Malayalam language

:Note: Malayalam is not the Malay language, which is spoken in Malaysia.

Language variation and external influence

Variations in intonation patterns, vocabulary, and distribution of grammatical and phonological elements are observable along the parameters of region, community, occupation, social stratum, style and register. Influence of Sanskrit is most prominent in the high caste dialects and least in the Harijan dialects like most other Indian languages. Loan words from English, Syriac, Latin, and Portuguese abound in the Christian dialects and those from Arabic and Urdu in the muslim dialects. Malayalam has borrowed from Sanskrit thousands of nouns, hundreds of verbs and some indeclinables. Some items of basic vocabulary also have found their way into Malayalam from Sanskrit. Like other parts of India, Sanskrit was considered as the aristocratic and scholastic language, similar to Latin in Europe.

Related Topics:
Sanskrit - Christian

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European languages, mainly English and Portuguese, stand only second to Sanskrit in its influence in Malayalam. Many of individual lexical items and many idiomatic expressions in modern Malayalam are of European origin.

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