- Official language in
- India
- Script
- Odia
Where it's spoken
Odia is the official language of the Indian state of Orissa, an Indo-Aryan language that belongs to the Eastern subgroup of Indo-Aryan alongside Bengali and Assamese. Dialectal variation within Odia is small: alongside southern, western, and northern dialect groups, there is a standard variety associated with the cities of Cuttack, Puri, and Bhubaneswar.
Sources
- Neukom, Lukas; Patnaik, Manideepa (2003). "A Grammar of Oriya." ASAS (Arbeiten des Seminars für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft) Nr. 17, Universität Zürich — p.1 §1.1 (official language, Indo-Aryan classification); p.2 §1.2 (dialect groups, standard variety)
Script & pronunciation
Odia is written in its own script, a descendant of the Brahmi script that is related to other North Indian scripts such as Devanagari. Like the other scripts of South Asia, it is an abugida: most letters stand for a consonant plus an inherent vowel, and word-internal vowels are written by attaching a vowel sign near the affected consonant. This app's romanization can mark each syllable with a hyphen, as in Na-mas-kaar (ନମସ୍କାର, "Hello / Greetings") and Su-pra-bhaat (ସୁପ୍ରଭାତ, "Good morning").
Sources
- Neukom, Lukas; Patnaik, Manideepa (2003). "A Grammar of Oriya." ASAS (Arbeiten des Seminars für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft) Nr. 17, Universität Zürich — p.11 §2.8 (script)
- The Unicode Standard, Version 16.0.0 — Core Specification, Chapter 12: South and Central Asia-I: Official Scripts of India — Chapter introduction (abugida structure); §12.5 "Oriya (Odia)," U+0B00–U+0B7F
Grammar essentials
In Odia, the unmarked word order in a full sentence places the subject first, then a time adverbial, then the object (the patient before the recipient), then a place adverbial, with the verb last; because the subject is usually the topic of a sentence, the shorter subject-object-verb order is very frequent. This app's card for needing an accessible room, ମୋର ଅଭିଗମ୍ୟ ସୁବିଧା ସହ ଏକ କୋଠରୀ ଦରକାର। ("I need a room with accessibility features."), places its predicate at the end of the sentence, matching this order. The general negator ନାହିଁ (nahī) is placed immediately after the verb it negates and forms a fixed unit with it, as in this app's card ମୁଁ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଜାଣେ ନାହିଁ ("I can't speak Odia"), where ନାହିଁ follows the verb ଜାଣେ ("know"). Counting something normally requires a classifier attached to the numeral, and the numeral-plus-classifier sequence normally comes before the noun it counts, as in this app's card ଏହା ଗୋଟିଏ ଦିଅନ୍ତୁ ("Please give me one of these"), where ଗୋଟିଏ fuses the numeral "one" with a classifier. Grammatical relations such as location are marked with a case suffix attached to the noun: the locative suffix -re marks location in time and space, as in this app's card ସେ ଚଉକ ପାଖରେ ବାଁ ଦେ ("Turn left near that intersection"), where -re — which this app's own notes call a locative postposition — is attached to ପାଖ ("near") to give ପାଖରେ.
Sources
- Neukom, Lukas; Patnaik, Manideepa (2003). "A Grammar of Oriya." ASAS (Arbeiten des Seminars für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft) Nr. 17, Universität Zürich — p.335 §6.2 (word order); p.339 §6.4.1 (negation); p.116–117 §3.4.3 (classifiers); p.63 §3.1.4.6 (locative case)
Politeness & etiquette
Odia's second-person pronouns contrast in honorificity: tu is the least polite and most intimate, used with children, very close friends, or someone of lower status; apɔɳɔ signals formality and politeness, used among businesspeople and as a respectful address to elders, including by students toward a teacher; in other cases the pronoun tume is used, among colleagues and people of about the same age. This app's formal card ଆପଣ କେମିତି ଅଛନ୍ତି? ("How are you?") addresses the listener with the honorific pronoun, which its own grammar note calls "aapana"; the informal card ମୁଁ ତୁମକୁ ପସନ୍ଦ କରୁଛି ("I like you") instead uses the pronoun ତୁମ, which this app labels "you (informal)". Verb agreement marks the same distinction: the honorific second person takes the same verb ending as the third-person plural, while the familiar second person has its own ending, and this app's card for slowing down a martial-arts drill notes that the respectful imperative ending -antu is used with strangers and elders, while friends would instead hear the bare verb stem.
Sources
- Neukom, Lukas; Patnaik, Manideepa (2003). "A Grammar of Oriya." ASAS (Arbeiten des Seminars für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft) Nr. 17, Universität Zürich — p.83 §3.3.1 (three degrees of honorificity); p.85 Table 3.4 (verb agreement); p.86 §3.3.1.1 (pronoun use)