Malayalam

Verbs

Form	Description	Tag	Example	Translation
Present	stemk-unnu	<pres>	kuttikal kalikkunnu children play	The children are playing.
Future	stem-um	<fut>	naale mala peyyum tomorrow rain will.fall	It will rain tomorrow.
Present progressive	presk-unt		aval nannaayi pathikkunt she well studying.is	She is studying well.
Present progressive (II)	inf ān		siita avite irikkuka ān Sita there sit is.	Sita is sitting there.
Iterative present	stem-kontu-iri-kk-unnu		avan paatikkontirikkunnu He singing.is	He is singing.
Iterative fut	stem-kontu-iri-kk-um		avan paatikkontirikkum He singing.will.be	He will be singing.
Iterative past	stem-kontu-iri-unnu		avan paatikkontirunnu He singing.was	He was singing.
Continuous iterative	stem-konte-iri-kunnu		kuttikal paatikkonteeyirunnu children sang.without.stopping	The children sang without stopping
Perfect			innale mala peytirunnu yesterday rain fell	It rained yesterday.
Contemporaneous perfect			yuddham pottippurappettirikkunnu war broken#out.has	War has broken out!
Remote perfect			ñaan paattŭ pathiccittuntŭ I music studied.had	I had studied music.
Habitual present			juun maasattil mala peyyaaruntŭ June month.in rain falls.usually	It usually rains in June.
Habitual past			ñaan delhiyil pookaaruntaayirunnu I Delhi.to go.used#to	I used to go to Delhi.
Imperative			putiya vidyaarthikal hedmaasrrare kaaneentataanŭ new students headmaster meet.should	New students should meet the headmaster.
Promissive	past-ām		ñaan naale varaam I tomorrow come.will	I will come tomorrow.
Emphatic promissive	past-ēk-ām		ñaan naale vanneekkaam I tomorrow come.will	I will come tomorrow.
Permissive	past-ō (kolluu)		vannoo you.may.come	You may come.
Permissive (II)	past-ootte		avan avite irunnootte He there sit.let	Let him sit there.
Permissive (III)			avar avite taamasikkatte He there sit.let	Let him sit there.
Permissive (Formal)			paas ullavarkkŭ itilee pookaavunnatŭ aanŭ pass having this.way go.may is	Those who have a pass may go this way.
Optative			mala peyyatte rain fall.let	Let it rain.
Precative	stem-anē (= stem-uka-vēnam-ē)		mala peyyanee rain fall.may	May it rain.

Nouns

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Masculine Sanskrit nouns with a word stem ending in a short /a/ take the ending /an/ in the nominative singular. For example, Kr̥ṣṇa → Kr̥ṣṇan. The final /n/ is dropped before masculine surnames, honorifics, or titles ending in /an/ and beginning with a consonant other than /n/ – e.g., "Krishna Menon", "Krishna Kaniyaan" etc., but "Krishnan Ezhutthachan". Surnames ending with /ar/ or /aḷ/ (where these are plural forms of "an" denoting respect) are treated similarly – "Krishna Pothuval", "Krishna Chakyar", but "Krishnan Nair", "Krishnan Nambiar", as are Sanskrit surnames such "Varma(n)", "Sharma(n)", or "Gupta(n)" (rare) – e.g., "Krishna Varma", "Krishna Sharman". If a name is a compound, only the last element undergoes this transformation – e.g., "Kr̥ṣṇa" + "dēva" = "Kr̥ṣṇadēvan", not "Kr̥ṣṇandēvan"

Feminine words ending in a long /ā/ or /ī/ are changed to end in a short /a/ or /i/, for example "Sītā" → "Sīta" and "Lakṣmī" → "Lakṣmi". However, the long vowel still appears in compound words, such as "Sītādēvi" or" Lakṣmīdēvi". The long ī is generally reserved for the vocative forms of these names, although in Sanskrit the vocative actually takes a short /i/. There are also a small number of nominative /ī/ endings that have not been shortened – a prominent example being the word "strī" for "woman".

Sanskrit words describing things or animals rather than people with a stem in short /a/ end with an /m/ in Malayalam. For example,"Rāmāyaṇa" → "Rāmāyaṇam". In most cases, this is actually the same as the Sanskrit accusative case ending, which is also /m/ (or, allophonically, anusvara due to the requirements of the sandhi word-combining rules) in the neuter nominative. However, "things and animals" and "people" are not always differentiated based on whether or not they are sentient beings; for example, "Narasimha" becomes "Narasiṃham" and not "Narasiṃhan", whereas "Ananta" becomes "Anantan" even though both are sentient. This does not strictly correspond to the Sanskrit neuter gender, as both "Narasiṃha" and "Ananta" are masculine nouns in the original Sanskrit.

scripting

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It is a Brahmic script used commonly to write the Malayalam language, which is the principal language of Kerala, India, spoken by 35 million people in the world.[3] Malayalam script is also widely used for writing Sanskrit texts in 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, 36 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.

https://svn.code.sf.net/p/apertium/svn/incubator/apertium-mal