Malayalam

Malayalam is a Dravidian language spoken by Malayali people on India's southwestern coast, chiefly in Kerala and the Lakshadweep islands. Its name combines mala, mountain, and alam, region. Most scholars derive it from a western coastal dialect of Middle Tamil, which separated between the ninth and thirteenth centuries as the Western Ghats cut Kerala off from the Tamil country and Brahmin settlers added Sanskrit words.

The Quilon Syrian copper plates of about 850 are among its oldest inscriptions, and the Ramacharitam of the late twelfth or early thirteenth century is the first work independent of the Tamil tradition. From the thirteenth century court poetry flourished in Manipravalam, a mixed Tamil-Sanskrit idiom, while the sixteenth-century poet Ezhuthachan fixed the modern literary language.

Its script, Vatteluttu enlarged with Grantha letters, had its own shape by the late thirteenth century, and a Malayalam travel book of 1785 was the first travelogue in an Indian language.