Malayalam

Letters

Combining marks

Numbers

Punctuation

Symbols

Other

Vowel sounds

Consonant sounds

	labial	dental	alveolar	post- alveolar	retroflex	palatal	velar	glottal
stops	p b	t d	t		ʈ ɖ		k ɡ
aspirates	pʰ bʰ	tʰ dʰ			ʈʰ ɖʰ		kʰ ɡʰ
affricates				t͡ʃ d͡ʒ
aspirates				t͡ʃʰ d͡ʒʰ
fricatives	f		s	ɕ	ʂ			h
nasals	m	n̪	n		ɳ	ɲ	ŋ
approximants	ʋ		l		ɻ ɭ	j
trills/flaps			ɾ		ɽ

Tone

Malayalam is not a tonal language.

Structure

tbd

Vowel summary table

The following table summarises the main vowel to character assigments.

ⓘ represents the inherent vowel. Diacritics are added to the vowels to indicate nasalisation (not shown here).

For additional details see vowel_mappings.

This is the full set of characters needed to represent the vowels of the Malayalam language.

Inherent vowel

ക ka U+0D15 MALAYALAM LETTER KA

a following a consonant is not written, but is seen as an inherent part of the consonant letter, so ka is written by simply using the consonant letter.

Vowel absence & half-u

ക് k U+0D15 MALAYALAM LETTER KA + U+0D4D MALAYALAM SIGN VIRAMA​

Malayalam uses 0D4D (in Malayalam called ചന്ദ്രക്കല cn͓d͓rk͓kl (candrakkala) ʧand̪r̪akkala) to kill the inherent vowel after a consonant, eg. the example just below the section heading explicitly represents just the sound k.

However, in modern text, at the end of a word the combination ക് may also represent the sound kə̆ or kɨ̆ (depending on dialect). The transcription for this is usually ŭ, and it is called half-u.

In older documents the half-u was typically written with a u vowel sign plus chandrakkala, which is not ambiguous. It is unusual for a virama to occur after a vowel sign, like this. പാലു്

The Unicode Standard provides examples of half-u occurring in positions that are not word-final (that is, not immediately before a space), eg.

കട്ടയാക്

ഐശീല്ം

In another example, the chandrakkala is attached to an independent vowel letter, and overrides the sound of that letter, eg. എ്ന്നാ

The chandrakkala is always written after any vowel sign.

See also clusters, where the chandrakkala can be hidden between consonant clusters, and finals.

Vowels after consonants

Post-consonant vowels are written using 12 vowel signs, all combining marks. Also the word-final half-u sound is written in modern Malayalam using 0D4D.

The orthography includes 3 pre-base vowels and 3 circumgraphs. All circumgraphs can be decomposed, creating multipart vowels. The only multipart vowels are those created by decomposition of the circumgraphs, and involve 2 glyphs, one on each side of the base consonant(s).

Pre-base vowel signs

കെ ke U+0D15 MALAYALAM LETTER KA + U+0D46 MALAYALAM VOWEL SIGN E

Three vowel signs appear to the left of the base consonant letter or cluster.

െ␣േ␣ ␣ൈ

show composition

അരികെ

These are combining marks that are always stored after the base consonant. The font places the glyph before the base consonant.

These vowel signs are placed before the start of an orthographic syllable. This means that a word with a consonant cluster at the start separates the pre-base vowel from the position where it is pronounced by more than one consonant character (see fig_prebase).

show composition

ഇദ്ദേഹം

However, if the cluster is split by a visible virama, this creates two syllables and the pre-base vowel sign appears after the consonant with the virama. If you click on the example below, you'll see that the characters and code point orders are the same as for the previous example (apart from the addition of the ZWNJ to force the virama to appear), but the location of the pre-base vowel sign is now immediately before the consonant after which it is pronounced.

show composition

ഇദ്ദേഹം

Circumgraphs

കൊ ko U+0D15 MALAYALAM LETTER KA + U+0D4A MALAYALAM VOWEL SIGN O

Three vowels are produced by a single combining character with visually separate parts, that appear on opposite sides of the consonant onset.

