Malayalam has a unique consonant റ്റ, a type of voiceless alveolar plosive, transliterated commonly as tt (with an underline). Interestingly, in at least one example, it finds correspondence with another sound ക ka in the words otta ഒറ്റ and okka ഒക്ക, both of which have a common meaning of “oneness” but with different nuances. otta ഒറ്റ refers to the condition of being alone, sole, singular.¹ On the other hand, okka ഒക്ക refers to togetherness, sameness, consistency, and in that sense, to be one.² okka ഒക്ക in the past tense is ottha ഒത്ത, which also uses the alveolar plosive sound as tt റ്റ but in the voiced version. Why is this correspondence interesting? Because it displays, quite clearly in my mind, a close connection with the evolution in sound of the Egyptian “arm” hieroglyph 𓂝 and the associated “one-barbed harpoon” hieroglyph 𓌡, indicating yet another evidence of the relatedness of the two languages.
Very early in Egyptian history, before 2000 BCE, the arm hieroglyph had an alveolar plosive sound, similar to tt and t; around 2000 BCE, it changed to a voiced laryngeal fricative.³ The voiced laryngeal fricative is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the back of the throat with the tongue. This sound is nonexistent in modern Indian languages. From the place of articulation of this sound in the mouth, moving the tongue in a direction to close the channel will completely obstruct airflow with the back of the tongue, resulting in the sound ka. Moving in the opposite direction to open the channel, it becomes the vowel a. These two different movements show the evolution of the Egyptian voiced laryngeal fricative into the Malayalam sounds ka and a.
Going back to otta ഒറ്റ and okka ഒക്ക, they both likely derived from the Egyptian word represented by the “one-barbed harpoon” hieroglyph 𓌡. The earliest attestation of this word in the Thesaurus Lingua Aegyptia (TLA) is to a divine epithet dating to around 2613 BCE.⁴ It refers to the sole deity, the one and only, the unique one, similar in concept to Hinduism’s Brahman, from which all creation derives. It was pronounced as an alveolar plosive at that time, as evidenced by the correspondence of the literal meaning of “one-barbed harpoon” hieroglyph 𓌡 to Malayalam uta ഉട meaning “harpoon”.⁵
Over time, the sound of the hieroglyph changed in Egyptian to the voiced laryngeal fricative, which evolved into Malayalam ka in some words.⁶ Thus, otta ഒറ്റ became okka ഒക്ക. But for some unknown reason, both words were retained in Malayalam, each with slightly differing usage from the other. One possibility for the retention is that the two words came into Malayalam at different times in history. Another possibility for the difference in usage is that the later okka ഒക്ക corresponding to “sole” “alone” and “single” likely merged with Sanskrit eka ഏക which has the same meaning, whereas the other usages of okka ഒക്ക do not have such Sanskrit correspondence and were retained as such. Thus, there are three similar words in Malayalam derived from two different languages: otta ഒറ്റ, okka ഒക്ക, and eka ഏക.
There are many more such examples of Malayalam correspondence with the different pronunciations of the Egyptian arm hieroglyph. They all show that many of these Malayalam words are very ancient, being used continuously since before 2000 BCE. That the Egyptian language influenced the native language of Kerala is clear, but whether that was by migration, trade, colonization, or some other process so early in human history — well, that remains to be seen.
Notes
[1] https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/gundert_query.py?page=178
[2] https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/gundert_query.py?page=174
[3] Allen, James. 2013. The Ancient Egyptian Language: An Historical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Peust, Carsten. 1999. Egyptian Phonology: An Introduction to the Phonology of a Dead Language. Gottingen: Peust und Gutschmidt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_pharyngeal_fricative
[4] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/450762
[5] Another word in Malayalam, otti ഒറ്റി, relates to Kerala’s unique ancient land revenue system and has a completely different meaning: “to mortgage (land),” which is related to ottuka ഒറ്റുക “to step aside,” “retire.” These words are likely rooted in Egyptian 𓂝𓅱𓂝𓌙𓂡 “to inherit,” the spelling of which uses the arm hieroglyph rather than the harpoon. https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/22380
[6] Another example in Malayalam for this correspondence is the word koyi കോയി “palace,” derived from Egyptian 𓌡𓏏𓉐 “palace” that uses the one-barbed harpoon hieroglyph. https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/gundert_query.py?page=317; https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/861109.
