The Malayalam Alphabet: A Beginner's Guide to Reading It

The Malayalam alphabet has 49 basic letters in our chart: 13 vowels and 36 consonants. It is an abugida, which means every consonant already carries a short “a” sound, and the other vowels are written as signs attached to the consonant. Learn the vowels, then the consonants row by row, then the vowel signs, and you can sound out real Malayalam words.

This guide uses the letters, names and sounds from our free Malayalam alphabet chart, and every practice word comes from our list of the 3,457 most common Malayalam words.

#What kind of script is Malayalam?

Malayalam is written in its own script, used for the language of Kerala in southern India. Our alphabet data describes it as “the roundest of the Indian scripts and the one with the most letters, because Malayalam kept sounds its neighbours dropped.”

The important word for a learner is abugida. In an alphabet like English, vowels and consonants are equal: you write k and then a. In an abugida, the consonant letter already includes a vowel. The letter ക on its own is read ka, not k. To say ki or koo instead, you add a vowel sign to ക. The standalone vowel letters are used mainly at the start of a word, where there is no consonant to attach a sign to.

Devanagari (Hindi), Bengali, Tamil and Telugu work the same way. What sets Malayalam apart in our charts is the count.

Malayalam 49 letters

Telugu 47 letters

Devanagari (Hindi) 44 letters

Bengali 43 letters

Tamil 30 letters

Source: LangX alphabet charts (vowels plus consonants as listed on each /tools/alphabet page). Other charts count differently.

Show as a table

Item	Value
Malayalam	49 letters
Telugu	47 letters
Devanagari (Hindi)	44 letters
Bengali	43 letters
Tamil	30 letters

Letter counts depend on what you include. Some Malayalam charts add signs and extra forms and arrive at a bigger number; ours lists the vowels and consonants a beginner needs to start reading, so treat 49 as a working total rather than an official one.

#Malayalam vowels

These are the vowels in their standalone form, the way they look at the start of a word. The sounds are rough English approximations, enough to sound a word out.

Most of them come in short and long pairs: a and aa, i and ii, u and uu, e and ee, o and oo. The long one is usually the short one with an extra stroke or loop, so learn them in pairs. Length matters in Malayalam: a short and a long vowel can make two different words.

Two of these vowels are also everyday words on their own. ഈ (ii) means “this” and is the 6th most common word on our list; ആ (aa) means “that” and is 7th.

#Malayalam consonants

Our chart lists 36 consonants. The first 25 fall into five rows of five, and each row follows the same pattern: a plain sound, the same sound with a puff of air, a voiced sound, the voiced sound with a puff of air, and a nasal. Learn the pattern once and each new row is quick.

The remaining 11 don’t fit a row:

#The letters that share a name

This is the part that trips up English speakers. Several Malayalam letters have the same romanized name because English has only one sound where Malayalam has two.

“Tongue curled back” means the tip of the tongue curls up and back toward the roof of the mouth. You won’t hear the difference from a table. You’ll hear it from a native speaker, which is why these pairs are worth asking about early.

Then there is ഴ, named zha and described in our chart as “r and l at once”. It has no English equivalent, and you’ll meet it in common words such as വഴി (path), the 82nd most common word on our list.

#How vowel signs work

Every consonant carries a built-in short a. To put any other vowel after a consonant, you attach that vowel’s sign. Here are the signs on ക (ka):

Notice where the signs sit. The aa, i and ii signs come after the consonant. The e, ee and ai signs are written before it, even though you say them after. The o, oo and au signs wrap around, with one part on each side. The u and uu signs join onto the consonant and can change its shape.

