Odia alphabet

History

The Odia script is developed from the Kalinga alphabet, one of the many descendants of the Brahmi script of ancient India. The earliest known inscription in the Odia language, in the Kalinga script, dates from 1051. The script has undergone several phases. They are broadly:

1. Transitional Odia
2. Proto Odia
3. Kutila
4. Gupta scripts

The script in the Edicts of Ashoka at Dhauli and Jaugada and the Minor Inscriptions of Kharavela in the Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves give the first glimpse of possible origin of the Odia language. From a linguistic perspective, the Hati Gumpha inscriptions are similar to modern Odia and essentially different from the language of the Ashokan edicts. The question has also been raised as to whether Pali was the prevalent language in Odisha during this period. The Hati Gumpha inscriptions, which are in Pali, are perhaps the only evidence of stone inscriptions in Pali. This may be the reason why the famous German linguist Professor Oldenburg mentioned that Pali was the original language of Odisha.

There are noticeable similarities between the Odia and Thai alphabets, which provides clues about the Sadhabas, Kalinga traders who traveled to south Asian countries and ruled there, leaving evidence of the Odia script on the Thai script, along with a cultural impact.

The curved appearance of the Odia script is a result of the practice of writing on palm leaves, which has a tendency to tear the leaves when many straight lines are written.

Odia is a syllabic alphabet or an abugida wherein all consonants have an inherent vowel embedded within. Diacritics (which can appear above, below, before, or after the consonant they belong to) are used to change the form of the inherent vowel. When vowels appear at the beginning of a syllable, they are written as independent letters. Also, when certain consonants occur together, special conjunct symbols are used to combine the essential parts of each consonant symbol.

Oṛiyā is encumbered with the drawback of an excessively awkward and cumbrous written character. ... At first glance, an Oṛiyā book seems to be all curves, and it takes a second look to notice that there is something inside each.(G. A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, 1903)

Overwhelmingly, the Odia script was used to write the Odia language. However, it has been used as a regional writing-system for Sanskrit. Furthermore, Grierson in his famed Linguistic Survey of India mentioned that the Odia script was sometimes employed for Chhattisgarhi, an Eastern Hindi language, in the eastern border regions of Chhattisgarh.

All characters

଼ ଽ ା ି ୀ ୁ ୂ ୃ ୄ େ ୈ ୋ ୌ ୍ ଁ ଂ ଃ

୦୧୨୩୪୫୬୭୮୯

ଅ ଆ ଇ ଈ ଉ ଊ ଋ ୠ ଌ ୡ ଏ ଐ ଓ ଔ କ ଖ ଗ ଘ ଙ ଚ ଛ ଜ ଝ ଞ ଟ ଠ ଡ ଢ ଣ ତ ଥ ଦ ଧ ନ ପ ଫ ବ ଵ ଭ ମ ଯ ର ଳ ୱ ଶ ଷ ସ ହ ୟ ଲ

Independent vowels

The vowels "ଇ" ("i"), "ଈ" ("ī"), "ଉ" ("u") and "ଊ" ("ū") are pronounced same as most long sounds are pronounced in the same way as short vowel sounds.

Consonants

The consonants j and y are pronounced the same in Odia. Initial ḍa, ḍha vary with intervocalic ṛa, ṛha.

Dependent vowels

As in other abugida scripts, Odia consonant letters have an inherent vowel. It is transliterated as ⟨a⟩, phonetic value [ɔ]. Its absence is marked by a halanta (virāma):

For the other vowels diacritics are used:

(Note: In many Odia fonts the vowels e, ai, o, au do not display properly; these are given work-arounds in parentheses below.)

Vowel diacritics may be more or less fused with the consonants, though in modern printing such ligatures have become less common.

Consonant ligatures

Clusters of two or more consonants form a ligature. Basically Odia has two types of such consonant ligatures. The "northern" type is formed by fusion of two or more consonants as in northern scripts like Devanāgarī (but to a lesser extent also in the Malayalam script in the south). In some instances the components can be easily identified, but sometimes completely new glyphs are formed. With the "southern" type the second component is reduced in size and put under the first as in the southern scripts used for Kannaḍa and Telugu (and to some extent also for Malayalam script). The following table lists all conjunct forms. (Different fonts may use different ligatures.)

Special forms

⟨ẏ⟩ and ⟨r⟩ as components of a ligature are given a special treatment. As last member they become and respectively:

⟨r⟩ as first member of a ligature becomes (called Repha as in other Indic scripts) and is shifted to the end of the ligature:

Ambiguities

The Odia alphabet exhibits quite a few ambiguities which add to the difficulties beginners encounter in learning it.

Some of the letters of the script may easily be confounded. In order to reduce ambiguities a small oblique stroke is added at the lower right end as a diacritic. It resembles Halanta (Virāma) but it is joined to the letter, whereas Halanta is not joined. When the consonant forms a vowel ligature by which the lower right end is affected, this stroke is shifted to another position. This applies also to consonant ligatures bearing the stroke (see table of consonant ligatures).

Some of the subjoined consonants, some other ligature components, and variants of vowel diacritics have changing functions:

Open top consonants get a subjoined variant of the vowel diacritic for ⟨i⟩ as in

This same little hook is used in some consonant ligatures to denote ⟨t⟩ as first component:

The subjoined form of ⟨ch⟩ is also used for subjoined ⟨th⟩:

The subjoined form of ⟨bh⟩ serves also as a diacritic for different purposes:

The subjoined forms of ⟨ṇ⟩ and ⟨tu⟩ are almost identical:

The sign for the nasal ⟨ṁ⟩ may be used as a diacritic too:

Comparison of Odia script with its neighbours

At a first look the great number of signs with round shapes suggests a closer relation to the southern neighbour Telugu than to the other neighbours Bengali in the north and Devanāgarī in the west. The reason for the round shapes in Odia and Telugu (and also in Kannaḍa and Malayāḷam) is the former method of writing using a stylus to scratch the signs into a palm leaf. These tools do not allow for horizontal strokes because that would damage the leaf.

Odia letters are mostly round shaped whereas in Devanāgarī and Bengali have horizontal lines. So in most cases the reader of Oṛiyā will find the distinctive parts of a letter only below the hoop. Considering this the following tables clearly show a closer relation to Devanāgarī and Bengali than to any southern script, though both northern and southern scripts have the same origin, Brāhmī.

The treatment of ⟨e⟩ ⟨ai⟩ ⟨o⟩ ⟨au⟩ is similar to Bengali, Malayāḷam, Sinhalese, Tamiḻ, Grantha and also to SE Asian scripts like Burmese, Khmer and Thai, but it differs clearly from Devanāgarī, Gujarātī, Gurmukhī, Kannaḍa, Telugu and Tibetan.

Unicode

Odia script was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 1991 with the release of version 1.0.

The Unicode block for Odia is U+0B00–U+0B7F: