""Pandit Raghunath Murmu""
Pandit Raghunath Murmu is the inventor of
Ol Chiki script. He was born in a village,
called (Dahardih)Dandbose, on 5th May 1905
on the day of full moon in the district of
Mayurbhanj, Orissa. After a brief stint in
technical profession, he took up the job of
teaching in Badomtolia high school. During
this time, his interest was drawn into Santali
literatures. Santali is a language with its own
special characteristics, and has a literature
which dates back to the beginning of the
15th century. Naturally, he felt that Santals
with their rich cultural heritage and tradition
also need a separate script to preserve and
promote their language, and therefore, he
took up the work of inventing Ol Chiki script
for writing Santali. The epoch making
invention of Ol Chiki script was unveiled in
1925. In the novel Bidu Chandan, he has
vividly described how god Bidu, and godess
Chandan who appear on Earth as human
being would have naturally invented the Ol
Chiki script in order to communicate with
each other using written Santali. He wrote
over 150 books covering a wide spectrum of
subjects such as grammar, novels, drama,
poetry, and story in Santali using Ol Chiki as
a part of his extensive programme for
culturally upgrading the Santal community.
"Darege Dhan", "Sidhu-Kanhu", "Bidu
Chandan" and "Kherwal Bir" are among the
most acclaimed of his works. Pandit
Raghunath Murmu is popularly known as
GURU GOMKE among the Santals, a title
that was conferred on him by the
Mayurbhanj Adibasi Mahasabha. Besides the
Govt of West Bengal and Orissa, several
other organizations/associations including
Orissa Sahitya Academy have honoured him
in various ways and Hon D. Litt. was
conferred on him by Ranchi University. The
great thinker, philosopher, writer, and
dramatist breathed his last breath on 1st
February, 1982.
Why do we need Ol Chiki script ?
In earlier times, all Santali writings were in
Bengali, Devanagari, or Roman script.
Although there have been impressive number
of works by foreigner and non-Santal writers
on dictionary, grammar, collection of folklore
etc., these works are mostly intended for
research purposes. Roman script was in
extensive use for writing Santali and several
books in Santali have been published using
Roman script. But most of the creative
literatures were written by the native
speakers in Bengali or Devanagari script.
The use of different scripts for writing
Santali has hindered the development and
utilization of Santali language. This, in turn,
has effectively marred the progress of
Santali language in several fields such as
philosophy, history, religion, science, novel,
prose, poetry etc. The problem of using
different scripts for the same language
necessitated the invention of a new script
for Santali, and it finally led to the invention
of Ol Chiki by Pandit Raghunath Murmu.
After the invention of Ol Chiki, a large
number of books have been written by
various authors in Santali using Ol Chiki
script. Types of books include (i) novels
and short stories, (ii) poetries, songs, and
religious sermons, (iii) books on Santal
society, (iv) primary books for learning Ol
Chiki, (v) books for learning primary
mathematics, (vi) books on Santali
grammars and related topics, and (vii) books
on great tribal persons. Santali magazines in
Ol Chiki are also being published regularly.
The problems with Indic Scripts:
The problems of correctly representing
Santali sounds in Indic scripts, viz., Bengali,
Devanagari & Oriya are explained here.
Firstly, in Indic language, some phonetics
like checked consonants / k', c', t', p'/ do not
exist. If one attempts to suppress the
inherent vowel of consonants /KA/, /CA/, /
TA/ & /PA/ of any Indic script, it would only
produce /k/, /c/, /t/ & /p/, respectively.
There are no mechanisms to represent these
unique Santali sounds. Secondly, there is a
difficulty of representing the Santali vowels.
Currently, the Santali language does use
eight or nine vowels that can be short or
long and nasalized, whereas the Indic scripts
provide only six vowels. By modifying the
vowels of Indic script using diacritic marks,
the santali vowels can be represented to
some extent, but when such vowels are used
in the beginning of a word, they tend to
approximate with closest vowels of the Indic
script. Thirdly, there is no mechanism to
represent the Glottal stop of Santali sounds
which Santals use very frequently.
