Malayalam is not the only language spoken in Kerala. If you spend time in the state you will hear several others, and knowing what they are will save you from a set of misunderstandings and teach you something about how multilingual societies actually work. THE SYMMETRY Kerala has a very large workforce from West Bengal, Assam, Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, working in construction, hotels, plywood, fisheries and agriculture. With a large share of the local working-age population abroad and local wages high by Indian standards, the state that exports workers to the Gulf simultaneously imports them from the east. അതിഥി തൊഴിലാളികൾ guest workers — the official Kerala term, from Sanskrit അതിഥി, guest, adopted deliberately in place of "migrant labourer". Practically: a great deal of service work is done by people whose first language is Bengali or Hindi. Do not assume the person serving you speaks Malayalam. A courteous opening in either language: നിങ്ങൾ എവിടുന്നാണ്? Where are you from? THE BORDER LANGUAGES തമിഴ് Tamil — along the eastern border and the far south, where the transition is gradual rather than sharp, and in Palakkad's long-settled communities കന്നഡ Kannada and തുളു Tulu in the far north. Kasaragod district is genuinely multilingual — Malayalam, Kannada, Tulu, Konkani, Beary and Marathi are all spoken there, one of the most linguistically diverse districts in India. കൊങ്കണി Konkani, spoken by communities in Kochi and elsewhere descended from migrations down the Konkan coast THE LANGUAGES OF THE HILLS Kerala's Scheduled Tribe communities in the Western Ghats — in Wayanad, Idukki, Attappady and the Palakkad hills — speak distinct languages, not dialects of Malayalam: Paniya, Kurumba, Irula, Muduga, Kattunayakan, Adiya and others. Several are seriously endangered. Language death is happening in Kerala right now, in the hills, while Malayalam itself is entirely secure. The pressures are the familiar ones: displacement, economic marginalisation, education in the dominant language, and the entirely rational calculation by parents that their children's futures lie in Malayalam and English. Linguists have been documenting them, and mother-tongue-based early education exists in some tribal areas. If you are the kind of learner this course was built for — a linguist, a polyglot, somebody who cares about languages as such — this is not a footnote to Malayalam. It is the more urgent story. Quizzes below. Dr. Reshmi R Nair — SpeakMalayalam.