Class 1 — the first class of the course, in Malayalam script. By the end of it you can ask for something, refuse something and offer something, which is genuinely most of what human beings do with language. It opens with a fruit stall in Thrissur. A learner walks up and says, clearly and confidently, that she wants bananas. Right words, right grammar, loud enough. The vendor looks at her blankly. Her Malayali friend says what sounds like exactly the same thing, and the bananas arrive at once. The difference was one sound: in പഴം (pazham) she had pronounced ഴ as an English z, and her friend curled the tongue back. One articulation — complete failure, then complete success. That is why this course spends real time on sound. But today you need one word. വേണം — venam — is wanted, is needed. That translation is deliberately awkward, and it is worth sitting with, because it is the single most important structural fact in Malayalam and you meet it in your first class. വേണം is not a verb meaning to want. There is no subject doing the wanting. The wanting is a STATE, and it arrives at a person. So Malayalam does not say I want tea. It says, roughly, to me tea is wanted. എനിക്ക് ചായ വേണം — enikku chaaya venam — to me / tea / is wanted. Three words and no verb of the kind English would use. എനിക്ക് (enikku) will follow you through the entire course. It is the form of I that Malayalam uses whenever something happens TO you rather than being done BY you — wanting, needing, liking, knowing, being hungry, having a headache, even having a brother. It is the dative, and Class 61 explains it in full. For today, learn it as a fixed piece. And if it feels strange, that is only strange from English. An enormous share of the world’s languages does exactly this — Spanish does not say I like coffee either. Also in this class: വേണ്ട (venda) for refusing, and how to offer something to someone else. Start here. Quizzes below. Dr. Reshmi R Nair — SpeakMalayalam.