Development of literature malayalam.........

Main article: Malayalam literature

The earliest written record resembling Malayalam is the Vazhappalli inscription (ca. 830 CE). The early literature of Malayalam comprised three types of composition: Malayalam Nada, Tamil Nada and Sanskrit Nada.

• Classical songs known as Naadan Paattu
• Manipravalam of the Sanskrit tradition, which permitted a generous interspersing of Sanskrit with Malayalam.Niranam poets Manipravalam Madhava Panikkar, Sankara Panikkar and Rama Panikkar wrote Manipravalam poetry in the 14th century. The changed political situation in the 14th century after the invasion of Malik Kafur in 1310 led to the decline of Tamil dynasties leading to the dominance of people with Prakrit and Sanskrit heritage, the languages of Ahichatra in Uttarkhand, the original home town of Aryans and Nagavanshi people.

• The folk song rich in native elements

Malayalam poetry to the late 20th century betrays varying degrees of the fusion of the three different strands. The oldest examples of Pattu and Manipravalam, respectively, are Ramacharitam and Vaishikatantram, both from the 12th century.
The earliest extant prose work in the language is a commentary in simple Malayalam, Bhashakautaliyam (12th century) on Chanakya’s Arthasastra. Adhyathmaramayanam by Thunchaththu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan (known as the father of the Malayalam language) who was born in Tirur, one of the most important works in Malayalam literature.
By the end of 18th century some of the Christian missionaries from Kerala started writing in Malayalam but mostly travelogues, Dictionaries and Religious books. Varthamana Pusthakam (1778), written by Parammekkal Thoma Kathanar a travelogue. Church Mission Society which started a seminary at Kottayam in 1819 also started a press which printed Malayalam books in 19th century. Malayalam and Sanskrit were increasingly studied by Christians of Kottayam and pathanamthitta by the end of 19th century Malayalam replaced Syriac as language of Liturgy in the church.

[edit] Phonology

For the consonants and vowels, the IPA is given, followed by the Malayalam character and the ISO 15919 transliteration.

[edit] Vowels

The first letter in Malayalam

	Short			Long
	Front	Central	Back	Front	Central	Back
Close	/i/ ഇ i	/ɨ̆/ * ŭ	/u/ ഉ u	/iː/ ഈ ī		/uː/ ഊ ū
Mid	/e/ എ e	/ə/ * a	/o/ ഒ o	/eː/ ഏ ē		/oː/ ഓ ō
Open		/a/ അ a			/aː/ ആ ā

• */ɨ̆/ is the saṁvr̥tōkāram, an epenthentic vowel in Malayalam. Therefore, it has no independent vowel letter (because it never occurs at the beginning of words) but, when it comes after a consonant, there are various ways of representing it. In medieval times, it was just represented with the symbol for /u/, but later on it was just completely omitted (that is, written as an inherent vowel). In modern times, it is written in two different ways - the Northern style, in which a chandrakkala is used, and the Southern or Travancore style, in which the diacritic for a /u/ is attached to the preceding consonant and a chandrakkala is written above.
• */a/ (phonetically central: [ä]) and /ə/ are both represented as basic or "default" vowels in the abugida script (although /ə/ never occurs word-initially and therefore does not make use of the letter അ), but they are distinct vowels.

Malayalam has also borrowed the Sanskrit diphthongs of /äu/ (represented in Malayalam as ഔ, au) and /ai/ (represented in Malayalam as ഐ, ai), although these mostly occur only in Sanskrit loanwords. Traditionally (as in Sanskrit), four vocalic consonants (usually pronounced in Malayalam as consonants followed by the saṁvr̥tōkāram, which is not officially a vowel, and not as actual vocalic consonants) have been classified as vowels: vocalic r (ഋ, /rɨ̆/, r̥), long vocalic r (ൠ, /rɨː/, r̥̄), vocalic l (ഌ, /lɨ̆/, l̥) and long vocalic l (ൡ, /lɨː/, l̥̄). Except for the first, the other three have been omitted from the current script used in Kerala as there are no words in current Malayalam that use them.

[edit] Consonants

				Bilabial		Labiodental	Dental		Alveolar		Retroflex		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Stop		Unaspirated		/p/ പ p	/b/ ബ b		/t̪/ ത t	/d̪/ ദ d	/t/ * t		/ʈ/ ട ṭ	/ɖ/ ഡ ḍ	/t͡ʃ/ ച c	/d͡ʒ/ ജ j	/k/ ക k	/ɡ/ ഗ g
		Aspirated		/pʰ/ ഫ ph	/bʱ/ ഭ bh		/t̪ʰ/ ഥ th	/d̪ʱ/ ധ dh			/ʈʰ/ ഠ ṭh	/ɖʱ/ ഢ ḍh	/t͡ʃʰ/ ഛ ch	/d͡ʒʱ/ ഝ jh	/kʰ/ ഖ kh	/ɡʱ/ ഘ gh
Nasal				/m/ മ m			/n̪/ ന n		/n/ ന * n		/ɳ/ ണ ṇ		/ɲ/ ഞ ñ		/ŋ/ ങ ṅ
Approximant						/ʋ/ വ v					/ɻ/ ഴ l		/j/ യ y
Liquid									/r/ റ r
Fricative						/f/ ഫ* f	/s̪/ സ s				/ʂ/ ഷ ṣ		/ɕ/ ശ ś				/ɦ/ ഹ h
Tap									/ɾ/ ര r
Lateral approximant									/l/ ല l		/ɭ/ ള ḷ

• The unaspirated alveolar plosive stop used to have a separate character but it has become obsolete because it only occurs in geminate form (when geminated it is written with a റ below another റ) or immediately following other consonants (in these cases, റ or ററ is usually written in small size underneath the first consonant). To see how the archaic letter looked, find the Malayalam letter in the row for t here.
• The alveolar nasal used to have a separate character but this is now obsolete (to see how it looked, find the Malayalam letter in the row for n here) and the sound is now almost always represented by the symbol that was originally used only for the dental nasal. However, both sounds are extensively used in current colloquial and official Malayalam, and there is no distinction made in the spelling.
• The letter ഫ represents both /pʰ/, a native phoneme, and /f/, which only occurs in adopted words.

[edit] Grammar

Malayalam has a canonical word order of SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) as do other Dravidian languages.^[27] Both adjectives and possessive pronouns precede the nouns they modify. Malayalam has 6 grammatical cases.^[28