The problems with Roman Script:
Although the Roman script can nicely
represent checked consonants, but it is not
without deficiencies. The Roman script
cannot distinguish between the short and
long vowels. It is worth mentioning that the
Santali long vowels are pronounced much
longer than those of English, and other Indic
languages. Another problem with Roman
script is that it does not have any explicit
mechanism to represent the Glottal stop.
Therefore to retain the beauty, specialty,
peculiarity & sweetness of Santali language,
there is a need to use a script that can
represent all sounds of the Santali language
accurately and is naturally appealing to all
Santals, and it is definitely the Ol Chiki script
that fulfils these requirements.
A Brief Introduction to Ol Chiki Script
The very basic information about Ol Chiki
script is provided here. The intention of
this tutorial is to provide information about
the unique features of Ol Chiki writing
system, which is often misunderstood due
to a lack of organised information about the
script. Here, an attempt has been made to
provide sufficient information about features
and functions of various letters: vowels,
consonants and diacritics. This tutorial is
written by R. C. Hansdah and N. C. Murmu.
UPDATED ! on 10/08/2003
Introduction:
This script is also known as Ol Cemet', Ol
script, Ol ciki Script and also Ol. In Santali,
Ol means writing and Cemet' means learning
. So, Ol Cemet' means the learning of
writing. Ol Cemet' is the title of the book,
written by Pandit Raghunath Murmu for
teaching the Ol Chiki to the beginners
(primer). Ol Chiki is alphabetic, and does not
share any of the syllabic properties of the
other Indic scripts. It is used for writing
Santali which belongs to the Munda group
languages of the Austro-Asiatric family. One
of the interesting feature of the Ol Chiki
script is that it makes use of signs and
symbols long familiar to the Santals. The
very ingenuity in shaping the symbols of the
letters and arranging the letters in the script
has been greatly helpful in transmission of
the script. A large number of words in the
Santali language are derived from natural
sounds. Letters of Ol Chiki script are also
derived from the physical environment and
what surrounds the people - hills, rivers,
trees, birds, bees, plough, sickle - the list is
endless . Norman Zide, an eminent linguist in
his work (Zide, 1996) says, The shapes of
the letters are not arbitrary, but reflect the
names for the letters, which are words,
usually the names of objects or actions
representing conventionalized form in the
pictorial shape of the characters. For
example, the word At means earth and the
shape of letter /AT/ derived from the round
shape of earth. Similarly /UD/ means
mushroom and so is the shape of the letter /
UD/.
On commenting about Ol Chiki, Zide (1996)
observes, One ingenious - scientific and
unique feature of Ol Cemet that certainly
increases the efficiency of writing Santali is
the deglottalizing ohot'(AHAD). This neatly
preserves the morphophonemic relationship
between the glottalized and the voiced
equivalent: The former occurs in words at
certain word-internal preconsonantal
junctures, whereas the latter occurs
prevocalically, but never morpheme-initially
in these alterations. Thus /OK/ is the name
of a letter that represents both /k'/ and /g/.
Two further diacritics include a horizontal
loop added at the top right of the character
for aspiration of consonants, and a raised
dot for vowel nasalization.
Santali language:
Santali language contains some phonetics
which are generally not used in English and
neighbouring Indian languages, and hence,
learning the correct pronunciations of Ol
Chiki letters is very important. In fact, these
pronunciations give a feeling of why Santali
language needs a separate script, specially
the pronunciations of unreleased stops/ k',
c', t', p' /, which are not found in English and
other Indic languages. It is a momentary
obstruction of the passage of air by the
glottis and its sudden release, which creates
a small explosion of air, giving the
consonant a hard sound. Another notable
feature of Santali language is the presence
of voiced and voiceless /h/. The voiceless /
h/ occurs frequently in Santali language. The
occurance of nasals are also extremely
regular and they have the phonological
distinctions in even word final position.
Ol Chiki:
The Ol Chiki letters are arranged in a matrix
of 6 by 5, in which the six letters in the first
column of the matrix are vowels, and the
rest 24 letters are consonants. However,
the five letters of the third column represent
dual consonants, and this, eventually, helps
to represent 29 consonants with the help of
diacritic Ahad. Ol Chiki gives 5 basic
diacritics, and the combination of diacritics
Mu Tudag and Gahla Tudag gives rise to
another diacritic, called Mu-Gahla Tudag.
