Resources for Malayalam

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jsega
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Resources for Malayalam

Postby jsega » Tue Feb 21, 2017 8:55 pm

This language seems fairly difficult to find resources for. Any experience/tips would be appreciated.

I have come across the Mango languages course which I have access to.

I'm really looking for a reliable resource to learn the writing system to start with though.
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DangerDave2010
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Re: Resources for Malayalam

Postby DangerDave2010 » Tue Feb 21, 2017 9:03 pm

There are biligual parallel subtitles at opus the open parallel corpus, wich includes 251 movies or episodes.

http://opus.lingfil.uu.se/

But you will probably need to learn some coding in order to turn it into a usable learning material.

The writing system, you can probably learn it at wikipedia.

In may well be worth to take a detour and learn some python, if you plan to learn an obscure language that happens to have a not insignificant number of subs at opus.
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israelrt
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Re: Resources for Malayalam

Postby israelrt » Wed Feb 22, 2017 9:22 am

Namaskaram ! ( Greetings )
Ende malayalam nalathathalla ( My Malayalam isn't great )

1. Malayalam: A University Course and Reference Grammar (1985).
Audio files can be downloaded from
https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/asianstu ... ayalam.php
The book and the audio is by the admirable Rodney F. Moag.
Mr Moag is reasonable in Malayalam, but unfortunately his accent is non-ideal.

2. A Course in Colloquial Malayalam.
Moag, Rachel; Moag, Rodney
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED030093
"This text is designed to teach colloquial Mal
ayalam of the kind that will be understood throughout Kerala to the Peace Corps volunteers going to India's Kerala State. The text is aural-oral in approach and is made up of two main parts. Part I contains 35 graded lessons designed to teach the grammar and vocabulary necessary for a functional knowledge of the language. Lessons consist of short conversations, grammar drills and explanations, and pronunciation drills and notes. Linguistic Field Exercises, a set of graded exercises to train the volunteer to elicit and analyze linguistic data in the field, are interspersed with the other drills in Part I. Part II has extra conversations covering general living situations, as well as simplified excerpts from Kerala government publications in Malayalam treating various topics with which volunteers often deal. These units are not graded and may be taught or used as the coordinator sees fit. Part II, along with the appendixes, is intended primarily to serve the volunteer in the field. Appendixes include: (1) suggestions for continued learning in Kerala, (2) the Malayalam writing system, (3) additional grammar notes and exercises, (4) names of days and months, and (5) a glossary. "
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israelrt
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Re: Resources for Malayalam

Postby israelrt » Wed Feb 22, 2017 9:30 am

And a Malayalam anki deck with Tatoeba sentences
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/192062583

Unfortunately, this does not include audio and therefore it is only useful once you can read Malayalam.
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jsega
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Re: Resources for Malayalam

Postby jsega » Wed Feb 22, 2017 2:39 pm

israelrt wrote:Namaskaram ! ( Greetings )
Ende malayalam nalathathalla ( My Malayalam isn't great )

1. Malayalam: A University Course and Reference Grammar (1985).
Audio files can be downloaded from
https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/asianstu ... ayalam.php
The book and the audio is by the admirable Rodney F. Moag.
Mr Moag is reasonable in Malayalam, but unfortunately his accent is non-ideal.

2. A Course in Colloquial Malayalam.
Moag, Rachel; Moag, Rodney
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED030093
"This text is designed to teach colloquial Mal
ayalam of the kind that will be understood throughout Kerala to the Peace Corps volunteers going to India's Kerala State. The text is aural-oral in approach and is made up of two main parts. Part I contains 35 graded lessons designed to teach the grammar and vocabulary necessary for a functional knowledge of the language. Lessons consist of short conversations, grammar drills and explanations, and pronunciation drills and notes. Linguistic Field Exercises, a set of graded exercises to train the volunteer to elicit and analyze linguistic data in the field, are interspersed with the other drills in Part I. Part II has extra conversations covering general living situations, as well as simplified excerpts from Kerala government publications in Malayalam treating various topics with which volunteers often deal. These units are not graded and may be taught or used as the coordinator sees fit. Part II, along with the appendixes, is intended primarily to serve the volunteer in the field. Appendixes include: (1) suggestions for continued learning in Kerala, (2) the Malayalam writing system, (3) additional grammar notes and exercises, (4) names of days and months, and (5) a glossary. "


Awesome, thank you.
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israelrt
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Re: Resources for Malayalam

Postby israelrt » Thu Feb 23, 2017 9:03 am

jsega wrote:
Awesome, thank you.


bhagyamundakatte (good luck !)
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Re: Resources for Malayalam

Postby n_j_f » Tue Apr 25, 2017 8:56 am

Lately, I've become interested in Kalaripayattu (a martial art practised in Kerala) and have long been interested in Ayurveda which has its spiritual home in Kerala. I was looking around for resources to learn Malayalam as well and was disappointed to learn that none of the "usual suspects" (Assimil, Linguaphone, Teach Yourself, Colloquial, FSI, Spoken Language Services, et. al.) has a Malayalam course.

I recall a video review by Prof. Arguelles of the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) and found a list of their courses here:
http://www.ciil.org/PubBook.aspx
There is a separate link for the audio.

Unfortunately, there's a dearth of material in English. Maybe there are more resources in French or German. This is one of the few I could find:
https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Basic-Mala ... =malayalam

From what I understand, Malayalam is closely related to Tamil. I'm not sure how close the relationship is (e.g. is it similar to the relationship between, say, Spanish and Portuguese) but perhaps learning Tamil first would be a better option. Also, I would think there would be more material available in Tamil or Hindi.
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Re: Resources for Malayalam

Postby n_j_f » Thu Apr 27, 2017 11:31 am

Further to the previous message, I checked in on the progress of the Glossika Persian course (which, rather frustratingly, doesn't seem to have moved forward over the last twelve months or so) and found this under the list of Dravidian languages:

Dravidian Languages

Malayalam (Translation 100%)
Tamil (Translation 100%)
Kannada (Translation 75%)
Telugu (Translation 50%)
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