Malayalam and the Class 2 languages
Languages with some linguistic differences from English — and how much of Malayalam's grammar each one already gives you.
Shared grammatical features with Malayalam
Each language scored against the same ten features used throughout this site. A full match counts 1, a partial match 0.5.
The strongest European match. Four cases, verb-final subordinate clauses, du/Sie — and a true dative subject: mir ist kalt is enikku thanuppundu exactly.
Agglutinative affixation and pro-drop, with the question particle -kah.
As Indonesian — suffix-building and dropped subjects.
Builds words by stacking separable affixes exactly as Malayalam does, from an unrelated family on another continent.
Almost no overlap; included for completeness.
Case endings, as in German
German marks case on articles. Malayalam adds an ending to the noun itself.
| Malayalam | Romanised | English |
|---|---|---|
| വീട് | veedu | House |
| വീട്ടിൽ | veettil | In the house |
| വീട്ടിലേക്ക് | veettilekku | To the house |
| വീടിന്റെ | veedinte | Of the house |
Feature by feature
● full match · ◐ partial · ○ absent
| Language | Verb goes last | Postpositions | Suffixes stack | Case endings | Subject dropped | Dative subject | Relative participle | Question by ending | Twin consonants | Respect levels | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German | partial | partial | full match | full match | absent | full match | absent | absent | absent | full match | 5 |
| Indonesian | absent | absent | full match | absent | full match | absent | absent | partial | absent | partial | 3 |
| Malay | absent | absent | full match | absent | full match | absent | absent | partial | absent | partial | 3 |
| Swahili | absent | absent | full match | absent | full match | absent | partial | partial | absent | absent | 3 |
| Haitian Creole | absent | absent | absent | absent | absent | absent | absent | partial | absent | absent | 0.5 |
Learn this properly, with a teacher who wrote the book
Everything on this page is drawn from Speak Malayalam: The Complete Colloquial Course — 3,297 pages, nineteen volumes, built on the spoken language rather than the textbook one. The first thirty days are free.
Malayalam’s case endings, step by step
German speakers already think in cases, which is a real advantage. Malayalam simply puts the case on the end of the noun instead of on an article. Here is one everyday noun, അമ്മ (amma, mother), with the endings you will use most.
| Malayalam | Romanised | English |
|---|---|---|
| അമ്മ | amma | Mother |
| അമ്മയ്ക്ക് | ammaykku | To/for mother (dative) |
| അമ്മയുടെ | ammayude | Mother’s (genitive) |
| അമ്മയോട് | ammayodu | To mother, when speaking to her |
| വീട്ടിൽ നിന്ന് | veettil ninnu | From the house |
There are no grammatical genders for things and no articles to agree, so once you know the endings they work the same on every noun.