Ol Chiki script

The Ol Chiki (ᱚᱞ ᱪᱤᱠᱤ (https://sat.m.wikipedia.org/)) script, also

known as Ol Chemetʼ (Santali: ol 'writing', chemet' 'learning'), Ol Ol Chiki
Ciki, Ol, and sometimes as the Santali alphabet, is the official
writing system for Santali, an Austroasiatic language recognized as an
official regional language in India. It has 30 letters, the forms of which
are intended to evoke natural shapes. The script is written from left to Script type Alphabet
right. Direction left-to-right
Languages Santali language
The shapes of the letters are not arbitrary, but reflect the ISO 15924
names for the letters, which are words, usually the names
ISO 15924 Olck, 261 , Ol Chiki
of objects or actions representing conventionalized form
(Ol Cemet’, Ol,
in the pictorial shape of the characters.
Santali)
— Norman Zide, [1] Unicode
Unicode Ol Chiki
alias

Contents Unicode
range
U+1C50–U+1C7F (ht
tps://www.unicode.or
History g/charts/PDF/U1C50.
Myths pdf)
Letters
Other marks
Digits
Punctuation
Computing
Unicode
Fonts
See also
References

History
The Ol Chiki script was created in 1925 by Raghunath Murmu for the Santali language, and publicized first in
1939 at a Mayurbhanj State exhibition.[2]

Previously, Santali had been written with the Latin script. However, Santali is not an Indo-Aryan language and
Indic scripts did not have letters for all of Santali's phonemes, especially its stop consonants and vowels, which
made writing the language accurately in an unmodified Indic script difficult. The detailed analysis was given
by Byomkes Chakrabarti in his "Comparative Study of Santali and Bengali". Missionary and linguist Paul
Olaf Bodding, a Norwegian, introduced the Latin script, which is better[3] at representing Santali stops,
phonemes and nasal sounds with the use of diacritical marks and accents. Unlike most Indic scripts, Ol Chiki
is not an abugida, with vowels given equal representation with consonants. Additionally, it was designed
specifically for the language, but one letter could not be assigned to each phoneme because the sixth vowel in
Ol Chiki is still problematic.

Myths
There are two prominent myths associated with the creation of Ol Chiki. One of them is tied to the genesis
legend as it believed by the Santals. According to this myth, the Ol Chiki writing system originated during the
creation of the earth. The first character "ᱚ" is shaped after the fire created by lightning. The first five
characters "ᱚ" (sengel - fire), "ᱛ" (hasa - soil/earth) , "ᱜ" (dak - water), "ᱝ" (hoi - air) and "ᱞ" (soon - sky)
represent the five classical elements. Noting about the myth, Rameswar Murmu[4] has written the belief of
Raghunath Murmu as a small child seeing the Santal deities "Bidu" and "Chandan" in his dreams where the
deities would ask him to worship them which will follow the appearance of the script. This would follow
Raghunath Murmu going to the mountain "Kaphiburu" alone to worship the deities. The deities would later
show the writing system in a dream.[5]

The second myth is related to a divine origin of Ol Chiki script through a blessed man (Raghunath Murmu) as
opposed to any human creation.[5]

Letters
The values of the letters are as follows:
 Transliteration
Letter Name IPA[6] ALA- Shape[1]
Zide[6] Deva.[8] Beng.[8] Odia[8]
LC[7]

ᱚ aa /ɔ/ a ọ अ অ ଅ burning fire

ᱛ ta /t/ t t त ত the Earth

ᱜ ga
/k’/,
/g/
g k’ ग গ vomiting mouth which produces the
same sound as the name of the letter

ᱝ anga /ŋ/ ṃ ṅ ◌ं ◌ং ◌ଂ blowing air

ᱞ la /l/ l l ल ল writing

ᱟ aaa /a/ ā a आ আ ଆ working in the field with a spade

ᱠ ka /k/ k k क ক bird (sound of a swan)

ᱡ ja
/c’/,
/j/
j c’ ज জ person pointing towards a third person
with the right hand (saying he)

ᱢ ma /m/ m m म ম person pointing towards a second

person with the left hand (saying you)

