How many letters are in Malayalam?
The modern Malayalam alphabet has 15 vowel letters, 42 consonant letters. The word ‘Malayalam’ may have been a local dialect in the beginning. The first part in the word ‘Malayalam’, ie, ‘Mala’ may refer to hill, and the last part ‘Alam’ to the depths of the ocean (‘Alam’ over the years transformed to Azham’ meaning ‘depths’). So the word ‘Malayalam’ may refer to the land lying between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea.