Malayalam letter gha

A voiced “g” with extra breath and its built-in vowel.

The Malayalam gha starts like the “g” in “go,” but releases an extra puff of air while the voice continues. The letter also carries the script’s built-in “a” vowel; a vowel sign changes that vowel.

That makes ഘ a syllable-building letter, not a complete word by itself. The full sound set can write Sanskrit-derived words as well as Malayalam words.

Why does Malayalam have a separate gha letter?

It preserves a voiced, breathy consonant in Malayalam’s full sound set.

The oldest surviving Malayalam writing includes evidence from Vazhappally in the 9th century, written in Vatteluttu, an older script. That shows the script’s ancestry, not necessarily this exact modern glyph.

Writers used Grantha, a script for Sanskrit, alongside Vatteluttu in medieval Manipravalam, a literary blend of Malayalam and Sanskrit, to represent voiced, breathy consonants. Both scripts descend independently from Brahmi, an older Indian script.

Vaishikatantram is an early Malayalam-script example from the 12th century, and the writing system was being organized by the first half of the 13th century. By the 19th century, Grantha-derived Arya-eluttu was the main Malayalam script; Tigalari continued as a related script used for Sanskrit.

How do I type ഘ?

Use gha in a phonetic IME or uppercase I in InScript.

A Malayalam phonetic input method treats gha as a transliteration and may offer suggestions instead of producing one fixed letter. On the standard Malayalam InScript layout, uppercase I produces ഘ.

Some vowel signs are typed after the consonant but render to its left or on both sides. The virama mark removes the built-in vowel and can join ഘ to another consonant, though not every pair forms a valid cluster.