Malayalam

Closely related but no longer mutually intelligible. Malayalam descended from Old Tamil and split off between the 9th and 13th centuries, retaining many archaic forms while developing distinctive features of its own. The two share large amounts of basic vocabulary and core grammatical structure, but verb conjugation, phonology, and modern vocabulary diverge enough that speakers of one need study to follow the other.

An abugida descended from Brahmi via the Vatteluttu script, with rounded curves and intricate ligatures. Malayalam has one of the larger character inventories among Indian scripts — it represents an unusually extensive consonant set including retroflexes, dental-retroflex distinctions, and a series of phonemes inherited from Sanskrit borrowings. A 1971 reform simplified the script for typewriter and printing use.

Mostly in Kerala (around 33 million speakers) and Lakshadweep, with substantial Malayali diaspora populations in the Gulf states (more than a million across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and elsewhere), Singapore, Malaysia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Kerala is famous for its high literacy rate and strong tradition of Malayalam-language journalism and literature.

Mostly no. Malayalam doesn't agree adjectives or verbs with grammatical gender — but it does distinguish a small set of pronouns by sex (masculine, feminine, neuter) where natural gender is relevant. This is closer to Tamil than to Indo-Aryan languages, and far simpler than the three-gender systems of Hindi or Marathi.

Among the harder major languages. The script has many ligatures and characters. The grammar is agglutinative with long suffix chains. Vocabulary leans heavily on Sanskrit at higher registers. Most challenging is the consonant inventory — retroflex contrasts, dental-retroflex pairs, geminate distinctions — which the script faithfully preserves but English speakers haven't trained their ears for.