The matrix of Ol Chiki letters are listed with
transliteration of alphabets, with
pronounciation in brackets and their sounds
in bracelets.
The above table gives Ol Chiki letters, their
transliterations, their pronunciation and the
corresponding phonetic alphabets(IPA).
Phonetic alphabets are given to understand
the correct pronunciations of Ol Chiki
letters. Note: sometimes /AAW/ also
approximates to /v/.
Diacritics:
The diacritic Mu Tudag functions like
Devnagari chandrabindu, and it is used for
nasalization of vowels. Gahla Tudag is used
for generating additional vowels, and Rela is
used for generating extra length in the
vowels. Pharka is used as separator and
Ahad has special properties, that will be
discussed later.
Vowels:
The important component of any writing
system is the vowels, which are, indeed,
responsible for producing words by joining
the consonants. The description of vowel
system of Ol Chiki script is given here. The
Santali language has 9 vowels. The first six
vowels are shown in first column of the Ol
Chiki alphabets matrix. The next three
vowels are generated juxtaposing the Gahla
Tudag. But one of the vowel generated by
placing Gahla Tudag (/A/+ Gahla Tudag) has
marginal phonemic status and rarely used. In
Santali all vowels may be long or short and
all vowels may be nasalized. The Santali
diphthongs consists of two vowels; unlike
English they never consist of a vowel and a
semi-consonant. The below is that list of
Santali language vowels along with their
corresponding International phonetic
alphabets.
pic3
The first six are familiar vowels in English
and many other Indian languages like
Bengali, Hindi or Oriya. First vowel is
equivalent to /o/ of boil, boy , coy. The
pronunciation of this vowel is similar to that
of Bengali or Oriya first vowel which is also
the inherent vowel of Bengali/Oriya script. /
a/ is pronounced as in /a/ of English word
car. The pronunciation of /i/ is similar to
that of /i/ in English word city or sit, and
that of /u/ is similar to /u/ of put. The
pronunciation of /e/ is similar to /e/ of
English word get, and that of /o/ is more
like /o/ of more. The remaining three vowels
are discussed in the Gahla Tudag section.
Word Formation:
Ol Chiki writing system is alphabetic, and
so, it is better understood using Roman
script. Normally, in Santali language, all
words begin with either a vowel or single
consonant. However, it is observed that
inside a word, a combination of two
consonants may occur, and, sometimes even
three. But then one of these is a nasal. It is
worth mentioning that, in Santali language,
the occurrence of nasals is extremely
regular. These are even distinguishable in
word final position.
Let us look at some of the examples that
illustrate how words can be formed using Ol
Chiki letters. Suppose, one needs to
construct a Santali word /am/, then just put
the vowel /a/ followed by the consonant /
m/. so, we write /a/ + /m/ = a + m = /am/
which, in Santali, means 'you'. Similarly,
when we need to write /ipil/, we write /i/
+ /p/ + /i/ + /l/ = i+p+i+l = /ipil/ which, in
Santali, means 'star'. Given below is a list of
examples which would help to understand
the mechanism of forming words using Ol
Chiki vowels and consonants.
Additonal consonants :
Apart from the consonants mentioned above,
Santali language does use other aspirated
consonants. An aspirated consonant is
generated by juxtaposing /OH/, which
functions more like English /h/, immediately
after another consonant. For example : /dh/
of Dhanbad, is generated using /EDD/
followed by /OH/. It should be noted that, in
Ol Chiki, it is /OH/(and not /IH/) that is
used to generate the aspirated consonants,
and this is in contrast to the English
language, where no such distinction is made.
The consonant /OH/, when placed
immediately after the unaspirated
consonants t/AT/, g/AG/, k/AAK/, j/AAJ/, c/
UCH/, d/UD/, p/EP/, D/EDD/, t/OTT/, b/OB/
generates the corresponding aspirated
consonants.
