Suriyani Malayalam (സുറിയാനി മലയാളം, ܣܘܪܝܢܝ ܡܠܝܠܡ), also known as Karshoni, Syro-Malabarica or Syriac Malayalam, is a dialect of

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of ...

written in a variant form of the

Syriac alphabet The Syriac alphabet ( ) is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language since the 1st century. It is one of the Semitic languages, Semitic abjads descending from the Aramaic alphabet through the Palmyrene alphabet, and shares sim ...

which was popular among the

Saint Thomas Christians The Saint Thomas Christians, also called Syrian Christians of India, ''Marthoma Suriyani Nasrani'', ''Malankara Nasrani'', or ''Nasrani Mappila'', are an Ethnoreligious group, ethno-religious community of Indian Christians in the state of Ker ...

(also known as Syrian Christians or Nasranis) of

Kerala Kerala ( , ) is a States and union territories of India, state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

. It uses Malayalam grammar, the Maḏnḥāyā or "Eastern" Syriac script with special orthographic features, and vocabulary from Malayalam and East Syriac. This originated in the South Indian region of the

Malabar Coast The Malabar Coast () is the southwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. It generally refers to the West Coast of India, western coastline of India stretching from Konkan to Kanyakumari. Geographically, it comprises one of the wettest regio ...

(modern-day Kerala). Until the 19th century, the script was widely used by Syrian Christians in Kerala.

Writing system

There were numerous problems in writing Malayalam using the

Syriac script The Syriac alphabet ( ) is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language since the 1st century. It is one of the Semitic languages, Semitic abjads descending from the Aramaic alphabet through the Palmyrene alphabet, and shares sim ...

, which was designed for a

Semitic language The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew, Maltese, Modern South Arabian languages and numerous other ancient and modern languages. They are spoken by mo ...

. Only 22 letters were available from the East Syriac alphabet to render 53 or so phonemes of Malayalam. This problem were overcome by adopting letters from the

Malayalam script Malayalam script (; / ) is a Brahmic scripts, Brahmic script used to write Malayalam, the principal language of Kerala, India, spoken by 45 million people. It is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union ter ...

. Basic Syriac ''ʾĀlap̄ Bēṯ'' based on form with corresponding Malayalam letters. Augmented letters from Malayalam script * Malayalam alveolar nasal encoded as U+0D29 for scholarly purposes. Vowels

Unicode

The Syriac alphabet was added to the

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

Standard in September, 1999 with the release of version 3.0. Additional letters for Suriyani Malayalam were added in June, 2017 with the release of version 10.0.

Blocks

The Unicode block for Syriac is U+0700–U+074F: The Syriac Abbreviation (a type of

overline An overline, overscore, or overbar, is a typographical feature of a horizontal and vertical, horizontal line drawn immediately above the text. In old mathematical notation, an overline was called a ''vinculum (symbol), vinculum'', a notation fo ...

) can be represented with a special control character called the

Syriac Abbreviation Mark The Syriac Abbreviation Mark is a Unicode Control character (U+070F) that forms part of the Syriac script block. In Syriac, words are sometimes written in an abbreviated form, omitting some of the last letters. In such cases, a special overline is ...

(U+070F). The Unicode block for Suriyani Malayalam specific letters is called the Syriac Supplement block and is U+0860–U+086F:

Loanwords

Over the centuries,

borrowed Eastern Syriac words. A few of them are given below:

Literature

''Vedatharkam'' written by Kariattil Mar Ousep is one of the famous books written in Suriyani Malayalam. Large number of documents written in Suriyani Malayalam are found among the Saint Thomas Christians or Nasranis of Kerala. These documents include an alternate set of the Canons of the

Synod of Diamper The Synod of Diamper (Udayamperoor Synod) (), held at Udayamperoor (known as Diamper in non-vernacular sources) in June 1599, was a diocesan synod, or council, that created rules and regulations for the ancient Saint Thomas Christians (also ...

.Perczel (2014), 266-8. At present the dialect is not in popular usage. However it survives in historical literature of the Saint Thomas Christian denominations. Thomas Koonammakkal is one of the most notable experts in Garshuni Malayalam studies.

Writing system

Unicode

Blocks

Loanwords

Literature

See also

References

Further reading