Malayalam
മലയാളലിപിSample Characters
First 48 characters from Malayalam (U+0D00–U+0D7F)
About Malayalam
The Malayalam script is an abugida used to write the Malayalam language, spoken by approximately 35 million people in the Indian state of Kerala. Malayalam is one of the six classical languages of India.
Malayalam script descended from the Grantha script (itself derived from Brahmi) and is written left-to-right. It is notable for its extremely complex system of conjunct consonants, which historically created very large orthographic inventories. A script reform in 1971 simplified many of the most complex conjuncts for easier typesetting.
Data sourced from the ISO 15924 registry, Unicode CLDR, and the Unicode Character Database.
Languages Using Malayalam 1
Frequently Asked Questions
What type of writing system is Malayalam?
What direction does Malayalam read?
How many languages use the Malayalam script?
When was the Malayalam script created?
Does Malayalam have uppercase and lowercase letters?
Compare Malayalam With Another Script
Direction, characters, languages — side by side.
Key Facts
- ISO Code
- Mlym
- ISO Number
- 347
- Script Type
- Abugida
- Direction
- Left-to-right
- Status
- Living
- Region
- South Asian
- Characters
- 118
- Introduced
- 830 CE
- Languages
- 1
- Total Speakers
- ~35M
Unicode Ranges
-
MalayalamU+0D00–U+0D7F
Script Properties
- Has Case
- No
- Cursive
- No
- Vowels
- inherent