What is the difference between malay and malayalam

I travelled all the way from London to Crawley Surrey today and found out that the police officer has booked me for the wrong language combinations! He has mistaken Malay as Malayalam. The client is in fact a Tamil speaker from Sri Lanka. I was booked for Malay language, as a Malay interpreter. The British called it "Malaysian" interpreter, because they do not know that "Malaysian" is a nationality, but "Malay" is a language or an ethnicity.

I am a Malay interpreter, my task was interpreting from Malay to English, interpreting English to Malay.

Malay is the major language in the Austronesian family spoken in Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Singapore. Malayalam is spoken in the south of India, predominantly in Kerala. There is no similarity whatsoever! This is not the first time it has happened to me. Tamil is spoken in Malaysia, but only among the Tamil Indian community, which is around 6. However, most of the middle class Tamil Indians do not go to Tamil schools and they only speak English and they do not speak Tamil at all.

I can very well understand Tamil even though I have never learned it formally or I speak with Tamil natives. Dravidian languages can all be picked up easily if we have enough exposure.

And what qualifies you to make such nonsensical remarks. There is plenty of evidence to suggest Malayalam branched off from Tamil and later got heavily influenced by Sanskrit. Nothing to be ashamed of if something comes from Tamil or is influenced by Sanskrit. This has only enriched Malayalam. Forgive If I am wrong, but this has been proved by many historian like prof Govindankutty, Padmanabhan menon etc..

Tamil is unquestionably the oldest language of all. Malayalam, an off-shoot of it is probably equally old. The advantage rested with the Malayalam language because those who knew it could pick up both Tamil and Hindi very easily. Name required. Email required. Please note: comment moderation is enabled and may delay your comment. There is no need to resubmit your comment. Notify me of followup comments via e-mail.

Written by : Nimisha Kaushik. User assumes all risk of use, damage, or injury. You agree that we have no liability for any damages.

Malayalam Malayalam is a language of the Dravidian family. Summary: Both languages are spoken in southern India and belong to Dravidian family of languages. Modern Malayalam literature is rich in poetry, fiction, drama, and biography.

In Kerala alone, approximately daily newspapers, over weekly periodicals, and over monthly journals are published in Malayalam.

The modern Malayalam alphabet was originally used to write Sanskrit only, but is now used to write spoken Malayalam. The script was developed in the 13th century from a descendant of the Brahmi script. The alphabet consists of 54 letters, 18 of which are vowels. It is a syllabic alphabet in which all consonants have an inherent vowel.

Diacritics, which can appear above, below, before or after the consonant, indicate change to another vowel or suppression of the inherent vowel. The shapes of Malayalam letters closely resemble those of Tamil, i. The roundedness has to do with the fact that in ancient times writing was done by carving letters on palm leaves with a sharp point.

Using this technique, it was apparently easier to produce curved lines rather than straight ones. A simplified version of the script was introduced in the to facilitate printing. The main change involved writing consonants and diacritics linearly rather than as complex characters.

These changes are not applied consistently, so the modern script is often mixture of traditional and simplified characters. In Singapore and Malaysia, Malayalam is written with the Arabic script. The Arabic script is also used occasionally by Muslims in Kerala. How difficult is it to learn Malayalam? There is no data on the difficulty level of Malayalam for speakers of English. Toggle navigation. Malayalam Swaagatam — Welcome. Listen » Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Language Difficulty.

Languages A-Z. Select Language. Tibetic Languages. Tok Pisin. Arabic Egyptian Spoken. Arabic Levantine. Arabic Modern Standard. Arabic Moroccan Spoken. Arabic Overview. Bashkort Bashkir. Haitian Creole. Hawaiian Creole. Indonesian Bahasa Indonesia. Irish Gaelic. Malay Bahasa Melayu. Mandarin Chinese. Afro Asiatic Language Family. Algic Language Family.

Altaic Language Family. Austro-Asiatic Language Family. Austronesian Language Family. Baltic Branch. Berber Branch. Caucasian Language Families.