This page brings together basic information about the Ol Chiki script and its use for the Santali language. It aims to provide a brief, descriptive summary of the modern, printed orthography and typographic features, and to advise how to write Santali using Unicode.
Sample
Select part of this sample text to show a list of characters, with links to more details. Change size: 28px
The Ol Chiki script was invented by Pandi Raghunath Murmu in the 1920s to provide Santali, spoken by around 6 million people, with a dedicated script, instead of the Latin, Bengali, Devanagari, and Odia that had been and still are used. Ol Chiki is primarily used for the southern dialect of Santali, and has received some official recognition. It has been used for other Munda languages.
The Ol Chiki script is an alphabet. Both consonants and vowels are indicated by letters. See the table to the right for a brief overview of features for the Santali language.
Ol Chiki is mostly a simple and small orthography. There are no combining characters, and no symbols. The script has no case distinction.
Ol Chiki runs
left to right in horizontal lines.
Words are
separated by spaces.
Santali has
23 consonant letters. Consonants can be aspirated by forming a digraph with a special aspiration letter.
There are 6 basic vowel letters, and 3 digraphs, where an existing vowel letter is followed by a dot. All vowels can be nasalised and lengthened by modifiers.
Ol Chiki has a unique way of handling syllable-final consonants. Four of the voiced stops are typically pronounced unreleased, and unvoiced if they don't appear before a vowel. Where the full value of the letter should be retained, this can be indicated using a modifier called ahad. Another hyphen-like modifier,phaarkaa, applies the reduction before a vowel, when needed (for example for certain verb forms).
Ol Chiki has native digit shapes.
Block-specific danda and double-danda are used as sentence and section dividers. Otherwise, most of the punctuation is ASCII.
Distinctive characteristics: an alphabet surrounded by abugidas; modifiers for voiced stops at word boundaries; no combining characters.
Character index
Letters
Show
Consonants
ᱯ␣ᱵ␣ᱛ␣ᱫ␣ᱪ␣ᱰ␣ᱴ␣ᱡ␣ᱠ␣ᱜ␣ᱥ␣ᱦ␣ᱢ␣ᱱ␣ᱧ␣ᱬ␣ᱝ␣ᱣ␣ᱶ␣ᱨ␣ᱲ␣ᱞ␣ᱭ
Vowels
ᱤ␣ᱩ␣ᱮ␣ᱳ␣ᱚ␣ᱟ
Other
ᱹ␣ᱸ␣ᱺ␣ᱻ␣ᱽ␣ᱼ␣ᱷ
Numbers
Show᱐␣᱑␣᱒␣᱓␣᱔␣᱕␣᱖␣᱗␣᱘␣᱙
Punctuation
Show᱾␣᱿␣“␣”␣‘␣’
Items to show in lists
Phonology
These are sounds for the Santali language.
Click on the sounds to reveal locations in this document where they are mentioned.
Phones in a lighter colour are non-native or allophones. Source Wikipedia.
Vowel sounds
Plain vowels
Santali can have successive vowels without intervening consonants, but they are not diphthongs such as those that combine with a glide at the end.
Consonant sounds
The following reprour are non-native or allophones. Source Wikipedia.
labial
dental
alveolar
post-
alveolar
retroflex
palatal
velar
glottal
stops
pb
td
ʈɖ
cɟ
kɡ
aspirated
pʰbʰ
tʰdʰ
ʈʰɖʰ
cʰɟʰ
ɡʰ
fricatives
s
h
nasals
m
n
ɳ
ɲ
ŋ
approximants
w
l
j
trills/flaps
r
ɽ
The aspirated stops occur primarily, but not exclusively, in Indo-Aryan loanwords.wl,#Phonology
ɳ only appears as an allophone of n before ɖ.wl,#Phonology
A typical Munda feature is that word-final stops are "checked", i. e. glottalised and unreleased.wl,#Phonology
Vowels
Vowel sounds to characters
This section maps Santali vowel sounds to common graphemes in the Ol Chicki orthography. Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.
To indicate a prolonged vowel sound, ᱻ [U+1C7B OL CHIKI RELAA] is used,rp,9 eg. ᱢᱚᱹᱬᱮᱻ ᱢᱚᱸᱻᱦᱟ
Consonants
There are no special forms for consonant clusters in Santali.
Consonant sounds to characters
This section maps Santali consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Ol Chiki orthography. Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.
Sounds listed as 'infrequent' are allophones, or sounds used for foreign words, etc.
Where the voicing needs to be maintained, ᱽ [U+1C7D OL CHIKI AHAD] is added, eg.
ᱨᱚᱡᱽ
cf. ᱨᱚᱡᱚ
ᱫᱟᱜᱽ
cf. ᱫᱟᱜᱤ
In the opposite situation, where a voiced consonant is used before a vowel but you want to allow the devoicing, put ᱼ [U+1C7C OL CHIKI PHAARKAA] before the vowel.rp,10 For example, see this verb form: ᱢᱮᱱᱟᱜᱼᱟ
Aspiration
ᱷ
Aspirated consonant sounds are indicated using ᱷ [U+1C77 OL CHIKI LETTER OH] after the consonant,fp,2 eg. ᱡᱷᱚᱛᱚᱛᱷᱚᱲᱟ
Symbols
The Ol Chiki Unicode block has no characters with the general category of Symbol.
Numbers
Digits
Ol Chiki has a set of native digits
᱐␣᱑␣᱒␣᱓␣᱔␣᱕␣᱖␣᱗␣᱘␣᱙
Text direction
Santali text runs left to right in horizontal lines.
This section brings together information about the following topics:
writing styles;
cursive text;
context-based shaping;
context-based positioning;
baselines, line height, etc.;
font styles;
case & other character transforms.
The ASCII full stop is not used, since it creates confusion with other dots in the orthography, therefore ᱾ [U+1C7E OL CHIKI PUNCTUATION MUCAAD] is the main sentence delimiter.rp,11
Santali texts use quotation marks around quotations. Of course, due to keyboard design, quotations may also be surrounded by ASCII double and single quote marks.
Observation: All but one of the samples in the Unicode submission document are fully justified. Mostly, the justification is achieved by stretching inter-word spacing, however some words also have the space between characters stretched.
Example of full justification, with the word at the end of the 3rd line from the bottom also showing signs of being stretched.fp,7
Text spacing
tbd
This section looks at ways in which spacing is applied between characters over and above that which is introduced during justification.
Baselines, line height, etc.
tbd
Santali uses the so-called 'alphabetic' baseline, which is the same as for Latin and many other scripts.
Counters, lists, etc.
You can experiment with counter styles using the Counter styles converter. Patterns for using these styles in CSS can be found in Ready-made Counter Styles, and we use the names of those patterns here to refer to the various styles.
Santali Wikipedia pages use numeric styles.
Numeric
The numeric style is decimal-based and uses these digits.
᱑␣᱒␣᱓␣᱔␣᱕␣᱖␣᱗␣᱘␣᱙␣᱐
Examples:
᱑␣᱒␣᱓␣᱔␣᱑᱑␣᱒᱒␣᱓᱓␣᱔᱔␣᱑᱑᱑␣᱒᱒᱒␣᱓᱓᱓␣᱔᱔᱔
Prefixes and suffixes
A range of prefixes and/or suffixes is used in Wikipedia. They include a simple period, parentheses on both sides, and no mark.
Separators for Santali list counters in Wikipedia.
Styling initials
tbd
Page & book layout
This section is for any features that are specific to Ol Chiki and that relate to the following topics:
general page layout & progression;
grids & tables;
notes, footnotes, etc;
forms & user interaction;
page numbering, running headers, etc.
