Malayalam is a Dravidian language spoken in Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry by the Malayali people. The origin of Malayalam remains a matter of dispute among scholars.
Malayalam came from the words mala, meaning 'mountain' and alam, meaning 'region,' and hence Malayalam is literally translated as "the mountain region." Originally, Malayalam was named the land of the dynasty of Chera and later became its name.But certain scholars believe that during the prehistoric period, both Tamil and Malayalam evolved from the "Proto-Tamil-Dravidian" ancestor and that the notion of Malayalam as the "daughter" of Tamil is not accepted. This is because Malayalam and several Dravidian languages have common traits on the West Coast that are found not even in Tamil 's oldest historical forms.
Robert Caldwell expressed the view that Malayalam had an affiliating identity with classical Tamil and that it had acquired a significant amount of Sanskrit vocabulary and lost its personal termination over time in his 1856 book "Comparative Dravidian or South-Indian Languagemonies." The early development of Malayalam was highly influenced by Old-Tamil as the scholarship and administration language, which later became the Tamil-Brahmi and Vatteluttu alphabets. Throughout the 8th and 9th centuries, the script from Malayalam started to vary from that of Tamil and Brahmi. By the end of the thirteenth century, the Tamil-Brahmi script, used for the writing of Tamil, was the only written language.
Throughout the years, Malayalam has incorporated several language components, most notably Sanskrit and later English. The other major languages, which have been introduced over the ages, are Pali, Prakrit, Urdu, Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, Syriac, Dutch, and Portuguese, according to Sooranad Kunjan Pillai, compiler of the authoritative lexicon Malayalam.
In the admixture of Sanskrit and Early Malayalam, Manipravalam, a number of liturgical medieval texts were written. In formal Malayalam used in literature, the influence of Sanskrit was very prominent. The number of Sanskrit loans in Malayalam, however, is very small. In Jewish Malayalam, as well as in English, Portuguese, Syriac, and Greek, the dialects of loan and influences from Hebrew, Syriac, and Ladino are abounding, while in Muslim dialects the elements in the Arab and Persian language predominate. In the Malabar region of Kerala, a Muslim dialect called Mappila Malayalam is used.
Malayalam is a language spoken in India by almost 2.88 percent of Indians in 22 common languages. 45 million people worldwide have spoken about Malayalam. In addition, in the neighboring state of Malayalam there are linguistic minorities; in the Nilgiris, Kanyakumari, Coimbatore, Tenkasi, Tamil Nadu and Kodagu districts, and in the Dacshina Kannada districts of Karnataka, a small number of speakers. The languages are also commonly spoken in the Gulf countries due to Malayali expatriates in the Persian Gulf.