Going from Malayalam to Kannada (เฒเฒจเณเฒจเฒก) has a composite linguistic distance of 34% (curated lexical data). Below is the dimension-by-dimension breakdown.
Shared vocabulary, cognates, and loanwords.
Morphology, syntax, word order, cases.
Shared sounds and phoneme inventory.
Malayalam โ Kannada
Dravidian โ Dravidian
The 5 languages with the lowest linguistic distance from Malayalam:
A quick 3-question check between Malayalam and Kannada. No signup.