EDIT Writing system
Like other Indian scripts, Malayalam is a syllabic alphabet of the abugida type, which means the consonants have an inherent vowel (a) unless otherwise indicated by vowel signs. In Malayalam, the indications to change the vowel are extra strokes called matras. When certain consonants are used together they form ligatures which combine the essential parts of each letter.

Due to the complex characters, printing Malayalam proved to be difficult, and as a result a simplified or reformed version of the characters needed to be created and was introduced beteen 1970 and 1980. Today, it is often used inconsistently in combinationwith the old characters.

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EDIT History
Malayalam shares its origin with most of the Indian scripts, it ultimately derived from the Brahmi script. In the 12th century, it developed with the Tamil script as a forming of a southindian variant of Brahmi, the Grantha script.

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EDIT Languages
The Malayalam script is used to write Malayalam, one of the four Dravidian languages (the others are Tamil, Telugu and Kannada) that are not related to the indoarabic languages. It is spoken in the southern Indian state of Kerala, the Laccadive Islands and neighboring states, and also in Bahrain, Fiji, Israel, Malaysia, Qatar, Singapore, UAE and the UK.
The Malayalam script is also used to write the Konkani language in Goa.

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