ൊ␣ോ␣ ␣ൌ

show composition

കൊച്ച്

In modern text, 0D57 has become a dominant way to write the vowel au̯, rather than 0D4C, eg. സൗന്ദര്യം

All of these circumgraphs can be written as a single character, or as two. Whichever approach is used, the vowel signs must be typed and stored after the consonant characters they surround, and if the vowel signs are decomposed, they must be typed and stored in left to right order. See encoding_circumgraphs.

Standalone vowels

Malayalam represents standalone vowels using a set of independent vowel letters. For example:

എല്ലാ

ഓടുക

സിമേഈ

The set includes a character to represent the inherent vowel sound.

Vowel sounds to characters

This section maps Malayalam vowel sounds to common graphemes in the Malayalam orthography.

The left column contains dependent vowels, and the right column independent vowels.

Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.

Consonant summary table

The following table summarises the main consonant to character assigments.

For additional details see vowel_mappings.

Basic consonants

Whereas the table just above takes you from sounds to letters, the following simply lists the basic consonant letters (however, since the orthography is highly phonetic there is little difference in ordering).

Onsets

Clusters of consonant letters at the beginning of an orthographic syllable occur in Malayalam, and they are handled as described in the section clusters.

Special behaviours include handling of RA at the beginning of an orthographic syllable (see special_forms).

Finals

Consonant clusters

The absence of a vowel sound between two or more consonants is visually indicated in one of the following ways.

1. A visible chandrakkala character above the top right of the initial consonant.
2. Conjuncts. There are a number of possibilities here.
   1. Stacked consonants, where the non-initial consonant appears below the initial, usually with a reduced or ligated form.
   2. Conjoined consonants, where consonants sit side-by-side but with some ligation or different forms than usual.
   3. Special 'chillu' shapes for the initial consonant (a special case of conjoined consonants).
   4. Special forms : The letter RA has its own idiosyncratic way of combining with other consonants, whether it precedes or follows them.

See also syllable-final consonants, which may be followed by a regular consonant.

Conjunct formation

See a table of 2-consonant clusters.
The table allows you to test results for various fonts.

്

In Unicode, the stacking and conjoining behaviour is achieved by adding 0D4D between the consonants. The font hides the glyph automatically.

Traditional fonts have more ligatures than modern ones. There doesn't appear to be much in the way of a systematic approach to shaping. With a few exceptions, the conjuncts are specific to particular pairs of characters.

The link at the beginning of this section shows all combinations of two consonants and allows you to observe the effect of changing the font. Versions of the table with conjuncts highlighted are available for Noto Serif Malayalam and Thoolika Traditional Unicode (part 1), (part 2). The split for the Thoolika font is stacked, etc in part 1, and using chillu shapes in part 2. The number of conjuncts is 135 and 219+156, respectively.

Sequences involving more than two consonants in a cluster can combine a variety of methods. The example in to_india shows 3 conjoined consonants in the middle, and a conjoined cluster stacked below another letter at the end.

show composition

ഇന്ത്യയ്ക്ക്

Visible chandrakkala

This was promoted as the default by the orthographic reforms of the 1970s. It is also the fallback if the font doesn't contain conjunct forms for a particular cluster of consonants.

Examples include ആഴ്ച ഗുല്ഫം നമസ്തേ

Stacking

The non-initial consonant is drawn below the initial consonant, and with a slightly different shape.

The following list shows stacked conjuncts in the Noto Serif Malayalam font (unless you changed the font for examples on this page).

