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KERALA AT A GLANCE
Kerala, the land of green
magic, is a narrow, fertile strip on the south - west coast of India,sandwitched
between the Lakshadweep Sea and the Western Ghats. The landscape is dominated by
rice fields, mango and cashew nut trees and coconut palms. Christianity has been
in Kerala for as long as the period of Christ's apostles. The present-day state
of Kerala was formed in 1956 from Travancore, Kochi and Malabar. Malabar was
formerly part of Madras state. Kerala is one of the most progressive, literate
and highly educated states of India. For the visitors Kerala offers an
intriguing blend of cultures and some unusual ways of traveling around. It
offers some of the best and most picturesque beaches in India.
Kerala is the
southern most state of India having the city of Thiruvananthapuram as its
capital. It shares it's boundaries with Karnataka in the north and Tamil Nadu in
the east, It is hugged by the Arabian Sea in the west. Malayalam
is the mother tounge of Kerala, English and Hindi are also widely spoken
languages.
In this entrancing place where the land rises
from the coast to end up in the misty hills of the western ghats covered with
dense tropical forests, the landscape is dominated by rice fields, coffee,
rubber and tea plantations all dotted with coconut palms, where time stands
still for a visitor with the silence of the clear skies breached only by the cry
of the wild. There is so much that is unique to Kerala that the only way to
experience its natural beauty, history and culture is through traveling in the
state and discovering a new facet every day.
To know more about kerala history enter here
Malayalam :
Malayalam (/malayALam/) is the principal language of the South Indian state of Kerala and also of the Lakshadweep Islands (Laccadives) of the west coast of India. Malayalis (speakers of Malayalam), who - males and females alike - are almost totally literate, constitute 4 percent of the population of India and 96 percent of the population of Kerala (29.01 million in 1991). In terms of the number of speakers Malayalam ranks eighth among the fifteen major languages of India. The word /malayALam/ originally meant mountainous country) (/mala/- mountain + /aLam/-place). Tamil is its neighbor on the south and east and Kannada on the north and east. Emergence of the Language With Tamil, Kota, Kodagu and Kannada, Malayalam belongs to the southern group of Dravidian languages. Its affinity to Tamil is the most striking. Proto-Tamil Malayalam, the common stock of Tamil and Malayalam apparently disintegrated over a period of four of five centuries from the ninth century on, resulting in the emergence of Malayalam as a language distinct from Tamil. As the language of scholarship and administration Tamil greatly influenced the early development of Malayalam. Later the irresistible inroads the Brahmins made into the cultural life of Kerala accelerated the assimilation of many Indo-Aryan features into Malayalam at different levels.