||Malayalam Class-ileku Swaagatham||

Malayalam is a language spoken in India predominantly in the state of Kerala. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India with official language status in the state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry. It belongs to the Dravidian family of languages, and was spoken by 33 million people in 2001. Malayalam is also spoken in the Nilgiris district, Kanyakumari district and Coimbatore of Tamil Nadu, Dakshina Kannada, Mangalore andKodagu districts of Karnataka.Malayalam most likely originated from Middle Tamil (Sen-Tamil-Malayalam) in the 6th century.Modern Malayalam still preserves many words from the ancient Tamil vocabulary of Sangam literature.

Malayalam alphabet has the largest number of letters among the Indian languages. Malayalam script includes letters capable of representing the sounds of all languages of the Dravidian language family and Sanskrit

Malayalam is spoken mostly in the state of Kerala and adjoining areas. As "Malai" (Chera) means "mountain", the word "Malai-alam" obviously refers to either people or the language of the mountainous region. Till about a thousand years ago Tamil was the spoken language of present-day Kerala state with a number of local variations. It is said that Malayalam as a spoken language was not referred to in Tamil literature before the 15th century.

On the other hand, the Rama-charitam, which was composed in the 14th century, may be said to have inaugurated Malayalam literature just as Naniah's Mahabharatam did for Telugu. The fact is that dialectical and local peculiarities had already developed and stamped themselves in local songs and ballads. But these linguistic variations were at last gathered together and made to give a coloring to a sustained literary work, the Rama-charitam, thereby giving the new language a justification and a new lease on life.

Originally Malayalam was no more than a local dialect of pure Tamil. Political isolation and local conflicts, the impact of Christianity and Islam, and the arrival of the Nambudiri Brahmins a little over a thousand years ago, all created conditions favorable to the development of the local dialect Malayalam. The Nambudri grafted a good deal of Sanskrit onto the local dialect and influenced its physiognomy. Popular and religious songs were composed first. Presently, the phenomenal popularity of Kamban's Tamil Ramayana led in course of time to a similar version in the local dialect.

By the 15th century the existence of Malayalam as a separate language was accepted.

Dialects of Malayalam are distinguishable at regional and social levels, including occupational and also communal differences.There are 12 major dialects of Malayalam.Sub-dialect regions, which could be marked off, were found.