Glottal stop:
Here is an example, where /OH/ is used
along with /EN/ as in the word, /nhate/
which means 'this side'. This sound is a bit
voiceless. This is a prolongation of /n/ along
with /h/ sound, and it is an example of
glottal stop. A point to be noted here is that
this glottal stop is generated in combination
of /IH/ with Ahad, but it is normally written
in a shorter form using /OH/. Although there
are few words in Santali language that use
the glottal stop, but the use of such words
are very frequent in Santali language. Here
is a list of words where glottal stop is used.
Mu Tudag:
This diacritic is used for the nasalization of
vowels. As already mentioned that in Santali
language, all vowels and diphthongs may be
nasalized. It works in the same way as the
chandrabindu of Devnagari script. When it is
placed immediately after a vowel, the vowel
gets nasalized. The example of nasalized
vowels that are used in the words of Santali
language are given below.
Gahla Tudag:
Gahla Tudag is used to generate the
additional vowels from the following vowels,
viz., open vowel /o/(first vowel), /a/, and /e/.
The vowel /a/+/Gahla Tudag/ is the most
frequently used vowel, and there is no exact
English equivalent for the same. This is a
half open central vowel and its
pronunciation is approximately equivalent to
that of /a / in ago. The vowel /e/+/Gahla
Tudag/ is pronounced as in /a/ of
English word gate and it is open /e/(half
open front vowel). But the pronunciation of
the vowel /o/+/Gahla Tudag/ is very nearly
the same as that of the original vowel, and
it occurs in a few words only.
Mu-Gahla Tudag:
The Mu-Gahla Tudag indicates that the new
vowel generated by the Gahla Tudag is
nasalized.
Rela:
In Santali language, all vowels may be short
or longs and it is Rela that is used to
lengthen the pronunciation of vowels. For
example, in the pair of words /hit/ and /
heat/ (or /bit/ and /beat/ ) in English, the
former uses a short vowel , but the later
uses a long vowel. In case of Ol Chiki, the
long vowels are pronounced much longer
than those of English, and a long vowel
corresponding to a vowel is indicated by
immediately following the vowel with the
diacritic Rela. The Rela is extensively used
in the adverb of Santali language. Here is a
list of words that use the rela and their
pronunciations and meanings.
Ahad:
In Ol Chiki, the letters, /AG/, /AAJ/, /UD/,
and /OB/ are semi-consonants . These semi-
consonants become consonants (voiced
equivalents), when they are immediately
followed by a vowel or Ahad . This generates
dual sounds from these semi-consonants
depending on whether they are immediately
followed by a vowel/Ahad or not. This is a
feature unique to Ol Chiki, which is not
observed in any other writing system.
Take the example of /AG/ : it produces two
sounds, viz., / k' / and /g/. The use of /k' / is
in words like /amak' /your/ or /senok' /go/.
The /k' / is not fully released in these
circumstances. The pronunciation of this
consonant is a bit unique to Santals, and it
is in-between /k/ and /g/. It starts with /k/
and glides towards /g/. Similar is the
case with /AAJ/ , which gives /c'/ and /j/
(Here /c/ is unreleased /ch/ of church ).
Similarly, /UD/ gives /t'/ and /d/, and /OB/
gives /p'/ and /b/ .
Whenever a semi-consonant occurs at the
end of a word, and the word is naturally
extended for a different use using a vowel or
Ahad, it is always the corresponding
consonant as given above that appears in
the new word. What it means is that /k'/ will
always get extended to /g/, and never to /
k/, and so on. This behaviour of semi-
consonants normally occurs in verb
formations, and hence, this transformation is
very widely used in Santali language. As an
example, consider the following pair of
sentences: /Uniy rak' kek'a /He wept/ and /
Uniy rag a/He will weep/. In this example, /
kek'a / in the first sentence gets replaced
by /a/ in the second sentence, and
therefore, /k' / in /ra k' / gets extended to /g/
in /ra g a/. Exmaples of pairs of sentences
using other semi-consonants are as
follows: /Uni toway hede c' kek'a /He boiled
milk/ and /Uni toway hede ja /He will boil
milk/, /Uniy ut' kek'a /He swallowed/ and /
Uniy u da/He will swallow/, and /Uniy u p'
kek'a /He poured/ and /Uniy uba /He will
pour/. An example of a pair of words that
can show this behaviour is /rakap' /lift
(intransitive verb)/ and /rakab/lift(transitive
verb)/. This is the reason why each of
the Ol Chiki letters /AG/, /AAJ/, /UD/, and
/OB/ has been used to represent the dual
sounds as given above, and because of
this special behaviour of these letters in
word formation, they have been termed as
"semi-consonants" . However, a better name
can be sought if it is deemed so.