ക്ട␣ക്ല␣ഗ്ഗ␣ച്ച␣ച്ഛ␣ട്ട␣ഡ്ഡ␣ഡ്ഢ␣ണ്ണ␣ത്ല␣ദ്ദ␣പ്പ␣പ്ല␣ബ്ദ␣ബ്ധ␣ബ്ബ␣ബ്ല␣മ്ല␣റ്റ␣യ്യ␣ല്പ␣ല്ല␣ല്വ␣വ്വ␣ശ്ല␣ശ്ശ␣സ്ല␣സ്സ␣ഷ്ട␣ഹ്ല

Stacks tend to be particularly common for geminated consonants, even when those consonants don't participate in other conjunct pairings. In 3 such cases, the second consonant is often represented by a small triangle.

Otherwise, the subjoined consonant may be a reduced version of the original, or may be ligated. Note that LA has a very different shape from normal when in subjoined position.

Conjoined consonants

Conjuncts where the consonants remain side-by-side typically merge the shapes of the consonants.

The following list shows conjoined conjuncts in the Noto Serif Malayalam font (unless you changed the font for examples on this page). To see the original shapes, click on the conjunct.

ക്ക␣ക്ഷ␣ഗ്ദ␣ഗ്ന␣ഗ്മ␣ങ്ക␣ങ്ങ␣ജ്ജ␣ജ്ഞ␣ഞ്ച␣ഞ്ഛ␣ഞ്ഞ␣ണ്ട␣ണ്ഡ␣ണ്ഢ␣ണ്മ␣ത്ത␣ത്ഥ␣ത്ന␣ത്ഭ␣ത്മ␣ത്സ␣ദ്ധ␣ന്ത␣ന്ഥ␣ന്ദ␣ന്ധ␣ന്ന␣ന്മ␣മ്പ␣മ്മ␣ശ്ച␣ശ്ഛ␣സ്ഥ␣ഹ്ന␣ഹ്മ

Three consonants have very standardised glyphs when they appear in non-initial position, and those glyphs don't merge with the other consonant. They are യ, റ, and വ. The list below shows them combined with the letter KA.

ക്യ␣ക്ര␣ക്വ

Exceptions to the above are യ്യ y͓y വ്വ ʋ͓ʋ

The isolated, pre-base shape for RA was introduced by the reformed orthography. In the old orthography RA as the second element in a conjunct was represented by a ligated swash below the initial consonant.

Chillu-style initials

In some fonts the initial consonant in a cluster may take a chillu shape, followed by an ordinary glyph for the second character.

In the Thoolika Traditional Unicode font this applies to the following consonants in initial position.

ക␣ണ␣ന␣ര␣ല␣ള

conjunct_chillus shows the same sequence of characters in the Thoolika Traditional Unicode font. Note how the shape of the second consonant remains the same as normal - there is no ligation or repositioning. The examples in conjunct_chillus all use SHA in the second position. Note that the chillu code points are not used here – this is just font styling on normal consonants.

Special forms

Cluster-initial RA Cluster-initial ര is only used before യ in standard Malayalam.u,505 Since the orthographic reform, this has been written as ർയ r͓y

Before the 1970s, however, a dot or small vertical stroke was used over the following consonant, in a similar way to the repha in other indic scripts, eg. ൎയ The character 0D4E is used to reproduce this.

This character is not a combining character. It is typed and stored in the same place as you would expect to find the RA + VIRAMA, and then the font needs to position the glyph over the following consonant.

Non-initial RA ര when non-initial in a cluster is displayed to the left of the other consonant(s) in the reformed orthography, eg. ക്ര k͓rThis transposition is done by the font – the typed and stored order remains the same as the spoken order.

