Tamil vs Malayalam
Tamil and Malayalam are two languages spoken in South India and they show differences between them when it comes to their syntax and semantics. It is indeed true that both these languages belong to the Dravidian family of languages.
Tamil is spoken in the state of Tamilnadu in South India whereas Malayalam is spoken in the state of Kerala in South India. The origin of Tamil dates back to 5th century B.C. or even before and it is said that Tamil is one of the oldest languages of the world. On the other hand Malayalam is not said to be very old. It began to flourish only from the late 10th century A.D.
Tamil boasts of literature that is as old as the literature of the Sanskrit language. The letter ‘zha’ is unique to the Tamil language and this letter is a cerebral in pronunciation. Tamil is considered as an agglutinating language where the root does not undergo any change in its structure but it allows prefixes and other elements to join it.
Malayalam too is an example of agglutinating language. It is said that Malayalam has close affinity to Sanskrit than the Tamil language. On the other hand Tamil is said to be an independent language and it does not borrow too many words from Sanskrit. Malayalam has borrowed quite a few words from Sanskrit. Ezhuttachan wrote the Mahabharata in Malayalam where as Kamban wrote the Ramayanam in Tamil language.
It is interesting to note that both Tamil and Malayalam resemble each other to a great extent in their scripts. They show similarities to some extent in sentence formation as well. Syntax is the branch of linguistics that deals with the study of sentence formation. Both the languages are recognized by the constitution of India. Tamil and Malayalam are two of the most popular languages spoken in India.