Malayalam is spoken by approximately 38 million people in India, predominantly in the state of Kerala. It ranks # 29 in the top 100 languages. The term 'Malayalam' as referring to the language of Kerala is of comparatively recent origin. To begin with, it denoted the land itself. It is probable that the term is the result of a combination of two words, mala meaning mountain and alam meaning the land or locality (which lies along side the mountain). Subsequently the synonyms Malayanma and Malayayma came into being as denoting the language of the Malayalam county and finally the name of the land itself was taken over as the name of its language. Malayalam is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and was designated as a Classical Language in India in 2013. It has official language status in the state of Kerala and in the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry. Malayalam is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka; with significant speakers in the Nilgiris, Kanyakumari and Coimbatore districts of Tamil Nadu, and Dakshina Kannada of Karnataka. Malayalam serves as a gateway language on certain islands, including the Mahl-dominated Minicoy Island. Malayalam has incorporated many elements from other languages over the years, the most notable being Sanskrit and later, English. According to Sooranad Kunjan Pillai who compiled the authoritative Malayalam lexicon, the other principal languages whose vocabulary was incorporated over the ages were Pali, Prakrit, Urdu, Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, Syriac, Dutch and Portuguese. This dictionary is extracted from our Words R Us system, a derivative of WordNet. English Wordnet, originally created by Princeton University is a lexical database for the English language. It groups words in English into sets of synonyms called synsets, provides brief definitions and usage examples, and records a series of relationships between these sets of synonyms. WordNet can be viewed as both a combination of dictionary and thesaurus. This dictionary will be indispensable for any international company doing business in areas where Malayalam is spoken. For pronunciation and definitions of the words in this book, see our website at http: //www.wordsrus.info
