Mygurudu is a
Malayalam
Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 2 ...
-based
secret language developed in Northern Kerala during the
Malabar Rebellion of 1921.
Prisoners used this coded language to pass messages without getting leaked.
Concepts
The fundamental idea behind Mygurudu involves the swapping of Malayalam alphabets.
For example, Mygurudu uses ‘Ra’ instead of ‘Cha’, and ‘Pa’ instead of ‘Na’.
Current State
Mygurudu had about 400 language before 2020, however, the number of speakers has reached 900, and 2,500+ people are learning right now. This is mostly due to online platforms increasing accessibility to language learning resources
The Speech Science Research Forum of the Department of Linguistics of
Kerala University
University of Kerala, formerly the University of Travancore, is a state-run public university located in Thiruvananthapuram, the state capital of Kerala, India. It was established in 1937 by a promulgation of the Maharajah of Travancore, Chit ...
has digitized and documented the structure of Mygurudu and other dying languages.
The scheme
The following tables give the transposition scheme used in the ''Mygurudu'' code.
Vowels
Consonants
Mnemonic
The users had developed a
mnemonic
A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding.
Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imag ...
to learn and remember this language. The mnemonic was very similar to
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
slokas
Shloka or śloka ( sa, श्लोक , from the root , Macdonell, Arthur A., ''A Sanskrit Grammar for Students'', Appendix II, p. 232 (Oxford University Press, 3rd edition, 1927). in a broader sense, according to Monier-Williams's dictionary, is ...
.
Examples
See also
*
Mulabhadra
Mūlabhadra (മൂലഭദ്ര) aka Mūlabhadri (:ml:മൂലഭദ്രി) was a secret method of communication employed by the royal spies of the erstwhile Travancore Kingdom during the medieval period. The scheme was also colloquially ...
, another Malayalam-based secret language from erstwhile
Travancore
The Kingdom of Travancore ( /ˈtrævənkɔːr/), also known as the Kingdom of Thiruvithamkoor, was an Indian kingdom from c. 1729 until 1949. It was ruled by the Travancore Royal Family from Padmanabhapuram, and later Thiruvananthapuram. At ...
state (Southern Kerala)
*
Byari language of
Beary
The Beary (also known as Byari) is a community concentrated along the southwest coast of India, mostly in the Mangalore district of the south Indian state of Karnataka. They are an ethnic group of Indian Muslims with their own distinct cu ...
people
References
{{reflist
Languages of Kerala
Malayalam language
Cant languages