Level Six, Class Forty-Eight, in Malayalam script. Nature and Kerala life — four blocks of vocabulary, every word in script, in Manglish and in English, with the drills spoken slowly enough to read along. The word that stops people: മഴവില്ല് — mazhavillu — rainbow. Pull it apart and you get മഴ (mazha, rain) plus വില്ല് (villu, a bow — the thing you shoot arrows from). Rain-bow. Morpheme for morpheme, that is the English word. German says Regenbogen, Dutch regenboog, Swedish regnbåge — but those are relatives, they inherited it. Malayalam is Dravidian. No shared ancestor, no plausible borrowing route for a word this basic. Two unrelated language families looked at the same arc of colour and independently called it a bow made of rain. Block one, water and land: കായൽ (kaayal) backwater · പുഴ (puzha) river · തോട് (thodu) canal · അരുവി (aruvi) brook · കുളം (kulam) pond · വെള്ളച്ചാട്ടം (vellachaattam) waterfall, literally water-leaping · കടൽത്തീരം (kadalttheeram) seashore · വയൽ (vayal) paddy field · കുന്ന് (kunnu) hillock · പാറ (paara) rock. Block two, the monsoon: കാലവർഷം (kaalavarsham) the southwest monsoon, literally season-rain · ഇടവപ്പാതി (idavappaathi) the June rain · തുലാവർഷം (thulaavarsham) the October rain · മഴക്കാലം (mazhakkaalam) rainy season · ഇടിമിന്നൽ (idiminnal) thunder and lightning · വെള്ളപ്പൊക്കം (vellappokkam) flood · മൂടൽമഞ്ഞ് (moodalmanju) mist. Block three, trees: തെങ്ങ് (thengu) coconut palm · കവുങ്ങ് (kavungu) areca palm · വെറ്റില (vettila) betel leaf — the English word betel comes from it · വാഴ (vaazha) banana plant · മുള (mula) bamboo · താമര (thaamara) lotus · ആമ്പൽ (aambal) water lily. Block four opens with കുയിൽ (kuyil), the koel — not merely a bird in Malayalam but a literary institution, the Indian answer to the Persian bulbul and the English nightingale. Quizzes below. Dr. Reshmi R Nair — SpeakMalayalam.