Pharka:
The diacritic Pharka is used very frequently
in Santali writings and works as separator in
two ways. First, it is used to separate two
consonants of similar paired words as in /
sujh-bujh/understanding/. Second, it is used
to separate a consonant from the following
vowel. It is generally used to prevent the
semi-consonants from becoming full
consonants and these cases occur in a large
number of verb formations such as /
menak'-a/have/Verb/, /hijuk'-a/come/Verb/
etc. Also, there is another situation, where
nasal consonant /ANG/, is separated by
Pharka from the following vowel.
Punctuation marks:
The main punctuation mark used is the
single vertical line " | ", and it marks the end
of a sentence. There are other familiar
punctuation marks which are also used in
Santali language. The names of punctuation
marks as given in the grammar book Ranal
written by Pandit Raghunath Murmu are as
given in the following table.
The hand writing of Ol Chiki letters:
The Ol Chiki gives hand writing letters for
fast writing. It is called /usA.ra ol/. The
hand writing letters consist of all
letters which are vowels and consonants,
and the letters which are formed in
combination of /IH/ and four semi-
consonants , /AG/, /AAJ/, /UD/, /OB/ with
Ahad. In normal writing, the combination
of /IH/ with Ahad is not found, as it is
generally written in a shorter form that is /
OH/.
Digits:
Ol Chiki uses decimal system, and
the symbol for basic digits 0-9 are as
follows:
Origin of Ol Chiki letters:
The great novelties and usages in Santali
language are as a result of the natural
derivation of the forms for words, where,
sounds generating out of actions or
movements from animated or unanimated
objects or sounds associated with living
being and their corresponding words, are
robustly approximated. Therefore, Pandit
Raghunath Murmu tried to infuse this
concept of natural formation of
Santali words into Ol Chiki. When Pandit
Raghunath Murmu devised the script, he
carefully choose the shapes of the scripts
from the nature, the surroundings which is
long familiar to the Santals, and is close to
them. The Santals form a community which
has wonderful relationship with nature, and
they respect it very well. Santal mythology
gives many stories and songs that depict
very importance of respecting nature and
sense of preserving it. The selection of
shapes for Ol Chiki letters is directly based
on the shapes of objects or actions which
the sounds for the letters represent, or with
which the sounds for the letters are in some
way associated. Naturally, the sources for
the shapes of letters were fire, soil, water,
air and sky- an environment that surrounds
them. This is an indigenous concept and has
multiple objectives. It would greatly help
them to remember the letters easily, since
they are familiar with the shapes and sounds
that can be easily retrieved from the
corresponding image from the nature. It can
be observed that the shapes of most of the
letters are either oval or round. This is
due to the nature of origin of letters, whose
shapes are often derived from the shape of
an object or action of natural environment.
For example, the word /AT/ means Earth and
the shape of letter /AT/ is derived from the
round shape of Earth. Similarly /UD/ means
mushroom and so looks the shape of the
letter /UD/. Here is the list of meaning of all
letters given in Ol Chiki writing system.
/A/ : The shape of burning fire.
/AT/ : The shape of Earth.
/AG/ : The shape of mouth during vomiting
which produces the
same sound as the name of the
letter.
/ ANG/: Blowing air.
/AL/ : Writing.
/AA/ : The shape of working in the field
with a spade.
/AAK/ : Sound of Swan or shape of a bird.
/AAJ / : The shape of a person pointing
towards a third person with
right hand(saying he).
/AAM/: The shape of a person pointing
towards a second
person with left hand(saying you).
