Oriya

Last Updated: 2020-02-25

COMPROMISED: diacritics not always marked and used interchangeably

Background

Language Family: Indo-European / Indo-Iranian / Indo-Aryan / Eastern zone / Oriya

• Oriya (now Romanized as Odia) is the official language of Orissa, an eastern Indian state. There are four major dialects of Oriya, and this project focuses on Standard Oriya (Ray 2003, 485).

Phonology

Consonants

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops (plain)	p b	t̪ d̪		ʈ ɖ	c ɟ	k ɡ
Stops (aspirated)	pʰ bʱ	t̪ʰ d̪ʱ		ʈʰ ɖʱ	cʰ ɟʱ	kʰ ɡʱ
Fricatives			s				h
Nasals	m	n̪		ɳ		ŋ
Flaps			ɾ
Approximants	w		l	ɭ	j
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced.

Vowels

• Nasal vowels are contrastive in Oriya (Ray 2003, 448); however, they don’t always contrast with their oral counterparts (Pattanayak 1959 as cited in Ray (2003), p. 448). /o/ does not have a nasal counterpart.
• Vowel length is said to be a phonetic feature rather than a phonemic one (Ray 2003, 447). Long vowels will be transcribed as short.
• The two diphthongs generally associated with Indo-Aryan languages /ɔi/ and /ɔu/ (variants of /ai/ and /au/), may be interpreted as separate monophthongss so, I have chosen not to transcribe them as complex nuclei (Ray 2003, 447).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low-Mid			ɔ
Low		a

Alphabet

• Oriya descends from the Brahmi script, but it does not hang from a horizontal line. It is a left-to-right abugida script without capital letters. As an abugida script, every consonant carries an inherent /ɔ/ following it (Ray 2003, 487).

Consonant Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
କ	/kɔ/
ଖ	/kʰɔ/
ଗ	/ɡɔ/
ଘ	/ɡʱɔ/
ଙ	/ŋɔ/
ଚ	/cɔ/
ଛ	/cʰɔ/
ଜ; ଯ	/ɟɔ/
ଝ	/ɟʱɔ/
ଟ	/ʈɔ/
ଠ	/ʈʰɔ/
ଡ	/ɖɔ/
ଢ	/ɖʱɔ/
ଣ	/ɳɔ/
ତ	/t̪ɔ/
ଥ	/t̪ʰɔ/
ଦ	/d̪ɔ/
ଧ	/d̪ʱɔ/
ନ; ଞ	/n̪ɔ/
ପ	/pɔ/
ଫ	/pʰɔ/
ବ	/bɔ/
ଭ	/bʱɔ/
ମ	/mɔ/
ର	/ɾɔ/
ଳ	/ɭɔ/
ୱ; ଵ	/wɔ/
ଶ; ଷ; ସ	/sɔ/
ହ	/hɔ/
ୟ	/jɔ/
ଲ	/lɔ/
Independent Grapheme		vowels and syllabic consonants
ଅ	/ɔ/
ଆ	/a/
ଇ; ଈ	/i/
ଉ; ଊ	/u/
ଋ; ୠ	/ɾu/
ଌ; ୡ	/lu/
ଏ	/e/
ଐ	/ɔi/
ଓ	/o/
ଔ	/ɔu/
Diacritic
ା	/a/
ି; ୀ	/i/
ୁ; ୂ	/u/
ୃ; ୄ	/ɾu/
ୢ; ୣ	/lu/
େ	/e/
ୈ	/ɔi/
ୋ	/o/
ୌ	/ɔu/
ଁ		called a candrabindu, this diacritic indicates vowel nasalization (Mahapatra 1996, 405); however, Giri (2011) states that it may be used in place of the anusvara, which represents a separate phonemic feature, compromising the language. It also denotes nasalization of preceding consonants (Panel 2018, 5), but given that nasal consonants aren’t contrastive, the diacritic in these instances will be removed in the rules.
ଂ	/m/	called an anusvara, this diacritic represents a nasal, either word-finally or in homorganic sequences (/m/ appears to be underlying) (Mahapatra 1996, 404; Mohapatra 2016, 23)
ଃ	/h/	called a visarga, this diacritic represents a word-final /h/ (Mohapatra 2016, 23)
୍		called a halanta, this diacritic removes the inherent vowel from a consonant (Mahapatra 1996, 404); however, it is not always marked, which compromises the language (Ray 2003, 447)
◌़		called a nukta, this diacritic indicates non-native sounds (Ishida 2002, 4). Given this, the diacritic will not be accounted for in the rules.

Lenition Rules

• Consonant gemination occurs in Odia (Ray 2003, 449–50).
  • For many speakers, duplicate consonants undergo degemination (Ray 2003).
• /ɖ/ and /ɖʱ/ may become flaps intervocalically and word-finally (Ray 2003, 449).

Misc. Rules

• Aspirated consonants are de-aspirated when preceded by /s/ and followed by a vowel (Ray 2003, 449).

References

Giri, Manoj Kumar. 2011. Computer Translation Style & Convention Guide for Odia. FUEL Project.

Ishida, Richard. 2002. “An Introduction to Indic Scripts.”

Mahapatra, B. P. 1996. “The World’s Writing Systemd.” In, edited by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, 404–7. Oxford University Press.

Mohapatra, Ramesh Kumar. 2016. “Handwritten Character Recognition of a Vernacular Language: The Odia Script.” PhD thesis, National Institute of Technology Rourkela.

Panel, Neo-Brahmi Generation. 2018. “Proposal for an Oriya Script Root Zone Label Generation Ruleset (Lgr).”

Pattanayak, D. P. 1959. “Nasal Phonemes in Oriya.” Indian Linguistics.

Ray, Tapas S. 2003. “The Indo-Aryan Languages.” In, edited by George Cardona and Dhanesh Jain, 444–76. Taylor & Francis Ltd. https://www.ebook.de/de/product/5389506/the_indo_aryan_languages.html.