Malabar · Western Coastal Strip

Dialect and oral traditions

Northern Malayalam diverges from the standard register further than the southern dialects do, in vocabulary and in verb endings, and a speaker from Kannur is identifiable in a sentence. Laid across that is Mappila Malayalam, whose Arabic, Persian and Urdu vocabulary is not a borrowing at the edges but part of the everyday core, and which had its own writing system — Arabi-Malayalam, the Arabic script with additional letters invented for Malayalam sounds Arabic does not have. On the plateau the position is different again: Paniya, Ravula and Kurumba are separate languages, not dialects, and none of them is written.

Speech varieties

North Malabar MalayalamDravidian, South Dravidian

The Kannur register, north of the Korapuzha. Retains forms lost elsewhere and is the language of the thottam and the Vadakkan ballads.

Kozhikode MalayalamDravidian, South Dravidian

The urban register of the old Zamorin's port, and the one most Malayalis outside the region hear as "Malabar" because of its dominance in film and comedy.

Mappila MalayalamDravidian, South Dravidian

Distinct enough in vocabulary and idiom to be treated separately, with a large Arabic and Persian lexicon, its own kinship and religious terminology, and a literature of its own in the Arabi-Malayalam script.

Speakers: The everyday register of a community that is the majority in parts of the region

EranadanDravidian, South Dravidian

The inland Malappuram register of the Eranad taluks, between the coast and the Nilambur valley, and the speech of much of the Mappila hinterland.

PaniyaDravidian

Spoken by the largest Adivasi community of Wayanad. Related to Malayalam but not intelligible to a Malayalam speaker, and unwritten; children are schooled in a language their households do not use.

Ravula and KurumbaDravidian

The Adiya (Ravula) and the several Kurumba and Kattunayakan varieties of the plateau, some of them shading towards Kannada rather than Malayalam because the plateau's contacts run east.

Indigenous terminology

Term	Meaning
Kavu കാവ്	A sacred grove or shrine, often a genuinely uncleared patch of forest with a small structure in it, owned by a lineage or a village. Not a temple, and not administered like one.
Kaliyattam കളിയാട്ടം	The annual Theyyam festival of a particular kavu — the word covers the whole occasion, not one dance.
Perumkaliyattam പെരുങ്കളിയാട്ടം	The great kaliyattam, held once in many years — sometimes a generation — at which every kolam belonging to a shrine is performed. A village saves for it for decades.
Kolam കോലം	One specific Theyyam form — its deity, costume, face pattern, song and rules. Over four hundred are documented, and a performer inherits the right to particular ones.
Thottam തോറ്റം	The invocation song that narrates the deity's origin, sung while the costume is put on.
Mudi മുടി	The Theyyam headdress. In the largest kolams it is a built structure several metres tall, carried by one man's neck and shoulders.
Ankam അങ്കം	A formal duel fought to settle a dispute between chieftains, in a marked arena, by professional fighters hired for the purpose. The Vadakkan ballads are almost entirely about ankams and what went wrong in them.
Chekavar ചേകവർ	A trained fighter of the Thiyya community available to fight an ankam on another man's behalf, and the class from which the ballads' heroes come.
Meithari മെയ്‌ത്താരി	The body sequences that open kalaripayattu training — months of them, before a weapon is handed over. Meyy is the body; the word means bringing the body under command.
Isal ഇശൽ	A named tune in the Mappila pattu system. A poet composes to an existing isal, so the melody is the inherited part and the words are the new part.
Uru ഉരു	The ocean-going wooden dhow built at Beypore, and by extension the whole trade of building it. The khalasi is the man who moves and launches it.
Kaipad കൈപ്പാട്	Tidal saline fields of the north where a salt-tolerant rice is grown in the monsoon and prawn are farmed in the brackish months, in a rotation that needs no fertiliser and no fresh water.

Sayings

Saying	Literally	Meaning
Kakkaykkum than kunju ponkunju	Even to the crow, its own chick is a golden chick	Everyone thinks their own is best. Used most often about a parent, and always with tolerance.
Aana kidannaalum aayiram, chatthaalum aayiram	An elephant is worth a thousand lying down and a thousand dead	Something of real substance keeps its value whatever happens to it. A proverb from a country where the elephant was an asset on a ledger.
Poyi varatte	Let me go and come	The ordinary Malayalam way to take leave. You never say simply that you are going, because going without returning is what you say about the dead — so the grammar of an everyday goodbye carries a superstition inside it.

Speech varieties, indigenous terminology and sayings of Malabar. (15)