English word "note" or "boat" [nout, bout]. Examples: [kompə] branch; [po:kum] will go.
(ii) [o] results from [u] as shown in (6) above.
9. [ɔ]. This sound occurs in the dialectal speech of certain classes of people in words like [nɔm] we; [ʃʌʋɔm] dead body; North Malabar [ʋɔˑn] < [ʌʋən] he.
10. [ɑː]. (i) [ɑː] is the value of all Malayalam long symbols in accented syllables; in unaccented syllables the sound may be reduced to the half-long sound [ɑˑ], or short [ɑ], or even [ə]: e.g., [pṛʌdɦɑːnəmɑllətta] not important; [ɑːʃɑːri]>[ɑˑʃəri] carpenter (colloquial).
(ii) Foreign words with [ɔ], as English "hospital" [hɔspitəl], and "college" [kʰɔlidʒ] are made into [ɑːspʌtri] and [kɑːḷeˑɟ͡ʒ] or [koːḷeˑɟ͡ʒ] in Malayalam.
The European seems to be guilty of exactly the opposite tendency for a place name like [pʌrʌʃubɦɑːɡəm] in Madras has been converted by him into [pəˑsvəkəm].
Diphthongs.
Those found in the alphabet are only [ʌi] and [ʌu], but there are many others occurring in the literary language and in the colloquial: e.g.,
[oi]: [poi] went;
[ei]: [nei] ghee;
[uo]: [puo] will (you, he or I) go?;
[iʌ]: [ʋʌliʌ] big;
[ie]: [niei] you indeed!
[ɑɑi]: [tai] mother;
[io]: [poio] did [he, you or I] go?
The diphthongal character of these combinations is ignored in the literary language where these vowel groups are mostly pronounced as two distinct syllables.
The words [poi], [nei], [puo] and [ʋʌliʌ] are respectively written as [poˑji], [nejja], [puˑʋo] and [ʋʌlijʌ], and when these words are deliberately pronounced, all the sounds are fully uttered.
Consonants.
As already mentioned, the parent Malayalam alphabet, or [ʋʌṭṭeɹ̣uttə] as it was called, was only a reproduction of the Tamil script, and so it contained no symbol for [ɦ] or for the aspirates. The symbols for these were only subsequently formed.
