What ᱟ means
It writes Santali’s open “a” vowel. In familiar terms, it sounds like the “a” in Spanish casa.
Ol Chiki writes vowels as full letters. In an abugida, by contrast, a consonant letter normally carries an inherent vowel.
Why was Ol Chiki made?
It was designed for Santali’s sounds. Santali had also been written in Roman letters and in Bengali, Odia, and Devanagari scripts, which did not consistently capture its sounds. Raghunath Murmu devised Ol Chiki in 1925.
The script spread through primers, presses, books, periodicals, community teaching, and later school and government use. Its letter shapes also serve as memory cues linked to familiar Santal objects and actions.
It can signal Santal or Santali identity
In public or community-facing writing, Ol Chiki can signal Santal or Santali identity and create a shared written space across regions.
Santali readers encounter different written traditions; region and schooling shape which script feels familiar. Ol Chiki is a separate alphabetic alternative, not a descendant of the other scripts used for Santali.
Neutral inside a Santali word; used alone, it can identify the text as an Ol Chiki sample.
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Who writes ᱟ
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Don't confuse it with
1
Combination ideas
3Questions people ask
1Why does ᱟ show as a box?
A box means the active font cannot draw this Ol Chiki letter. Choose or install a font with Ol Chiki coverage; the character itself has not changed.
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How to type or find ᱟ
- Also called
- laa · aa
- Search it as
- Santali laa · Santhali laa · Ol Chiki vowel · Ol Chiki keyboard · Santali keyboard · Santali vowel
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ᱟ\1C5FCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.