Suriyani Malayalam

Suriyani Malayalam, also known as Karshoni or Syriac Malayalam, is a traditional system of writing Malayalam language in a variant form of Syriac script which was popular among the Saint Thomas Christians (also known as Syrian Christians or Nasranis) of Kerala in India.^[1][2][3] It is a blend of Malayalam grammatical base, East Syriac script with special orthographic features, and vocabulary from Malayalam and East Syriac. This originated in the South Indian region of the Malabar Coast (modern day Kerala). Until the 19th century, the script was widely used by Syrian Christians in Kerala.

Writing

There were many problems in writing Malayalam using the script of Syriac, a Semitic language. Only 22 letters were available from East Syriac orthography to render over 53 phonemes of Malayalam. These problems were overcome by creating additional letters.^[4]

Loanwords

Over the centuries, the Malayalam language borrowed several East Syriac words as Suriyani Malayalam. A few of them are given below:

Literature

Vedatharkam written by Kariattil Mar Ousep Malpan is one of the famous books written in Suriyani Malayalam.^[1] Large number of documents written in Suriyani Malayalam are found among the Saint Thomas Christians or Nasranis of Kerala.^[1]

See also

• Judeo-Malayalam
• Arabi Malayalam
• Garshuni

References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Suriyani Malayalam, Nasrani Foundation
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 A sacred language is vanishing from State, The Hindu
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Prayer from the Past, India Today
4. ↑ "Preliminary Proposal to Encode Syriac Letters for Garshuni Malayalam" (PDF). 
5. ↑ Mar Thomma Margam by Fr. Varghese Pathikulangara

^[1]

1. ↑ "Preliminary Proposal to Encode Syriac Letters for Garshuni Malayalam" (PDF).