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the aashaan method

The biggest hindrance to start reading Malayalam fluently is the sheer number of letters in the alphabet. It has nearly 200 letters, including all the ligatures. This presents a challenge to first-time learners of the Malayalam script.

Conventional Approaches

Letters First Approach

Most adults learn Malayalam script by trying to study all the letters blindly first and then attempting to read. However, this is difficult since there are around 200 letters and symbols.

Easy Letters First Approach

Many Malayalam texts and tutorial videos introduce easy letters like റ, ര first. However, even in the first chapter itself, the words and sentences used to teach റ, ര will contain other letters, ligatures, and symbols, requiring the help of a native reader to understand and read.

Aashaan Approach

All Malayalam letters and symbols were prioritized according to their frequency of usage in normal Malayalam content such as news, blogs, stories, and novels. These were then grouped into units, mostly containing three letters/symbols per unit.

Each unit only includes words and sentences containing letters and symbols learned in that unit or a previous unit. This decreases dependence on a learned teacher to start reading. Each of these words and sentences was curated/created after hundreds of hours of sheer imagination and creativity.

For comparison, in English, if we introduce six letters like C, O, N, S, A, T, we can create sample words like:

  • CAT, SAT, ON, AT, COT, NOT, etc.
  • Sentences like:
    • CAT SAT
    • CAT ON A COT
    • CAT SAT ON A COT
    • NOT A CAT
    • NOT A COT

These sentences and words are easy to learn for a beginner.

However, in Malayalam, if we introduce letters like റ, ര, മ, ന, ത, ക, വ, ല to a student, how many meaningful words or sentences can we create with these letters? Aashaan tries to solve this problem. Let us see some samples.

Aashaan Learning Method

Each unit's sample words and sentences use only the letters and symbols learned up to that chapter. Even though Aashaan has 50 units, by 20 units, the learner will be able to start reading at least 75% of Malayalam content.