#Four more marks you’ll see in real words

The chart lists the 49 base letters. Real words use a few more marks, and all of these examples are from the word list:

• The vowel killer (്, called chandrakkala). It removes the built-in a. At the end of a word it is usually said as a very short, murmured vowel rather than silence. You’ll see it in അത് (that, #4), ഇത് (this, #8) and പേര് (name, #52).
• The m sign (ം, called anusvaram). A small circle that adds an m sound, very often at the end of a word: മരം (tree, #443), സമയം (time, #67), എല്ലാം (all, #29). The name of the language itself, മലയാളം, ends with it.
• Chillu letters. Special forms for a consonant with no vowel at all, common at the end of words: ൻ (n) in ഞാൻ (I, #3) and അവൻ (he, #47), ൾ (the curled l) in അവൾ (she, #77), ർ (r) in അവർ (they, #48).
• Doubled and joined consonants. Two consonants with no vowel between them are often fused into one shape: മ്മ (mm) in അമ്മ (mother, #95), ല്ല (ll) in നല്ല (good, #25).

#Read your first Malayalam words

Put the pieces together. Each of these is on our most common words list, with its rank.

Start with കട and ആന: no vowel signs at all, just letters with their built-in a. Then നീ and ശരി add one sign each. By വലിയ you’re reading a three-syllable word.

#A learning plan for the Malayalam alphabet

1. 1

   Learn the 13 vowels in pairs

   Short and long together: a and aa, i and ii, u and uu, e and ee, o and oo, then ru, ai and au.

2. 2

   Learn the five consonant rows

   One row at a time: plain, puff of air, voiced, voiced with a puff of air, nasal. Say each row aloud.

3. 3

   Add the 11 remaining consonants

   ya, ra, la, va, the two sha, sa, ha, the curled la, zha and the hard ra.

4. 4

   Drill the vowel signs on one consonant

   Write ka, kaa, ki, kii and so on until the sign positions feel natural, then try them on other consonants.

5. 5

   Read words from the common words list

   Start with short, high-ranked words and sound them out letter by letter.

6. 6

   Get a native speaker to listen

   Send voice messages so someone can tell you whether your curled t and your zha are right.

The alphabet chart is at /tools/alphabet/malayalam, and the next step after it is vocabulary: the 3,457 most common Malayalam words, each with its English meaning. When you can read a few hundred, the Malayalam vocabulary test samples 35 words from every part of the list and estimates how many you know.

If you’re also curious about related scripts, compare the Tamil alphabet (Malayalam is closely related to Tamil; both are Dravidian languages) and the Telugu alphabet, or browse all our alphabets.

#Practice reading and speaking with native speakers

A chart gives you the shapes. Pronunciation, especially the letter pairs and ഴ, comes from hearing a person and being corrected. On LangX, Malayalam is one of the 182 languages you can pick, and matching runs both ways: you see people who speak Malayalam and are learning a language you speak. They can hold any of your messages to correct it, corrections are unlimited on every plan, and you can send voice messages so they hear how you say a word, not only how you spell it. LangX has voice messages rather than live calls. The free plan includes 5 new conversations a day and unlimited replies; get the app or read how to do a language exchange.

#FAQ

#How many letters are in the Malayalam alphabet?

Our chart lists 49 basic letters: 13 vowels and 36 consonants. Other charts give different totals depending on whether they include signs, chillu letters and rarer forms.

#Is Malayalam an alphabet or an abugida?

An abugida. Each consonant carries a built-in short a, and other vowels are written as signs attached to the consonant. Standalone vowel letters are used mainly at the start of a word.

#Why do some Malayalam letters have the same name?

Because Malayalam distinguishes sounds English doesn’t. ട and ത are both “ta”, but one is said with the tongue curled back and the other with the tongue on the teeth. The same goes for the two “da”, “na”, “sha”, “la” and “ra” letters.

#What is the hardest Malayalam letter to pronounce?

For most English speakers it is ഴ (zha), which our chart describes as “r and l at once”. It has no English equivalent, so it is best learned by listening to a native speaker.

#How long does it take to learn the Malayalam alphabet?

It depends on how much you practice. Learning it in the order above, vowels first, then consonant rows, then vowel signs, is faster than memorizing 49 unrelated shapes, and reading real words early makes the letters stick.

More alphabet guides: Hindi and Bengali, two more abugidas; Korean; Greek; and the Cyrillic Russian and Bulgarian alphabets.