When RA follows more than one consonant, it is displayed to the left of the cluster, not just to the left of the preceding consonant, eg. ന്ദ്ര n͓d͓r in ചന്ദ്രക്കല

Clusters with RRA The conjunct റ്റ is always pronounced tta, eg. പാറ്റ

The same word could be spelled പാററ pāṙṙ and until the 1960s, when the stacked version began to appear, it would have been spelled that way, but this would be ambiguous,u,506 cf. ടെംപററി It would be particularly ambiguous when there are more than 2 RRA characters side by side, eg. compare കിലോമീറ്ററുകൾ കിലോമീറററുകൾ kilōmīṙṙṙukɭ̽

If a word with the sound tt is spelled using an unstacked pair of these characters, the pair acts as a single unit with pre-base vowels, eg. മാറെറാലി To achieve the correct positioning of vowel signs here, however, it is necessary to use the decomposed forms of the vowel (see the transcription). Otherwise you would end up with മാററൊലി māṙṙoli where the pre-base part of the vowel is in the wrong place.

Similarly, ൻ്റ n͓̽ṙ is always pronounced nta, eg. ആൻ്റോ

According to the Unicode Standard, an alternative spelling exists without the stack, , but this can also lead to ambiguityu,506, ie. ആൻേറാ ận̽ēṙā aːntoː

Note that again we had to split the vowel.

Consonant length

Gemination and consonant lengthening are handled using the normal approach to consonant clusters (see clusters).

Consonant sounds to characters

This section maps Malayalam consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Malayalam orthography.

The left column contains ordinary consonants, and the right column contains dedicated syllable-final consonants.

Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.

Encoding circumgraphs

The 3 circumgraphs can be written as a single character, or as two characters (in decomposed text).

The single code point per vowel sign is the form preferred by the Unicode Standard and the form in common use for Malayalam. The parts are separated, however, in Unicode Normalisation Form D (NFD), and recomposed in Unicode Normalisation Form C (NFC), so both approaches are canonically equivalent.

Whichever approach is used, the vowel signs must be typed and stored after the consonant characters they surround. In the case of decomposed vowel signs, the order is also important and must be as shown above.

Inappropriate glyph combinations

In some cases, visually similar or identical glyph patterns can be made from a sequence of code points rather than the single code point that Unicode provides. These are not made the same by normalisation, and they are not semantically equivalent. These inappropriate sequences should be avoided because they will cause the meaning of the text to change; searches, matching and other aspects of the text will fail to be understood by the application or the font. In the table below, the single code point on the left should be used, and not the sequence on the right. In some cases, fonts will indicate that there is a problem by forcing the appearance of a dotted circle or otherwise failing to render the text correctly, but this may not always be the case.

Chillus

In older Unicode text chillu letters were written using the combination C+VIRAMA+ZWJ, but since the introduction of the chillu characters in Unicode v5.1 these new atomic characters are recommended. The sequences are not canonically equivalent.

The default Noto font used for this page doesn't render the K glyph sequence in this table the same as the atomic character, but older fonts such as Malayalam MN and ThoolikaTraditionalUnicode do.

Codepoint order

When 2 vowel signs are used for a circumgraph, the encoded order of the combining marks should match the displayed order, left to right.

Digits

There is a set of Malayalam digits, but they are not use for modern texts.

Dates

൹ can be used like the 'th' in English dates, but it use is fading in modern text. u,507

Context-based shaping & positioning

Malayalam is not cursive, but display technology needs to provide shaping for conjunct formation.

Display technology must correctly position pre-base vowels to the left of the consonant or consonant cluster, and place the separate glyphs of 2-part vowels around those also.

It must do a similar thing for display of RA using the orthographic reforms.

Vowel ligatures & orthographic reforms

Like Tamil, in the traditional version of the script Malayalam consonants combining with 0D41 and 0D42 tend to produce ligated forms, as shown in fig_u_ligatures.

During orthographic reforms in the 1970s and 1980s a simpler approached was introduced, to make printing easier. Both vowels were represented by an unchanging, post-base vowel sign as shown below. No change is needed to the underlying code points in Unicode, this is purely a font difference.