/AAW/: Opening lips.
/I/ : Bending tree .
/IS / : The shape of plough.
/IH/ : The shape of hand ups.
/INY/ : The shape of a person pointing
towards himself or herself with
left hand.
/IR/ : The shape of a sickle used for
cutting or reaping(IR).
/U/ : The shape of a vessel used for
preparing food.
/UCH/: The shape of a peak of a mountain
which is usually high.
/UD/ : The shape of mushroom.
/UNN /: The picture of a flying bee which
makes this sound.
/UY/ : The shape of a man bending towards
ground to cut something.
/ E/ : Overflowing rivers changing course.
/EP/ : A person receiving with both hands.
/EDD /: The shape of a man with two legs
stretching towards his
chest and mouth.
/EN/ : The picture of thrashing grains with
two legs.
/ERR /: A picture of a path that turns to
avoid an obstruction or a
danger.
/O/ : The shape of mouth when sounding
this.
/OTT/: The hump of a camel.
/OB/ : Curly hair.
/OV/ : Nasalized.
/OH/ : The figure of a man throwing
something with one hand.
Pandit Raghunath Murmu is the inventor of
Ol Chiki script. He was born in a village,
called (Dahardih)Dandbose, on 5th May 1905
on the day of full moon in the district of
Mayurbhanj, Orissa. After a brief stint in
technical profession, he took up the job of
teaching in Badomtolia high school. During
this time, his interest was drawn into Santali
literatures. Santali is a language with its own
special characteristics, and has a literature
which dates back to the beginning of the
15th century. Naturally, he felt that Santals
with their rich cultural heritage and tradition
also need a separate script to preserve and
promote their language, and therefore, he
took up the work of inventing Ol Chiki script
for writing Santali. The epoch making
invention of Ol Chiki script was unveiled in
1925. In the novel Bidu Chandan, he has
vividly described how god Bidu, and godess
Chandan who appear on Earth as human
being would have naturally invented the Ol
Chiki script in order to communicate with
each other using written Santali. He wrote
over 150 books covering a wide spectrum of
subjects such as grammar, novels, drama,
poetry, and story in Santali using Ol Chiki as
a part of his extensive programme for
culturally upgrading the Santal community.
"Darege Dhan", "Sidhu-Kanhu", "Bidu
Chandan" and "Kherwal Bir" are among the
most acclaimed of his works. Pandit
Raghunath Murmu is popularly known as
GURU GOMKE among the Santals, a title
that was conferred on him by the
Mayurbhanj Adibasi Mahasabha. Besides the
Govt of West Bengal and Orissa, several
other organizations/associations including
Orissa Sahitya Academy have honoured him
in various ways and Hon D. Litt. was
conferred on him by Ranchi University. The
great thinker, philosopher, writer, and
dramatist breathed his last breath on 1st
February, 1982.
Why do we need Ol Chiki script ?
In earlier times, all Santali writings were in
Bengali, Devanagari, or Roman script.
Although there have been impressive number
of works by foreigner and non-Santal writers
on dictionary, grammar, collection of folklore
etc., these works are mostly intended for
research purposes. Roman script was in
extensive use for writing Santali and several
books in Santali have been published using
Roman script. But most of the creative
literatures were written by the native
speakers in Bengali or Devanagari script.
The use of different scripts for writing
Santali has hindered the development and
utilization of Santali language. This, in turn,
has effectively marred the progress of
Santali language in several fields such as
philosophy, history, religion, science, novel,
prose, poetry etc. The problem of using
different scripts for the same language
necessitated the invention of a new script
for Santali, and it finally led to the invention
of Ol Chiki by Pandit Raghunath Murmu.
After the invention of Ol Chiki, a large
number of books have been written by
various authors in Santali using Ol Chiki
script. Types of books include (i) novels
and short stories, (ii) poetries, songs, and
religious sermons, (iii) books on Santal
society, (iv) primary books for learning Ol
Chiki, (v) books for learning primary
mathematics, (vi) books on Santali
grammars and related topics, and (vii) books
on great tribal persons. Santali magazines in
Ol Chiki are also being published regularly.
