Odia Alphabet & Letters

Odia (ଓଡ଼ିଆ), spelled Oriya in English until 2011, is written in its own script, a member of the Brahmi family like Devanagari, Bangla and Telugu. It is an abugida: a consonant on its own already includes a vowel, so କ is read ko, and other vowels are added as signs around it. Odia schools teach the alphabet (ବର୍ଣ୍ଣମାଳା) as vowels (ସ୍ୱରବର୍ଣ୍ଣ) and consonants (ବ୍ୟଞ୍ଜନବର୍ଣ୍ଣ), in Odia's traditional letter order.

The vowels are ଅ ଆ ଇ ଈ ଉ ଊ ଋ ଏ ଐ ଓ ଔ. Each except ଅ has a vowel sign, the matra, used after a consonant: କା କି କୀ କୁ କୂ କୃ କେ କୈ କୋ କୌ. The sign େ is written before the consonant, ୈ adds a stroke above it, and ୋ ୌ wrap around it; ି sits on top. In Unicode you still type the consonant first and the sign second, and the font moves the sign into place.

The consonants come in five rows of stops (କ ଖ ଗ ଘ ଙ, ଚ ଛ ଜ ଝ ଞ, ଟ ଠ ଡ ଢ ଣ, ତ ଥ ଦ ଧ ନ, ପ ଫ ବ ଭ ମ), then ଯ ର ଲ ଵ, then ଶ ଷ ସ ହ, and then the letters Odia uses beyond the old Sanskrit set: ୟ, ଳ, ୱ and the dotted ଡ଼ ଢ଼. The CLDR list represents ଡ଼ and ଢ଼ with base letters plus the nukta dot ଼; these forms occur in common Odia writing, including the names of the language, ଓଡ଼ିଆ, and of the state, ଓଡ଼ିଶା. The old Sanskrit vowels ୠ ଌ ୡ, which some older charts still show, are not used in modern Odia and are left off this page.

Round tops, and the letters to watch: ଡ଼ ଢ଼ ୟ ଯ ଳ ୱ

Odia is easy to recognise: almost every letter wears a rounded cap, where Devanagari and Bangla draw a straight line along the top. A common explanation is the palm leaf: for centuries Odia was scratched into dried palm leaves with a stylus, and long straight strokes are said to split the leaf, so the scribes curved them. Scholars treat this as a plausible hypothesis rather than a settled fact.

ଡ଼ and ଢ଼ are ଡ and ଢ with a dot underneath. They write a flapped r, made by flicking the tongue back, a sound between d and r. That one sound is the reason English has spelled the language both Oriya and Odia, and the state both Orissa and Odisha. In Unicode ଡ଼ exists as one character (U+0B5C), but normalised text stores it as ଡ followed by ଼, and Unicode treats the two forms as canonically equivalent.

Odia has two y-letters and pronounces them differently: ଯ is said like j, so ଯାତ୍ରା is jatra and Puri's chariot festival is Ratha Jatra, while ୟ is a real y, as in ସମୟ (time). ଳ is a retroflex l, said with the tongue curled back, as in ଜଳ (water) and କଳା (black, also art). ୱ writes the w sound: after the hasanta it forms the w of conjuncts such as ସ୍ୱର (vowel) and ଭୁବନେଶ୍ୱର (Bhubaneswar), and on its own it appears mostly in loanwords; ଵ is a rarely used va, and ordinary Odia writes both b and v with ବ.

How Odia letters sound

The inherent vowel ଅ is pronounced /ɔ/ (a rounded open-mid vowel), so a consonant on its own, such as କ, is pronounced /kɔ/. Unlike Hindi, Odia keeps that vowel at the end of a word: the name written ରାମ is said Rama, not Ram. Odia speech has no long and short vowel pairs, so ଇ and ଈ, ଉ and ଊ sound alike and the difference is only in spelling.

The three sibilants ଶ ଷ ସ are usually all said as a plain s, so the choice between them is a matter of spelling too. The ଟ row and the ତ row, on the other hand, really differ: ଟ ଡ are said with the tongue curled back, ତ ଦ with the tongue against the teeth, and ଣ is a retroflex n.

The candrabindu ଁ makes a vowel nasal, as in ମୁଁ (I); the anusvara ଂ writes a nasal before the next consonant, as in ସଂଖ୍ୟା (number); the visarga ଃ is an echo of breath in words like ଦୁଃଖ (sorrow). The hasanta ୍ removes a consonant's vowel; between two consonants it makes a conjunct such as କ୍ଷ, ନ୍ତ or ଷ୍ଟ, and at the end of a word it can stand visibly under the letter.

How to type Odia in a laptop, MS Word and WhatsApp

Windows 10 and 11 include an Odia keyboard: Settings → Time & language → Language & region → Add a language → Odia, then switch to it with Windows + Space. Its layout is INSCRIPT, the Government of India standard that puts the same sounds on the same keys for every Indian script, so someone who types Hindi on INSCRIPT can type Odia without learning anything new. Type the consonant, then the vowel sign; for a conjunct, type consonant, hasanta ୍, consonant. Text typed this way is Unicode and works in MS Word, browsers and email; the Windows fonts Kalinga and Nirmala UI display it, and Google's free Noto Sans Oriya is a good choice for printing.

Many older Odia documents, typed in desktop publishing software such as Akruti, use non-Unicode fonts that store Odia shapes under English letters. Copied out of such a file, the text turns into Latin gibberish; it needs a converter or retyping before it can be pasted anywhere else. Everything on this page is Unicode.

Phones: on Android, Gboard has an Odia (ଓଡ଼ିଆ) keyboard: Settings → Languages → Add keyboard → Odia. It can show the Odia letters or let you type the sound in English letters and turn it into Odia. WhatsApp, Facebook and SMS then take Odia directly. Anywhere else, copy letters from this page. HTML: ଓ for ଓ, ଡ଼ for ଡ଼, ୟ for ୟ, । for the danda । and ₹ for ₹.

Odia numbers, punctuation and the rupee

Odia has its own digits: ୦ ୧ ୨ ୩ ୪ ୫ ୬ ୭ ୮ ୯. Counting from one to ten: ଏକ, ଦୁଇ, ତିନି, ଚାରି, ପାଞ୍ଚ, ଛଅ, ସାତ, ଆଠ, ନଅ, ଦଶ. They are read exactly like 0–9, so ୧୦ is ten and ୨୦୨୬ is the year 2026. Calendars, school books and many signs use them; prices and phone numbers are just as often written with the international 0–9.

A sentence ends with the danda ।, a short vertical bar that Odia shares with Hindi and Bangla (Unicode keeps one danda for all Indian scripts, U+0964). The double danda ॥ closes verses and prayers. Commas, question and exclamation marks and the quotation marks “ ” ‘ ’ are the same as in English.

Money is the Indian rupee, called ଟଙ୍କା (tanka) in Odia and written with ₹, the sign India adopted in 2010.

Where Odia is spoken, and its neighbours

Odia is the official language of Odisha on India's east coast, and is also spoken by Odia communities in the neighbouring states and in cities across India. CLDR estimates about 45 million speakers. In 2014 it became the sixth language that India recognises as classical, for a written tradition more than a thousand years old.

Its closest relatives are Bangla and Assamese, the other eastern Indo-Aryan languages: many words are shared, though the scripts look quite different, Odia round where Bangla is flat-topped. Hindi and Sanskrit share its alphabet order, and Telugu is its southern neighbour across the border. Odisha is also home to many Santali speakers: the Ol Chiki script for Santali was created in Odisha's Mayurbhanj district. Each of these languages has its own page in this collection series.