Malayalam, a language of God's own country! Options

[Nimii]

I always found Malayalam a sweet language. It is a bit sing a song when spoken.

It is an interesting thing to note that most of the south indian languages have lot of words with a bit of change in the sound so similar. Dr.Unni what does thou have to say here?

N

[unni]

I always found Malayalam a sweet language.  It is a bit sing a song when spoken.

It is an interesting thing to note that most of the south indian languages have lot of words with a bit of change in the sound so similar. Dr.Unni what does thou have to say here?

N

I guess that over time, with the inter-mingling of people/communities, a lot of words have become common to several languages, except they are pronounced differently. In the Palghat area the Tamil spoken is mixed with Malayalam, both in use of words as well as the intonation. Unless I am mistaken, Tamil was not Sanskrit-based, whereas the other South Indian languages were. Yet now there are numerous words in Tamil that are similar in other languages of the South.

(I have not learnt to read or write Malayalam, and my spoken vocabulary is very limited. In fact while listening to Malayalam songs I don't understand most of the words. My understanding of Hindi/Urdu is far better. And during almost 30 years of marriage I've never had a real conversation with my mother-in-law --- she is hesitant to speak in English and me in Tamil! Of course, my wife doesn't understand me in any language. )