If you speak Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati or Punjabi, this class tells you where your knowledge helps and where it will actively mislead you. I am Dr. Reshmi R. Nair, an applied linguist from Kerala. I have taught hundreds of learners to speak Malayalam as it is actually spoken. THE FACT MOST INDIANS DO NOT KNOW Hindi and Malayalam are not related. Hindi is Indo-Aryan, part of the Indo-European family alongside Sanskrit, Persian and English. Malayalam is Dravidian, a separate family entirely. In family terms Hindi sits closer to English than to Malayalam, so do not expect Malayalam to behave like a distant dialect of a language you know. WHAT TRANSFERS, AND IT IS A LOT 1. The Sanskrit layer. Both absorbed huge amounts of it, so formal and technical vocabulary overlaps heavily. ഭാഷ (bhaasha) - language. ദേശം (desham) - country. Meet a formal Malayalam word you do not know and guess the Sanskrit; you will be right astonishingly often. Urdu speakers also get the Persian and Arabic layer, because Malabar carries its own thousand-year Arabic vocabulary from trade. 2. Word order. Both are subject-object-verb. This is the single thing that makes Malayalam hardest for English speakers and easy for you. 3. Postpositions. Both say "the house behind", not "behind the house". 4. The dative-experiencer. Hindi: mujhe bukhar hai. Malayalam: എനിക്ക് പനിയുണ്ട് (enikku paniyundu) - to me there is fever. Identical thinking, and it costs you nothing. 5. Retroflex consonants and aspiration. You already produce and hear both. WHERE YOU WILL STRUGGLE Gender. Hindi marks it everywhere - nouns, adjectives and verbs all agree. Malayalam has none, and the verb agrees with nothing: ഞാൻ പോകുന്നു (njaan pokunnu) - I go. അവർ പോകുന്നു (avar pokunnu) - they go. One form. Your error will be overmarking: hunting for agreement that is not there. Which Indian language do you speak? Tell me the first Malayalam word you recognised. #LearnMalayalam #Malayalam #Kerala