Malayalam Alphabet (അക്ഷരമാല)

This chart shows 13 vowels, 36 consonants and 7 other letters and signs, such as anusvara, visarga and common conjuncts. Textbooks give different totals because some count those extra letters and signs and some do not.

It is the chart of every consonant written with every vowel sign, one row per consonant: ക, കാ, കി, കീ, കു and so on. Learning it row by row is how most children learn to read Malayalam.

Use our free Malayalam typing editor: type the word as it sounds in English and it turns into Malayalam script when you press space. For example, "namaskaram" becomes നമസ്കാരം. No Malayalam keyboard or software is needed.

They are the ISO 15919 romanisation, the standard way to write Indian scripts in English letters. Dots and lines mark sounds that plain English letters cannot tell apart: ṭa and ḍa are said with the tongue curled back, ā and ī are long vowels, and ṁ is the nasal anusvara.