ODIA

PHONOLOGY
Alternative Names: Odia is now the official name of the language but Oriya is still widely used.

Classification: Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Modern Indo-Aryan, Eastern. Odiya is closely

related to Bengali and Assamese.

Overview. Odiya is one of the many regional languages of India belonging to the Indo-Aryan

branch of Indo-European. It was born in what is now the state of Odisha in the northeast of the
country at a period when political fragmentation was giving way to a unified kingdom under the
Oriental Ganga dynasty (10-11th centuries), a time that also saw the flourishing of a major style
of Hindu architecture.

Distribution: Odiya is spoken mainly in the states of Odisha and Chhattisgarh in eastern India.

There also significant numbers of Odiya speakers in Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar,
Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam.
 Speakers. Around 38 million in the following Indian state
  Odisha 35,400,000

Chhattisgarh 950,000

Jharkhand 543,000

Andhra Pradesh 390,000

Assam 268,000

West Bengal 216,000

Gujarat 142,000

Status. Odiya is the official language of the Indian state of Odisha and one of
the 23 official languages established in the Constitution of India.
Varieties. There are four dialects in the state of
Odisha: Standard Odiya, prevalent in the capital
Bhubaneshwar and in the districts of Cuttak and Puri,
and Western, Northern,
and Southern dialects, prevalent in the western,
northern and southern regions of the state,
respectively. The last three are influenced by the
languages spoken in neighboring states (Hindi in the
west, Bengali in the north and Telugu in the south). Two
Odiya stylistic forms can be distinguished: formal and
informal, the former using more Sanskrit loanwords and
restricted mainly to writings.
Oldest Documents

1249. The first known inscription containing whole

sentences in Oriya, though traces of Oriya words can
be found in earlier inscriptions (from the 7th century
onwards).

1200-1300. Palm-leaf chronicles of the Jagannatha

temple at Puri.

1400-1500. The first literary texts.

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Phonology

Vowels (11). All except [o] have nasal counterparts and

nasalization (indicated by a tilde) is phonemic. In Oriya,
like in the other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages
(Bengali, Assamese), the short and long vowels typical
of Indo-Aryan have merged. Most words end in a
vowel.
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Consonants (31). Oriya has 31 consonants in total, including 20 stops, 2
fricatives, 4 nasals, and 5 liquids/glides. The stops are articulated at five
different places, being classified as labial, dental, retroflex, palatal and
velar. The palatal stops are, in fact, affricates. Every series of stops
includes voiceless and voiced consonants, unaspirated and aspirated,
this four-way contrast being unique to Indo-Aryan among Indo-European
languages (Proto-Indoeuropean had a three-way contrast only).

    The retroflex consonants of Oriya, articulated immediately behind the

alveolar crest, are not from Indo-European origin. They are, probably, the
result of Dravidian language influence. Oriya has a retroflex liquid not
inherited from Sanskrit.
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 In Oriya, like in Bengali and Assamese, the three sibilants of Sanskrit have
coalesced into one fricative (s in Oriya, ʃ in Bengali, x in Assamese).

Script and Orthography

Odiya uses its own script, a descendant of Brāhmī. The Odiya script is
an abugida alphabet in which every consonant carries the inherent vowel [ɔ]. Its
principles are similar to those of the Devanāgarī alphabet . However, Oriya letters
resemble those of Dravidian scripts.
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 • The Odiya script has signs for short and long vowels (ā, ī, ū) but in
informal speech they are all pronounced short.

The vowel [ɔ] is transliterated a. The syllabic vowel ṛ is present only in

Sanskrit loanwords.
In the original script nasalization is marked by a dot or candrabindu (a dot
inside the lower half of a circle) above the vowel while in transliteration is
indicated by a tilde above the vowel.
The aspirated stops and affricates are rendered as digraphs (pʰ = ph, dʰ = dh, etc).
The retroflex stops [ʈ], [ɖ] are transliterated ṭ , ḍ.

The affricates [tʃ], [dʒ] are transliterated c , j.

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The Odiya script has three signs for sibilants (ś, ṣ, s) but they are all
pronounced [s].

The nasals [ɳ], [ŋ] are rendered ṇ, ṅ. There is a sign for the nasal palatal (ñ)
in the script but it is not pronounced in native words.

The retroflex liquid [ɭ] is transliterated ḷ.

The glide [w] is transliterated v.

The glide [j] has two signs (y, ẏ); generally y occurs in initial position and ẏ
does not.
THANK
YOU
Any questions?
Anupama Das
20MAEL02