Malayali

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Malayali or Malayalee(മലയാളി) is a name given to the inhabitants of the state of Kerala. The word Malayali orignates from Tamil, Malai means Hill and Aali means person. Malayali literally means a person hailing from a Hill Country in Tamil. It is synonymous with the word Keralite. Malayalis can be either Hindus, Muslims (Mappila muslims and others) or Christian (Nasarani and others). A small number of Malayalis are also the Cochin Jews. Also, Malu can be referred to as sherene,shawny and or reena.

Malayalam is the language spoken by a majority in the state of Kerala in the extreme Southwest of India. It is also spoken on the Indian islands of Lakshadweep, and in Mahe, which forms part of the union territory of Pondicherry. Malayalis have emigrated to various parts of globe due to scarce job oppurtunities and small size of Kerala. Malayalis have now settled all over India. Earlier Mumbai (Bombay) and Chennai (Madras) have been the favourite destinations in India. Now large numbers are also settling in Delhi, Bangalore, and Hyderabad. A large number of Malayalis have also emigrated to the Middle East, Europe and North America.

According to the Indian census of 1991, there were 28,096,376 speakers of Malayalam in Kerala making up 96.6% of the total population (up from 95.99% in 1981). There were a further 38,392 (4.8%) in Pondicherry, 43,678(84.5%) in Lakshadweep and a further 2,198,730 in other parts of India (mother tongue figures. not known how many uses the language actively). In all, Malayalees made up 3.59% of all Indians in 1991. Of the total 30,377,176 Malayalam speakers in India in 1991, a total of 30,325,637 spoke the standard dialects, 17,295 spoke the Yerava dialect and 34,244 spoke non-standard regional variations like Eranadan. 1 28.85% of all Malayalam speakers in India fluently spoke another second language. 19.64% of the total knew 3 or more languages. 26,073 Malayalam speakers in Andaman and Nicobar made up 9.29% of it's population in 1991.

There were 79,860 speakers of Malayalam in USA, according to the 2000 census. The 2001 Canadian census reported 7,070 people who had Malayalam as their mother tongue. There were 2,968 Malayalam speakers in Australia in 2001 2 . The 2006 New Zealand census reported 2,139 speakers. 3 134 Malyalam speaking households were reported in 1956 in Fiji.

[edit] References

1. ^ Ethnologue report for Malayalam

• Joshua Project: Malayali People Cluster

[edit] See also

• List of famous Keralites