Malayalam alphabet
Meet the Malayalam letters, hear their sounds, and see how vowels and consonants fit together. Choose a starting point and keep the charts beside your practice.
Try a practice lesson →Choose Listen beside an available recording. Audio plays only when you ask.
How Malayalam letters work
A Malayalam consonant such as ക carries an inherent a sound. Compare it with കാ: the attached sign changes the vowel while preserving the consonant. A beginner chart is only a starting set; Malayalam reading also includes chillus and joined consonants.
This chart covers the course’s 13 vowels and 36 consonants. It is a beginner reading set, not an inventory of every character or form used in Malayalam. All stages are open, so use a familiar topic as your starting point.
Malayalam vowel chart
Read a letter, check its sound spelling, and listen. The Malayalam vowel guide gives you a focused practice routine for these sounds.
Malayalam consonant chart
The full sound families use five columns; the remaining groups have their own rows. Use the Malayalam consonant guide to practise a group at a time.
Ka family
Five sounds shaped at the back of the mouth.
Cha family
Five sounds shaped near the hard palate.
Curled-tongue family
Five sounds made with the tongue curled back.
Dental family
Five sounds made with the tongue near the teeth.
Pa family
Five sounds shaped with the lips.
Flowing sounds
Semivowels that glide smoothly into nearby vowels.
Breath & s sounds
Sibilants and the open ha sound.
Malayalam special sounds
Three distinctive curled and rolling sounds.
A small daily reading routine
- Choose a few letters from one lesson and listen while looking at their shapes.
- Cover the sound spelling, say each sound, then check it with the recording.
- Try the lesson’s matching activity or a quiz to find the letters you confuse.
- Use vowel combinations and beginner words to practise the same shapes in a new setting.
Prepared by Learn Akshara from our beginner Malayalam curriculum. English spellings are approximate learning aids. Writing-system reference: The Unicode Standard, South Asian Scripts. Foundation audio is adapted from the University of Texas at Austin Malayalam course under CC BY 4.0; other clips use a synthetic male voice. See our audio sources and credits.