Loan words in Malayalam

Loan words in Malayalam, excluding the huge number of words from Sanskrit and Tamil, originated mostly due to the centuries long interactions between the native population of Kerala and the trading (predominantly, spice trading) powers of the world. This included trading contacts with Arabia, Persia, Israel and China spanning millenniums, and with European Colonial powers for several centuries.

European contributions

Portuguese

Most Portuguese loan words are for items which the native population lacked when the encounter with Portuguese happened from around the final years of the 15th Century.

Middle East contributions

Arabic

The Arabic language contributes a large number of words into a dialect form of Malayalam that is spoken by the Muslim (Mappila)community of North Kerala (Malabar region).

Persian

yriac

Many other words like qurbana, mishiha and methrapoleetha, which Malayali Christians use , are all derived from Syriac. Suriyani-Malayalam (or Karshoni), which used the Syriac script to write Malayalam, was a popular medium of written communication among Christians in kerala until the 19th century

Hebrew

ee also

References