The
Malayalam script (; ), also known as
Kairali script is a
Brahmic script used commonly to write
Malayalam, which is the principal language of
Kerala,
India, spoken by 35 million people in the world. Malayalam script is also widely used for writing Sanskrit texts in Kerala. Like many other Indic scripts, it is an alphasyllabary (
abugida), a writing system that is partially “alphabetic” and partially syllable-based. The modern Malayalam alphabet has 15 vowel letters, 41 consonant letters, and a few other symbols. The Malayalam script is a
Vatteluttu alphabet extended with symbols from the
Grantha alphabet to represent
Indo-Aryan loanwords. The script is also used to write several minority languages such as
Paniya,
Betta Kurumba, and
Ravula. The Malayalam language itself was historically written in several different scripts.