Malayalam Letter Ii

It is a long-i vowel, but before a noun it can mean “this.”

As a letter, ഈ represents a long i sound, like the vowel in “see” held longer. Without a consonant before it in a syllable, it appears as ഈ; after a consonant, the dependent sign ീ carries the same vowel. Standing before a noun, the same letter is also a demonstrative (a pointing word): ഈ പുസ്തകം means “this book.”

At a word boundary, Malayalam sandhi (a sound change where words meet) may insert a brief y sound, written യ്, before a following vowel.

Why are ഈ and ൟ different?

They are older and newer spellings of the same long vowel.

The oldest surviving written Malayalam examples include the Vazhappally plates from 882–3 CE, inscribed in Vattezhuthu, an older script used in Kerala. The modern Malayalam script also draws on Grantha, a tradition used in the region to write Sanskrit.

Unicode describes ൟ as an earlier written form of the same long vowel. It appears in material from the 18th century; the newer form ഈ is reported in print by 1936. Peet’s grammar from 1841 uses ൟ in examples meaning “this,” while modern Malayalam writes that demonstrative as ഈ. The sound and demonstrative sense stayed the same; the written convention changed.