Level Six, Class Forty-Nine, in Malayalam script. Texting and digital Malayalam — the vocabulary and the actual chat phrases, in four blocks, every word in script, in Manglish and in English. Why this class matters more than it looks: if you have any Malayali in your life who is not in the same room as you, most of your Malayalam will happen on a screen, in short bursts. The register of a WhatsApp message is not the register of a textbook. It is faster, shorter, more clipped, and full of forms no course teaches. The pattern that runs through the whole class: there is a proper Malayalam word — usually Sanskrit-derived — that exists, is correct, and appears in the app interface; and there is the English word that everybody actually says. സന്ദേശം (sandesham) vs മെസ്സേജ് (message). ശബ്ദസന്ദേശം (shabdasandesham) vs വോയ്സ്. Recognise the first, use the second. മിസ്ഡ് കോൾ (missed call) gets its own note, because it was a genuine social institution. Before cheap data, a missed call was a message in itself — free, meaning I have arrived, or call me back, or I am thinking of you. Entire relationships were conducted in missed calls. ഒരു മിസ്ഡ് കോൾ അടിക്കൂ is still ordinary Malayalam. Look at the app vocabulary and notice which words Malayalam kept: തിരയൽ (thirayal) search, from തിരയുക to seek, and ക്രമീകരണം (krameekaranam) settings, from ക്രമം order. The abstract concepts Malayalam already had words for. The specific technical objects — ഡൗൺലോഡ്, ലിങ്ക്, പാസ്‌വേഡ്, അക്കൗണ്ട് — arrived with the technology and kept their names. That is how borrowing works in every language. Block four is the one that matters: real messages in the real clipped register. എന്താ വിശേഷം? · വിശേഷം ഒന്നുമില്ല · ഇപ്പോ വരാം (note ഇപ്പോൾ clipped to ഇപ്പോ — people now write the way they speak) · ഒന്നു വിളിക്കാമോ? · കണ്ടു · അയച്ചോ? · പിന്നെ പറയാം · നാളെ കാണാം · ടെൻഷൻ വേണ്ട. Quizzes below. Dr. Reshmi R Nair — SpeakMalayalam.