Explicit shaping controls

Assuming that you have fonts that produce the expected behaviours, the Unicode Standard describes the use of the joiner characters as follows:u,505

• 200C (ZWNJ) placed after the chandrakkala can be used to force the production of a visible virama, rather than a conjunct form. For example, ക്‌ക produces ക്‌കrather than ക്ക
• Uniquely to Malayalam, placing the ZWNJ before the chandrakkala is supposed to produce the modern 'open' form of the conjunct in fonts that would otherwise produce a traditional conjunct, eg. ക‌്ര should produce the form ക്ര

• 200D (ZWJ) can be used before the chandrakkala to produce a traditional conjunct form in fonts that produce the open form by default but have the glyphs for the traditional forms too.
• ZWJ used after the chandrakkala may produce a chillu form (eg. ക്‍), but this approach is now deprecated in favour of using the chillu codepoints. See finals.

Word boundaries

Spaces are often used between words, but it is not uncommon for writers to use spacing to indicate phonological pauses, rather than lexical boundaries.ws

Sequences of characters between spaces are often quite long in Malayalam, eg. അറിയപ്പെടുന്നുവെങ്കിലുംạ̄ṙiyp͓peʈun͓nuʋeŋ͓kilum̽

Graphemes

In many cases, grapheme clusters can be used to segment Malayalam words, since the virama is often visible and in principle allows for a segment break immediately (like Tamil). However, consonant cluster sequences often form conjuncts which should not be broken during edit operations such as letter-spacing, first-letter highlighting, and in-word line breaking. For the operations mentioned, one needs to segment the text using orthographic syllables.

The choice of visible virama vs. conjunct tends to vary from sequence to sequence and from font to font, but given that there is only one Malayalam virama, the application needs to interpret the virama in two different ways for segmentation: (1) as a simple vowel-killer, and (2) as a conjunct initiator. Choosing the right behaviour requires the application to understand the rendered glyphs, but this is asking a lot of an application.

The Malayalam virama (chandrakkala) is 0D4D, which has an Indic Syllabic Category of Virama.

Grapheme clusters

Base ZW(N)J? Combining_mark* ZW(N)J?

Combining marks may include one of the following types of character.

1. Dependent vowels [13] (see combiningvowels) There is usually only one vowel sign per base consonant, however in decomposed text circumgraphs are represented by 2 combining characters. Vowel signs may also be attached to numbers (see vowelsigns).
2. Final consonants [2] (see finals) One of 2 possible combining marks, at the end of a grapheme cluster sequence. May also occur after independent vowels.
3. Virama (chandrakkala) [1] (see anusvara_visarga and absence) The chandrakkala is used between consonants in a cluster, however sometimes it is simply rendered as a diacritic over the non-final consonant(s) in a cluster, but other times it causes conjunct creation and is invisible (see orthographicS). It is also used (usually at the end of a word) to indicate the half-u vowel sound. In older texts this would follow the U vowel sign. Finally, it may also be used to modify a vowel sound, such as in the 3rd example below.

Placing a ZWNJ before the chandrakkala is supposed to produce the modern 'open' form of the conjunct in fonts that would otherwise produce a traditional conjunct (see joiner). A ZWNJ can also be used after a chandrakkala to prevent the formation of a conjunct form.

ZWJ can be used before the chandrakkala to produce a traditional conjunct form in fonts that produce the open form by default but have the glyphs for the traditional forms too (see joiner).

The following examples show a variety of grapheme clusters, several of which show the virama used in a different way from its use in other words:

Click on the text version of these words to see more detail about the composition.

	കാഴ്ച
	കോത്
	എ്ന്നാ
	നമ്മൾ
	നല്ലത്
	നമസ്തേ

In many cases a non-final consonant in a cluster is these days rendered using a special chillu codepoint, rather than a consonant with virama. Chillus are also used for word final consonants that are not followed by a vowel. These chillu characters stand alone as grapheme clusters. See the example below, where the 2nd and final graphemes are chillus.

