Odia - A Language

Odia (ଓଡ଼ିଆ) is an Indian language, belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. It is mainly spoken in the Indian state of Odisha (which was before known as Orissa). The language is also one of the many official languages in India. Odia is the predominant language of Odisha, where Odia speakers comprise around 83.33% of the population according to census surveys.

Origin :-

The Odia script developed from the Kalinga script, one of the many descendents of the Brahmi script of ancient India. The earliest known inscription in the Odia language, in the Kalinga script, dates from 1051.
The curved appearance of the Odia script is a result of the practice of writing on palm leaves, which have a tendency to tear if you use too many straight lines.

Features & Characteristics :-

• Type of writing system: syllabic alphabet in which all consonants have an inherent vowel. Diacritics, which can appear above, below, before or after the consonant they belong to, are used to change the inherent vowel.
• When they appear the the beginning of a syllable, vowels are written as independent letters.
• When certain consonants occur together, special conjunct symbols are used which combine the essential parts of each letter.
• Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines.
• Odia has 28 consonant phonemes and 6 vowel phonemes.
• Odia is closely related to Bengali and Assamese.