Malayalam (/ˌmæləˈjɑːləm/;[9] മലയാളം, Malayāḷam, IPA: [mɐlɐjaːɭɐm] ⓘ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people.

The mainstream view holds that Malayalam descends from a western coastal dialect of early Middle Tamil and separated from it sometime between the 9th and 13th centuries.

A second view argues for the development of the two languages out of "Proto-Dravidian" or "Proto-Tamil-Malayalam" either in the prehistoric period or in the middle of the first millennium A.D.,[16][17][18] although this is generally rejected by historical linguists.

[34] The language Malayalam was alternatively called Alealum, Malayalani, Malayali, Malabari, Malean, Maliyad, Mallealle, and Kerala Bhasha until the early 19th century CE.

[35][36][37] The earliest extant literary works in the regional language of present-day Kerala probably date back to as early as the 12th century.

[38] The distinctive "Malayalam" named identity of this language appears to have come into existence in Kerala only around the 16th century, when it was known as "Malayayma" or "Malayanma"; the words were also used to refer to the script and the region.

[39] According to Duarte Barbosa, a Portuguese visitor who visited Kerala in the early 16th century CE, the people in the southwestern Malabar coast of India from Kumbla in north to Kanyakumari in south had a unique language, which was called "Maliama" by them.

[36] The mainstream view holds that Malayalam began to grow as a distinct literary language from the western coastal dialect of Middle Tamil[44] and the linguistic separation completed sometime between the 9th and 13th centuries.

[16] This is based on the fact that Malayalam and several Dravidian languages on the Western Coast have common archaic features which are not found even in the oldest historical forms of literary Tamil.

[50] Robert Caldwell, in his 1856 book "A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages", opined that literary Malayalam branched from Classical Tamil and over time gained a large amount of Sanskrit vocabulary and lost the personal terminations of verbs.

By the end of the 13th century, a written form of the language emerged which was unique from the Vatteluttu script that was used to write Tamil on the eastern coast.

[53][54] The beginning of the development of Old Malayalam from a western coastal dialect of Middle Tamil can be dated to circa 8th century CE.

[53][36] The Old Malayalam language was employed in several official records and transactions (at the level of the Chera Perumal kings, as well as the upper-caste (Nambudiri) village temples).

[65] The Champu Kavyas written by Punam Nambudiri, one among the Pathinettara Kavikal (Eighteen and a half poets) in the court of the Zamorin of Calicut, also belong to Middle Malayalam.

The 14th-century Lilatilakam text states Manipravalam to be a Bhashya (language) where "Dravida and Sanskrit should combine together like ruby and coral, without the least trace of any discord".

[64] P. Shangunny Menon ascribes the authorship of the medieval work Keralolpathi, which describes the Parashurama legend and the departure of the final Cheraman Perumal king to Mecca, to Thunchaththu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan.

[36][64] Variations in intonation patterns, vocabulary, and distribution of grammatical and phonological elements are observable along the parameters of region, religion, community, occupation, social stratum, style and register.

[36] For example, the words Vazhi (Path), Vili (Call), Vere (Another), and Vaa (Come/Mouth), become Bayi, Bili, Bere, and Baa in the northern dialects of Malayalam.

[87] According to Sooranad Kunjan Pillai who compiled the authoritative Malayalam lexicon, the other principal languages whose vocabulary was incorporated over the ages were Arabic, Dutch, Hindustani, Pali, Persian, Portuguese, Prakrit, and Syriac.

[91] 25.57% of the total population in the Kodagu district of Karnataka are Malayalis, and they form the single largest linguistic group accounting for 35.5% in the Virajpet Taluk.

Some authors say that Malayalam has no diphthongs and /ai̯, au̯/ are clusters of V+glide j/ʋ[15] while others consider all V+glide clusters to be diphthongs /ai̯, aːi̯, au̯, ei̯, oi̯, i̯a/ as in kai, vāypa, auṣadhaṁ, cey, koy and kāryaṁ[98] Vowel length is phonemic and all of the vowels have minimal pairs for example kaṭṭi "thickness", kāṭṭi "showed", koṭṭi "tapped", kōṭṭi "twisted, stick, marble", er̠i "throw", ēr̠i "lots"[98] Some speakers also have /æː/, /ɔː/, /ə/ from English loanwords e.g. /bæːŋgɨ̆/ "bank" but most speakers replace it with /aː/, /eː/ or /ja/; /oː/ or /aː/ and /e/ or /a/.

In 2004, the fonts were released under the GPL license by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation at the Cochin University of Science and Technology in Kochi, Kerala.

[124] Vatteluttu (Malayalam: വട്ടെഴുത്ത്, Vaṭṭezhuthŭ, "round writing") is a script that had evolved from Tamil-Brahmi and was once used extensively in the southern part of present-day Tamil Nadu and in Kerala.

[64] Malayalam literature has been profoundly influenced by poets Cherusseri Namboothiri,[148][64] Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan,[64] and Poonthanam Nambudiri,[64][149] in the 15th and the 16th centuries of Common Era.

[162] The words used in Ramacharitam such as Nade (Mumbe), Innum (Iniyum), Ninna (Ninne), Chaaduka (Eriyuka) are special features of the dialect spoken in North Malabar (Kasaragod-Kannur region).

The 14th-century Lilatilakam text states Manipravalam to be a Bhashya (language) where "Malayalam and Sanskrit should combine together like ruby and coral, without the least trace of any discord".

[66][67] The Champu Kavyas written by Punam Nambudiri, one among the Pathinettara Kavikal (Eighteen and a half poets) in the court of the Zamorin of Calicut, also belong to Middle Malayalam.

[64] P. Shangunny Menon ascribes the authorship of the medieval work Keralolpathi, which describes the Parashurama legend and the departure of the final Cheraman Perumal king to Mecca, to Thunchaththu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan.

Hermann Gundert, (1814–1893), a German missionary and scholar of exceptional linguistic talents, played a distinguishable role in the development of Malayalam literature.

For S. K. Pottekkatt and Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, who had not dabbled in politics, the continuity is marked in the former's Vishakanyaka (Poison Maid, 1948) and the latter's Ntuppuppakkoranendarnnu (My Grandpa had an Elephant, 1951).