ᱣ waa
/w/,
/v/
w w व ওয় opening lips

ᱤ ii /i/ i i इ ই ଇ bending tree

ᱥ si /s/ s s स স plow

ᱦ hi
/ʔ/,
/h/
ẖ h ह হ ହ hands up

ᱧ na /ɲ/ ñ ñ ञ ঞ person pointing towards himself/herself

with the left hand

ᱨ ri /r/ r r र র sickle used for cutting or reaping

ᱩ uu /u/ u u उ উ ଉ vessel used for preparing food

ᱪ cha /c/ c c च চ peak of a mountain which is usually

high

ᱫ daa
/t’/,
/d/
d t’ द দ mushroom

ᱬ na /ɳ/ ṇ ṇ ण ণ picture of a flying bee (which makes

this sound)

ᱭ ya /j/ y y य য় ୟ a man bending towards ground to cut

something

ᱮ aye /e/ e e ए এ ଏ overflowing rivers changing course

ᱯ la /p/ p p प প person receiving with both hands

ᱰ dha /ɖ/ ḍ ḍ ड ড a man with two legs stretching towards

his chest and mouth

ᱱ na /n/ n n न ন thrashing grains with two legs

 ᱲ rra /ɽ/ ṛ ṛ ड़ ড় a path that turns to avoid an
obstruction or a danger

ᱳ oo /o/ o o ओ ও ଓ a mouth when sounding this letter

ᱴ tta /ʈ/ ṭ ṭ ट ট camel hump

ᱵ ba
/p’/,
/b/
b p’ ब ব curly hair

ᱶ rra /w̃ / ṅ w̃ ङ ঙ nasalized

ᱷ haa /ʰ/ h (C)h ह হ ହ a man throwing something with one

hand

Aspirated consonants are written as digraphs with the letter ᱷ:[9][8] ᱛᱷ /tʰ/, ᱜᱷ /gʱ/, ᱠᱷ /kʰ/, ᱡᱷ /jʱ/, ᱪᱷ
/cʰ/, ᱫᱷ /dʱ/, ᱯᱷ /pʰ/, ᱰᱷ /ɖʱ/, ᱲᱷ /ɽʱ/, ᱴᱷ /ʈʰ/, and ᱵᱷ /bʱ/.

Other marks
Ol Chiki employs several marks which are placed after the letter they modify (there are no combining
characters):

Mark Name Description

This baseline dot is used to extend three vowel letters for the Santal Parganas dialect of Santali:[9]
ᱚᱹ ŏ /ɔ/, ᱟᱹ ă /ə/, and ᱮᱹ ĕ /ɛ/. The phonetic difference between ᱚ and ᱚᱹ is not clearly defined
ᱹ găhlă
ṭuḍăg and there may be only a marginal phonemic difference between the two. ᱚᱹ is rarely used. ALA-LC
transliterates ᱚᱹ as "ạ̄".[7]

ᱚᱸ /ɔ̃ /, ᱟᱸ /ã/, ᱤᱸ /ĩ/, ᱩᱸ /ũ/, ᱮᱸ /ẽ/,

ᱸ mũ This raised dot indicates nasalization of the preceding vowel:
ṭuḍăg
and ᱳᱸ /õ/. ALA-LC transliteration uses "m̐" after the affected vowel.[7]

mũ This colon-like mark is used to mark a nasalized extended vowel. It is a combination of mũ ṭuḍăg
ᱺ găhlă
and găhlă ṭuḍăg: ᱚᱺ /ɔ̃ /, ᱟᱺ /ə̃ /, and ᱮᱺ /ɛ̃/.
ṭuḍăg

This tilde-like mark indicates the prolongation of any oral or nasalized vowel. Compare ᱮ /e/ with
ᱻ relā ᱮᱻ /eː/. It comes after the găhlă ṭuḍăg for extended vowels: ᱮᱹᱻ /ɛː/. It is omitted in ALA-LC
transliteration.[7]
This special letter indicates the deglottalization of a consonant in the word-final position. It
preserves the morphophonemic relationship between the glottalized (ejective) and voiced
equivalents of consonants.[9] For example, ᱜ represents a voiced /g/ when word initial but an
ᱽ ahad ejective /k’/ when in the word-final position. A voiced /g/ in the word-final position is written as ᱜᱽ.
The ahad is used with ᱜ, ᱡ, ᱦ, ᱫ, and ᱵ which can form cursive ligatures with ᱽ in handwriting
(but not usually in printed text).[8] ALA-LC transliteration uses an apostrophe (’) to represent an
ahad.[7]
This hyphen-like mark serves as a glottal protector (the opposite function as the ahad.) It preserves

ᱼ phārkā the ejective sound, even in the word-initial position. Compare ᱜᱚ /gɔ/ with ᱜᱼᱚ /k’ɔ/. The phārkā
is only used with ᱜ, ᱡ, ᱫ, and ᱵ. It is omitted in ALA-LC transliteration.[7]
Digits
Ol Chiki has its own set of digits:

