണം (ōṇam, Onam) a long one. The consonants follow the classic order of Indian grammar: five rows of stops, ക ഖ ഗ ഘ ങ, ച ഛ ജ ഝ ഞ, ട ഠ ഡ ഢ ണ, ത ഥ ദ ധ ന, പ ഫ ബ ഭ മ, then യ ര ല വ ശ ഷ സ ഹ and finally ള ഴ റ.

Those last three are the sounds that make Malayalam sound like Malayalam. ള is an l said with the tongue curled back, the one in മലയാളം itself, in കേരളം and in വെള്ളം (water). ഴ, usually written zh in English, is a curled-back sound between r and l that Malayalam shares with Tamil ழ: മഴ (rain), പുഴ (river), കോഴിക്കോട് (Kozhikode). റ is a second r, trilled where ര is a light tap; doubled as റ്റ it becomes a hard t, as in ഒറ്റ (single) and ടിക്കറ്റ് (ticket), and after ന it gives the ന്റ of എന്റെ (my).

By CLDR's estimate about 46 million people speak Malayalam, about 45 million of them in India, where it is the official language of Kerala and Lakshadweep and of Mahé in Puducherry, and one of the 22 scheduled languages of the constitution. The Gulf has the largest community abroad, about 700,000 in the United Arab Emirates by the same estimate, with more in Bahrain and Qatar, and there are old communities in Malaysia and Singapore; in Israel it is the heritage language of the Cochin Jews. Malayalam is a Dravidian language whose closest relative is Tamil, with Kannada, Telugu and Tulu further off, and India declared it a classical language in 2013.

Malayalam vowel signs and the anusvara ം

After a consonant a vowel is written as a sign, and the full row for ക reads ക കാ കി കീ കു കൂ കൃ കെ കേ കൈ കൊ കോ കൗ കം കഃ. The signs are ാ for ആ, ി for ഇ, ീ for ഈ, ു for ഉ, ൂ for ഊ, ൃ for ഋ, െ for എ, േ for ഏ, ൈ for ഐ, ൊ for ഒ, ോ for ഓ and ൌ or ൗ for ഔ. In Unicode you always type the consonant first and the sign second, even when the sign is drawn before it: െ േ ൈ sit on the left, so കെ is typed ക + െ. ൊ and ോ wrap round the consonant, half on each side, and Unicode treats them as െ + ാ and േ + ാ.

ഔ has two signs. The old form ൌ is െ plus the length mark ൗ; modern spelling drops the left half and writes only ൗ after the consonant, as in കൗ and മൗനം (silence). Both are correct Malayalam, but they are different characters, so a search for one will not find the other.

The anusvara ം is very common in Malayalam, because it writes the m that ends so many nouns: മലയാളം, കേരളം, ഓണം, പഠനം. Inside a word it is a nasal that matches the next consonant, as in സംഗീതം (music). The visarga ഃ, a breathy h, lives in words from Sanskrit such as ദുഃഖം (sorrow).

Chandrakkala, koottaksharam and the chillu letters

The chandrakkala ് (ചന്ദ്രക്കല, 'crescent moon') has two jobs. Between two consonants it removes the first one's vowel and joins them into a koottaksharam (കൂട്ടക്ഷരം), a conjunct letter: ക + ് + ക = ക്ക as in ചക്ക (jackfruit), ങ്ങ in ഞങ്ങൾ (we), ഞ്ഞ in മഞ്ഞ (yellow), ണ്ട in രണ്ട് (two), ന്ന in ഒന്ന് (one). At the end of a word it writes the short, half-swallowed u that ends അത് (athŭ, that) and എന്ത് (enthŭ, what); older books often write this sound as ു്, as in അതു്.

