You can already produce good short sentences. This is the next thing, and the last major structural skill: how Malayalam builds a long one. It does it in a way genuinely different from English. THE DIFFERENCE English joins clauses with separate words — and, then, because, so, which — and every clause has a full verb. Malayalam does almost none of that. It strings together NON-FINITE verb forms that cannot stand alone and hand off to the next one, and puts exactly one finished verb at the very end. One sentence. One finite verb. Everything before it is a chain. TOOL ONE — THE CONVERB Past stem plus -ഇ or -ഉ. It means "having done this, then". പോയി having gone · വാങ്ങി having bought · കഴിച്ചു having eaten · എടുത്ത് having taken · ഇരുന്ന് having sat ഞാൻ കടയിൽ പോയി അരി വാങ്ങി വീട്ടിൽ വന്നു — three actions, one finite verb at the end, and no "and" anywhere. ഞാൻ രാവിലെ എഴുന്നേറ്റ് കുളിച്ച് ചായ കുടിച്ച് ബാഗ് എടുത്ത് വാതിൽ പൂട്ടി ബസ് സ്റ്റാൻഡിലേക്ക് നടന്നു — six actions, one sentence. A learner who does not use this sounds chopped up. Converb chaining is central to Japanese, Korean, Turkish and Hindi too; English simply lacks it. TOOL TWO — THE RELATIVE PARTICIPLE Everything that would follow the noun in English comes BEFORE it in Malayalam. ഇന്നലെ വന്ന ആൾ the yesterday-came person ഞാൻ വാങ്ങിയ പുസ്തകം the I-bought book ഞാൻ ഇന്നലെ കടയിൽ നിന്ന് വാങ്ങിയ പുസ്തകം the book I bought yesterday from the shop Modifiers before nouns, objects before verbs, subordinate clauses before main clauses. Internalise one principle — in Malayalam the important word comes last — and a great deal falls into place. TOOL THREE — THE SUBORDINATING ENDINGS -ആൽ if: മഴ പെയ്താൽ if it rains -ഉമ്പോൾ when: വരുമ്പോൾ when coming -ഇട്ട് having done, and then: കഴിച്ചിട്ട് പോകാം let us go after eating -ആതെ without doing: പറയാതെ പോയി went without saying -ഇട്ടും even though: പറഞ്ഞിട്ടും even though I said -ആൻ in order to: കാണാൻ വന്നു came to see -കൊണ്ട് because of: മഴ പെയ്തതുകൊണ്ട് because it rained All of these are endings ON the verb, not separate words, and all of them mark a clause as incomplete and hand it forward. THE EXERCISE THAT ACTUALLY WORKS Write five or six short sentences about your day, each with a full verb. Then convert every verb except the last into a converb, delete every പിന്നെ and അതുകൊണ്ട് you can, and make it one sentence. Then say it aloud. It will feel wrong at first, because your own language does not do this. Quizzes below. Dr. Reshmi R Nair — SpeakMalayalam.