Digit 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Ol Chiki ᱐ ᱑ ᱒ ᱓ ᱔ ᱕ ᱖ ᱗ ᱘ ᱙
Bengali ০ ১ ২ ৩ ৪ ৫ ৬ ৭ ৮ ৯
Devanagari ० १ २ ३ ४ ५ ६ ७ ८ ९
Odia ୦ ୧ ୨ ୩ ୪ ୫ ୬ ୭ ୮ ୯
Persian ۰ ۱ ۲ ۳ ۴ ۵ ۶ ۷ ۸ ۹

Punctuation
Some Western-style punctuation marks are used with Ol Chiki: comma (,), exclamation mark (!), question
mark (?), and quotation marks (“ and ”).

Period (.) is not used because it is visually confusable with the găhlă ṭuḍăg mark (ᱹ).[8] Instead of periods the
script uses two dandas:

᱾ (mucăd) marks a minor break

᱿ (double mucăd) marks a major break

Computing

Unicode

Ol Chiki script was added to the Unicode Standard in April, 2008 with the release of version 5.1.

The Unicode block for Ol Chiki is U+1C50–U+1C7F:

Ol Chiki[1]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1C50.pdf) (PDF)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F

U+1C5x ᱐ ᱑ ᱒ ᱓ ᱔ ᱕ ᱖ ᱗ ᱘ ᱙ ᱚ ᱛ ᱜ ᱝ ᱞ ᱟ
U+1C6x ᱠ ᱡ ᱢ ᱣ ᱤ ᱥ ᱦ ᱧ ᱨ ᱩ ᱪ ᱫ ᱬ ᱭ ᱮ ᱯ
U+1C7x ᱰ ᱱ ᱲ ᱳ ᱴ ᱵ ᱶ ᱷ ᱸ ᱹ ᱺ ᱻ ᱼ ᱽ ᱾ ᱿
Notes

1.^ As of Unicode version 13.0

Fonts
Google's Noto Sans Ol Chiki.[10]
Microsoft's font family Nirmala UI.[11]

See also
Byomkes Chakrabarti (a Bengali research worker on ethnic languages)
Santali Ol chiki script (https://goozzle.blogspot.com/2021/01/Santali%20Ol%20Chiki%20Script.
html)
Santali Ol chiki keyboard (https://santhaldisom.in/ol-chiki-keyboard/)
Santali Latin alphabet

References
1. "Ol Chiki Script" (http://wesanthals.tripod.com/id45.html). A portal for Santals. 2002. Retrieved
2017-09-12.
2. Hembram, Phatik Chandra (2002). Santhali, a Natural Language (https://books.google.com/boo
ks?id=XIlkAAAAMAAJ). U. Hembram. p. 165.
3. Bodding, P. O (1922). Materials for a Santali grammar. Santal Mission of the Northern
Churches. OCLC 14036654 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/14036654).
4. Murmu, Rameswar (1988). Ol Chikireyah Galhan. |access-date= requires |url= (help)
5. Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (2001). Santhal Worldview (https://books.google.co
m/books?id=EjdHD5BbeEwC&pg=PA74). Concept Publishing Company. pp. 74–. ISBN 978-
81-7022-866-0.
6. Zide, Norman (1996). Daniels, Peter T.; Bright, William (eds.). The World's Writing Systems (htt
ps://archive.org/details/isbn_9780195079937/page/614). Oxford University Press, Inc. pp. 614-
615 (https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780195079937/page/614). ISBN 978-0195079937.
7. "Santali (in Ol script)" (https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/santali.pdf) (PDF). ALA-LC
Romanization Tables. Library of Congress. Retrieved 2017-09-12.
8. Everson, Michael (2005-09-05). "L2/05-243R: Final proposal to encode the Ol Chiki script in
the UCS" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2005/05243r-n2984-ol-chiki.pdf) (PDF).
9. "The Unicode Standard, Chapter 13.10: Ol Chiki" (https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode1
3.0.0/ch13.pdf#G29195) (PDF). Unicode Consortium. March 2020.
10. "Noto Sans Ol Chiki" (https://www.google.com/get/noto/#sans-olck). Google Noto Fonts.
Retrieved 5 June 2020.
11. "Nirmala UI font family - Typography" (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/nirm
ala-ui). docs.microsoft.com. Retrieved 5 June 2020.

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