Малаялам әліпбиі: тарихы мен дамуы

Brahmic script used commonly to write the Malayalam language

Malayalam script (ISO; / ) is a Brahmic script used commonly to write Malayalam, which is the principal language of Kerala, India, spoken by 45 million people in the world. It 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. It is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic. Malayalam script is also widely used for writing Sanskrit texts in Kerala. The Malayalam script bears high similarity with Tulu Script and Tigalari script, which was used for writing the Tulu language, spoken in coastal Karnataka (Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts) and the northernmost Kasargod district of Kerala. Like many other Indic scripts, it is an alphasyllabary (abugida), a writing system that is partially "alphabetic" and partially syllable based. The modern Malayalam alphabet has 15 vowel letters, 42 consonant letters, and a few other symbols. The Malayalam script is a Vatteluttu alphabet extended with symbols from the Grantha alphabet to represent Indo Aryan loanwords. The script is also used to write several minority languages such as Paniya, Betta Kurumba, and Ravula. The Malayalam language itself was historically written in several different scripts.

Malayalam was first written in the Tamil Brahmi script, an ancient script of Tamil and Malayalam languages. However, the modern Malayalam script evolved from the Grantha alphabet, and Vattezhuthu, both of which evolved from the Tamil Brahmi, but independently. Vatteluttu 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. The Vazhappally inscription issued by Rajashekhara Varman is the earliest example, dating from about 830 CE. During the medieval period, the Tigalari script that was used for writing Tulu in South Canara, and Sanskrit in the adjacent Malabar region, was very similar to the modern Malayalam script. or the 18th century. A variant form of this script, Kolezhuthu, was used until about the 19th century mainly in the Malabar Cochin area. Another variant form, Malayanma, was used in the south of Thiruvananthapuram. It later evolved into Tigalari Malayalam script was used by the Malayali, Havyaka Brahmins and Tulu Brahmin people, but was originally only applied to write Sanskrit. This script split into two scripts: Tigalari and Malayalam. While Malayalam script was extended and modified to write vernacular language Malayalam, the Tigalari was written for Sanskrit only. In Malabar, this writing system was termed Arya eluttu (ആര്യ എഴുത്ത്, Ārya eḻuttŭ), meaning "Arya writing" (Sanskrit is Indo Aryan language while Malayalam is a Dravidian language). Vatteluttu was in general use, but was not suitable for literature where many Sanskrit words were used. Like Tamil Brahmi, it was originally used to write Tamil, and as such, did not have letters for voiced or aspirated consonants used in Sanskrit but not used in Tamil. For this reason, Vatteluttu and the Grantha alphabet were sometimes mixed, as in the Manipravalam. One of the oldest examples of the Manipravalam literature, Vaishikatantram (വൈശികതന്ത്രം, Vaiśikatantram), dates back to the 12th century, where the earliest form of the Malayalam script was used, which seems to have been systematised to some extent by the first half of the 13th century. Hence, Ezhuthachan is also known as The Father of modern Malayalam. used Arya eluttu to write his Malayalam poems based on Classical Sanskrit literature.

In 1971, the Government of Kerala reformed the orthography of Malayalam by a government order to the education department. The objective was to simplify the script for print and typewriting technology of that time, by reducing the number of glyphs required. In 1967, the government appointed a committee headed by Sooranad Kunjan Pillai, who was the editor of the Malayalam Lexicon project. It reduced number of glyphs required for Malayalam printing from around 1000 to around 250. Above committee's recommendations were further modified by another committee in 1969. This proposal was later accepted by major newspapers in January 1971. The reformed script came into effect on 15 April 1971 (the Kerala New Year), by a government order released on 23 March 1971.

Today the reformed orthography, is commonly called put̪iya lipi and traditional system, pazhaya lipi Current print media almost entirely uses reformed orthography. The state run primary education introduces the Malayalam writing to the pupils in reformed script only and the books are printed accordingly. However, the digital media uses both traditional and reformed in almost equal proportions as the fonts for both the orthographies are commonly available.