പെൻസിൽ

Larger typographic units

(Consonant Chandrakkala)* Grapheme_cluster

Malayalam commonly stacks or conjoins glyphs, to form conjuncts. The conjuncts represent consonant clusters.

Grapheme clusters terminate after a sequence of marks that ends with a chandrakkala, but editorial operations that change the visual appearance of the text, such as letter-spacing, first-letter highlighting, line-breaking, and justification, should never split conjunct forms apart. For this reason, an alternative way of segmenting graphemes is needed. This may not apply, however, for some other operations such as cursor movement or backwards delete.

Where conjuncts appear, a typographic unit contains multiple grapheme clusters. The non-final grapheme clusters all end with 0D4D, and the final grapheme cluster begins with a consonant.

The following are examples.

Click on the text version of these words to see more detail about the composition.

	നമ്മൾ
	നല്ലത്
	അങ്കക്കളരി

Complicating factors

Malayalam has only one virama code point, but it can be used to indicate a conjunct and disappear, or it may simply be displayed as a diacritic over the non-final consonant(s) in a cluster. Often both approaches will appear in the same cluster. The codepoints in memory give no indication as to which will result – that may also vary by font. There is no additional code point, like in some Southeast Asian scripts, that users can choose to indicate that they want a visible chandrakkala rather than a conjunct.

The problem is that, in principle, you would expect line-breaks, etc. to be allowed after a consonant with a visible chandrakkala, just like in Tamil. But without a way to distinguish how the font is rendering the codepoints, this is not possible. Therefore, applications may keep cluster components together for Malayalam when the chandrakkala is visible.

The following example shows 3 chandrakkala characters that are used in different ways. The first just appears above its base, the second creates a conjunct and disappears, and the third represents a vowel sound (a completely different usage). Note that the app that generated the orthographic syllable keeps everything together as one unbreakable typographic unit.

Click on the text version of this word to see more detail about the composition.

	തുടയ്ക്ക്
	Same word with orthographic syllable rules applied.

Treatment as grapheme clusters rather than conjuncts can also affect vowel sign positioning. An illustration of this can be seen when a consonant cluster is followed (phonetically) by a vowel rendered as a vowel sign glyph that is displayed to the left of the base. For example, observe below how the pre-base vowel 0D47 appears to the left of the tr conjunct, but doesn't get rendered at the beginning of the str cluster.

Click on the text version of this word to see more detail about the composition.

	ഓസ്ട്രേലിയ
	Same word with orthographic syllable rules applied.

Phrase & section boundaries

Malayalam uses western punctuation.

। and ॥ are used in older texts to separate phrases.

Quotations & citations

Malayalam texts use quotation marks around quotations. Of course, due to keyboard design, quotations may also be surrounded by ASCII double and single quote marks.

Line breaking & hyphenation

Spaces provide the main line break opportunities, however Malayalam is an agglutinative language and Malayalam words can be long. This can lead to large gaps during justification, and sometimes words that are longer than the available column width, so it is desirable to also hyphenate words.

Baselines, line height, etc.

Malayalam uses the so-called 'alphabetic' baseline, which is the same as for Latin and many other scripts.

Malayalam characters have ascenders and descenders, and combining marks appear above and below the lettters. However, generally speaking the extensions involved don't extend far beyond those of Latin text.

To give an approximate idea, fig_baselines compares Latin and Malayalam glyphs from Noto fonts. The basic height of Malayalam letters is typically around the Latin x-height, however extenders and combining marks reach slightly beyond the Latin ascenders and descenders, creating a need for slightly larger line spacing.

fig_baselines_other shows similar comparisons for the Malayalam MN and Kartika fonts.

Counters, lists, etc.

You can experiment with counter styles using the Counter styles converter. Patterns for using these styles in CSS can be found in Ready-made Counter Styles, and we use the names of those patterns here to refer to the various styles.

The modern Malayalam orthography uses a native numeric style.