1. History

2. Alphabet
     All characters    Independent vowels    Consonants    Structured consonants   Unstructured consonants   Dependent vowels  

3. Consonant ligatures
     Special forms  

4. Ambiguities

5. Numerals

6. Comparison of Odia script with its neighbours
     Vowel signs    Consonant signs    Vowel diacritics  

7. Unicode

8. Footnotes

9. See also

10. References

11. External links

The Odia script ({{lang-or|ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଲିପି}}; also known as the Oriya script) is a Brahmic script used to write the Odia language.

History

The Odia script is developed from the Kalinga alphabet, one of the many descendants of the Brahmi script of ancient India.^[1] The earliest known inscription in the Odia language, in the Kalinga script, dates from 1051.

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.^[2]

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.^[3][4]

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.^[5]

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.

{{IAST|Oṛiyā}} is encumbered with the drawback of an excessively awkward and cumbrous written character. ... At first glance, an {{IAST|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)^[6]

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^[7] 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. However it appears to have been replaced with the Devanagari script.

Alphabet

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 କ୍ଷ 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.

When a vowel follows a consonant, it is written with a diacritic rather than as a separate letter.

Consonants

Two categories of consonant letters (ବ୍ୟଞ୍ଜନ byan̄jana) are defined in Odia: the structured consonants and the unstructured consonants.

Structured consonants

The structured consonants are classified according to where the tongue touches the palate of the mouth and are classified accordingly into five structured groups. These consonants are shown here with their IAST transcriptions.{{need-IPA}}

Unstructured consonants

The unstructured consonants are consonants that do not fall into any of the above structures:

{{lang|kn|ଯ}} (ja),

{{lang|kn|ର}} (ra),

{{lang|kn|ଳ}} (ḷa),

{{lang|kn|ୱ}} (wa),

{{lang|kn|ଶ}} (śa),

{{lang|kn|ଷ}} (ṣa),

{{lang|kn|ସ}} (sa),

{{lang|kn|ହ}} (ha),

{{lang|kn|କ୍ଷ}} (khya).

{{lang|kn|ୟ}} (ya).

{{lang|kn|ଲ}} (la),

Dependent vowels

As in other abugida scripts, Odia consonant letters have an inherent vowel. It is transliterated as {{angle bracket|a}}, phonetic value {{IPA|[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 {{IAST|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

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 {{angle bracket|i}} as in

This same little hook is used in some consonant ligatures to denote {{angle bracket|t}} as first component:

The subjoined form of {{angle bracket|ch}} is also used for subjoined {{angle bracket|th}}:

The subjoined form of {{angle bracket|bh}} serves also as a diacritic for different purposes:

The subjoined forms of {{angle bracket|{{IAST|ṇ}}}} and {{angle bracket|tu}} are almost identical:

The sign for the nasal {{angle bracket|{{IAST|ṁ}}}} may be used as a diacritic too:

Numerals

Comparison of Odia script with its neighbours

Many Odia signs with round shapes suggests a closer relation to the southern neighbor Telugu than to the other neighbors Bengali in the north and Devanagari in the west and north . The reason for the round shapes in Odia and Telugu (and also in Kannada and Malayalam) 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 Devanagari and Bengali have horizontal lines. So in most cases the reader of Odia will find the distinctive parts of a letter only below the hoop.

Vowel signs

Consonant signs

Vowel diacritics

The treatment of {{angle bracket|e}} {{angle bracket|ai}} {{angle bracket|o}} {{angle bracket|au}} is similar to Bengali, Malayalam, Sinhalese, Tamil, Grantha and also to SE Asian scripts like Burmese, Khmer and Thai, but it differs clearly from Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, 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:

Footnotes

See also

• Odia Braille

References

External links

• [https://www.unicode.org/unicode/uni2book/ch09.pdf The Unicode Book: Chapter 9] - South and Southeast Asian Scripts (PDF)
• Odia alphabet - From Omniglot
• Oriya Unicode Fonts WAZU JAPAN's Unicode font pages

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