a new style of speaking and writing which combined in itself the sonorous grace of the Sanskrit language and the natural simplicity of the Dravidian speech. The newly-developed language, however, suffered an irreparable loss in that it lost its power of forming fresh compounds to express new ideas, and consequently had in later times to draw freely upon Sanskrit vocabulary to make up this deficiency.
Till the time of Thunchath Ezhuthachan, the script used in Malabar was only a copy of the Tamil one, and the Malayalam alphabet contained only the Tamil symbols. The deficiency of the Tamil alphabet in sounds as well as in symbols is noteworthy. The glottal fricative [h] was absent in ancient Tamil, and was is only to be expected, the aspirates [kh], [ɡɦ], [c͡ʃh], [ɟ͡ʒɦ], [ṭh], [ḍɦ], [th], [dɦ], [ph], [bɦ] were also absent. Again, separate symbols did not exist for the voiced sounds [ɡ], [ɟ͡ʒ], [ḍ], [d], [b], although the sounds themselves should be considered to have existed in ancient times and to have been indicated in writing by the symbols of the corresponding breathed ones. The original Malayalam alphabet which had only been a close copy of the Tamil one, was thoroughly revised about the time of Thunchath Ezhuthachan, and new symbols were borrowed or made for the representation of all Sanskrit sounds. The Dravidian sounds [r], [ɹ̣], [ḷ], [t], and [n], which do not occur in Sanskrit, retained their place in Malayalam.
Thus the Malayalam alphabet includes the symbols for the old (Tamil) or Dravidian sounds and those of the Sanskrit. According to the orthodox classification, the alphabet consists of fifty-three letters, but the actual number of "phonemes" existing in the language is only thirty-seven.
The time-honoured classification of sounds adopted from Sanskrit phonetics by Malayalam scholars is subject to various defects inasmuch as it does not take into account the new developments of vowel sounds in Malayalam and omits to make provision for the changed values of certain consonant sounds also.
I shall now proceed to discuss some of the phonetic qualities of the Malayalam sounds.
Mixed Vowels.
1. (i) [ʌ]. This sounds, symbolised by the first letter of the Malayalam alphabet, is erroneously supposed to be the equivalent of Indo-Aryan or Sanskrit [ɑ]. The Malayalam sound is a less open one, and is exactly like the vowel sound in the English word much when deliberately uttered. [ʌ] is the value to be given to the Malayalam symbol for this
