Ol Chiki Letter La

It marks Santali’s open “o” vowel. “La” is its traditional letter name, not its sound; for many English speakers the vowel is close to the “o” in “law.” Its traditional picture is a flame, a visual idea tied to the letter rather than another meaning.

Ol Chiki (“writing symbol”) was devised for Santali by primary-school teacher Raghunath Murmu in Mayurbhanj, then ruled by a local prince. The origin story says the first characters came to him in a 1925 dream. With royal backing, he made printing blocks and a hand press in the 1930s and displayed it at Mayurbhanj State’s 1939 exhibition. Santali had been written in Roman, Bengali, Odia and Devanagari; missionary printing in Roman began in the late nineteenth century. Murmu argued those scripts missed Santali sounds, including throat-caught consonants and short, weak vowels. Independent scripts for Sora and Ho also emerged then.

By the late 1950s and early 1960s, Murmu toured Santali-speaking areas and promoted Ol Chiki as a way to unite Santals across script boundaries and advance language rights. A 2002 review recorded support for both Ol Chiki and Roman, with regional differences in familiarity.

How do I type ᱚ?

Use an Ol Chiki keyboard; the key depends on its layout.

The 2019 guide for the Sarjom baha phonetic layout maps lowercase o to ᱚ; its Inscript2 layout maps lowercase d to ᱚ.

Why does ᱚ show as a box?

Usually, the font on your device cannot draw this letter.

ᱚ is text encoded as an Ol Chiki character. If a device shows a box instead, the text still contains this character; another font may draw it differently.