Odia (ଓଡ଼ିଆ odiā), is an Indian language, belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. It is mainly spoken in the Indian states of Odisha and in parts of West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh. Odia is one of the many official languages in India; it is the official language of Odisha and the second official language of Jharkhand.Odia is the predominant language of Odisha, where Odia speakers comprise around 83.33% of the population according to census surveys.

Odia alphabet

Independent vowels

The vowels "ଇ" ("i"), "ଈ" ("ī"), "ଉ" ("u") and "ଊ" ("ū") are pronounced same as most long sounds are pronounced in the same way as short vowel sounds.

Consonants

The consonants j and y are pronounced the same in Odia. Initial ḍa, ḍha vary with intervocalic ṛa, ṛha.

Dependent vowels

As in other abugida scripts, Odia consonant letters have an inherent vowel.

For the other vowels diacritics are used:

Vowel diacritics may be more or less fused with the consonants, though in modern printing such ligatures have become less common.

Consonant Ligatures

Clusters of two or more consonants form a ligature. Basically Odia has two types of such consonant ligatures. The "northern" type is formed by fusion of two ore more consonants as in northern scripts like Devanāgarī (but to a lesser extent also in the Malayalam script in the south). In some instances the components can be easily identified, but sometimes completely new glyphs are formed. With the "southern" type the second component is reduced in size and put under the first as in the southern scripts used for Kannaḍa and Telugu (and to some extent also for Malayalam script). The following table shows the most commonly used ligatures. (Different fonts may use different ligatures.)