The chillu letters (ചില്ലക്ഷരങ്ങൾ) ൺ ൻ ർ ൽ ൾ are consonants with no vowel at all, the pure sounds n, r, l at the end of a syllable: അവൻ (he), അവൾ (she), അവർ (they), പാൽ (milk), പെൺകുട്ടി (girl). ൿ, a chillu k, is rare and mostly found in older spellings. A chillu is not the same as a consonant with chandrakkala: അവൻ (avan, he) and അവന് (avanŭ, to him) are different words.

Since Unicode 5.1 (2008) the chillus are characters of their own; older text built them from the consonant, ് and an invisible zero-width joiner, so two words that look the same on screen can be stored differently and fail to match in a search. A ർ before another consonant also replaced the old dot reph ൎ: today's കർമ്മം (karma) was once printed കൎമ്മം.

Old script, new script and Sanskrit letters

In 1971 the Kerala government introduced a reformed script for printing and typewriters: signs that used to fuse with their consonant, such as ു and ൂ, were written detached beside it, and many traditional conjuncts were split with a visible ്. Both styles survive. Unicode stores them identically, and the font decides whether കു and ക്ക come out in the traditional joined shapes or the reformed ones; Rachana is a font made to draw the traditional script.

ഋ is a vowel from Sanskrit: ഋഷി (sage), and as a sign in കൃഷി (farming) and കൃഷ്ണൻ. Its long partner ൠ with the sign ൄ, and ഌ and ൡ with ൢ and ൣ, appear only in Sanskrit written in Malayalam letters, as does the avagraha ഽ. ഩ and ഺ are historic letters for an alveolar n and tt, and ൔ ൕ ൖ are old chillus of m, y and zh; Unicode added them so that old books and palm-leaf texts can be typed exactly.

Malayalam numbers, punctuation and the rupee

Malayalam has its own digits, ൦ ൧ ൨ ൩ ൪ ൫ ൬ ൭ ൮ ൯, so 2026 is ൨൦൨൬, though today they are seen mostly on old documents, temple boards and calendars; everyday Malayalam uses 0–9. The older counting system had separate signs for ten ൰, a hundred ൱ and a thousand ൲, fractions such as ൳ ൴ ൵ (a quarter, a half, three quarters) for land and money accounts, and the date mark ൹. The numbers 1 to 10 in words are ഒന്ന്, രണ്ട്, മൂന്ന്, നാല്, അഞ്ച്, ആറ്, ഏഴ്, എട്ട്, ഒമ്പത്, പത്ത്.

Modern Malayalam prose uses the same punctuation as English: full stop, comma, question and exclamation marks and the curly quotation marks “ ” and ‘ ’. The danda । and double danda ॥ shared by Indian scripts appear mainly in Sanskrit verses and devotional texts. Prices are written with the Indian rupee sign ₹, in Malayalam രൂപ.

How to type Malayalam in WhatsApp, on a laptop and in MS Word

On Android, add Malayalam in Gboard, where Latin typing can be transliterated into Malayalam. On iPhone, add the built-in Malayalam keyboard in Settings; it also supports Latin-to-Malayalam transliteration for typing in WhatsApp. On Windows 11, go to Settings → Time & language → Language & region → Add a language → Malayalam; on Windows 10, go to Settings → Time & language → Language → Add a language → Malayalam. Then use the standard InScript or Malayalam Phonetic keyboard and switch with Windows + Space. On a Mac, add Malayalam under System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources. Google Docs has Malayalam input tools of its own, and Swanalekha and Mozhi (from the Varamozhi project) are phonetic typing schemes that Malayalam writers use, often through Keyman.

In MS Word, any Unicode Malayalam keyboard works; set the text in a Unicode font such as Nirmala UI, Kartika, Noto Sans Malayalam, Manjari or Rachana. Without a keyboard, type a character's hex code and press Alt+X: 0D15 Alt+X gives ക. In HTML the same letter is ക. Older office files were often typed in non-Unicode ML-TT fonts that store Malayalam as Latin letters drawn to look like Malayalam; pasted anywhere else they turn into gibberish, so convert them to Unicode first.