2. [ə]. This is a very common sound in Malayalam.
(i) It occurs finally in many nouns which in the original Old Tamil language ended in [u] sound: e.g., [kɑːṭə] forest; [pɑːṭṭə] song; [kɑːppə] bangle; [kʌṇṇə] eye. The equivalent of this primitive [u] in modern Tamil is [ɯ]: Kaṇṇaḍa has an [e], and Telugu seems to retain the old final [u] itself.
In can be stated as a general rule that no native Malayalam word can be "hal-anta", that is to say, can end in a consonant. The only exceptions are furnished by those words which end in consonants known in Malayalam as [c͡ʃillukʌḷ] chips or branches, i.e. [n], [ṇ], [j], [r], [r], [l], [ḷ], [ɹ̣], [m]. When these consonants occur at the end of words, they can stand alone without the help of any vowel, e.g., [mɑːn] deer; [peṇ] girl; [nej] ghee; [kʌjər] rope; [peːr] name; [pɑːl] milk. But all these consonants can also alternatively take an [ə] sound to support them, and the words given above may also be pronounced as [mɑˑnə], [peṇṇə], [nejjə] [kʌjərə] etc.
It is this peculiarity of the Dravidian languages that has led many Malayalam scholars to entertain the belief that consonants cannot be sounded without the help of vowels.
The genius of the Dravidian languages is so strongly averse to "hal-anta" endings that even borrowed foreign words ending in a consonant naturalise themselves in these languages with the addition of a characteristic vowel at the end. Such words are made "svarânta" in Malayalam with [ə], in Tamil with [ɯ], in Telugu with a full [u], and in Kanarese with an [e]. e.g., Malayalam [ko:rṭə] for court; [skhu:ḷə] for school; [æˑkṭə] act; [sɑːrə] sir; [sle:ttə] slate; [ʋɑ:kkə] from Sanskrit [vɑ:k] speech.
When Malayalam words are used in English, sometimes the reverse process is visible—[tʌrʌʋɑ:ḍə] family used in English becomes [θɑːvəd], [tʰɑ:wæd] = Tharvad, Tarwad.
(ii) the [ə] sound is common at the end of past participles in Malayalam, e.g., [kʌṇṭə] having seen; [vʌnnə] having come. The symbol that stands for this sound [ə] was, till a very recent date, the same as for [u], so that confusion would arise easily, but of late a happy innovation has been introduced, and a special symbol has been found out to distinguish the [ə] sound from a full [u] which occurs in many past tense forms—[kʌṇṭu] saw, but [kʌṇṭə] having seen. The [ə] in the past participle is of course only a weakened form of the past inflexional ending [u].