The problems with Indic Scripts:
The problems of correctly representing
Santali sounds in Indic scripts, viz., Bengali,
Devanagari & Oriya are explained here.
Firstly, in Indic language, some phonetics
like checked consonants / k', c', t', p'/ do not
exist. If one attempts to suppress the
inherent vowel of consonants /KA/, /CA/, /
TA/ & /PA/ of any Indic script, it would only
produce /k/, /c/, /t/ & /p/, respectively.
There are no mechanisms to represent these
unique Santali sounds. Secondly, there is a
difficulty of representing the Santali vowels.
Currently, the Santali language does use
eight or nine vowels that can be short or
long and nasalized, whereas the Indic scripts
provide only six vowels. By modifying the
vowels of Indic script using diacritic marks,
the santali vowels can be represented to
some extent, but when such vowels are used
in the beginning of a word, they tend to
approximate with closest vowels of the Indic
script. Thirdly, there is no mechanism to
represent the Glottal stop of Santali sounds
which Santals use very frequently.
The problems with Roman Script:
Although the Roman script can nicely
represent checked consonants, but it is not
without deficiencies. The Roman script
cannot distinguish between the short and
long vowels. It is worth mentioning that the
Santali long vowels are pronounced much
longer than those of English, and other Indic
languages. Another problem with Roman
script is that it does not have any explicit
mechanism to represent the Glottal stop.
Therefore to retain the beauty, specialty,
peculiarity & sweetness of Santali language,
there is a need to use a script that can
represent all sounds of the Santali language
accurately and is naturally appealing to all
Santals, and it is definitely the Ol Chiki script
that fulfils these requirements.
A Brief Introduction to Ol Chiki Script
The very basic information about Ol Chiki
script is provided here. The intention of
this tutorial is to provide information about
the unique features of Ol Chiki writing
system, which is often misunderstood due
to a lack of organised information about the
script. Here, an attempt has been made to
provide sufficient information about features
and functions of various letters: vowels,
consonants and diacritics. This tutorial is
written by R. C. Hansdah and N. C. Murmu.
UPDATED ! on 10/08/2003
Introduction:
This script is also known as Ol Cemet', Ol
script, Ol ciki Script and also Ol. In Santali,
Ol means writing and Cemet' means learning
. So, Ol Cemet' means the learning of
writing. Ol Cemet' is the title of the book,
written by Pandit Raghunath Murmu for
teaching the Ol Chiki to the beginners
(primer). Ol Chiki is alphabetic, and does not
share any of the syllabic properties of the
other Indic scripts. It is used for writing
Santali which belongs to the Munda group
languages of the Austro-Asiatric family. One
of the interesting feature of the Ol Chiki
script is that it makes use of signs and
symbols long familiar to the Santals. The
very ingenuity in shaping the symbols of the
letters and arranging the letters in the script
has been greatly helpful in transmission of
the script. A large number of words in the
Santali language are derived from natural
sounds. Letters of Ol Chiki script are also
derived from the physical environment and
what surrounds the people - hills, rivers,
trees, birds, bees, plough, sickle - the list is
endless . Norman Zide, an eminent linguist in
his work (Zide, 1996) says, The shapes of
the letters are not arbitrary, but reflect the
names for the letters, which are words,
usually the names of objects or actions
representing conventionalized form in the
pictorial shape of the characters. For
example, the word At means earth and the
shape of letter /AT/ derived from the round
shape of earth. Similarly /UD/ means
mushroom and so is the shape of the letter /
UD/.
On commenting about Ol Chiki, Zide (1996)
observes, One ingenious - scientific and
unique feature of Ol Cemet that certainly
increases the efficiency of writing Santali is
the deglottalizing ohot'(AHAD). This neatly
preserves the morphophonemic relationship
between the glottalized and the voiced
equivalent: The former occurs in words at
certain word-internal preconsonantal
junctures, whereas the latter occurs
prevocalically, but never morpheme-initially
in these alterations. Thus /OK/ is the name
of a letter that represents both /k'/ and /g/.
Two further diacritics include a horizontal
loop added at the top right of the character
for aspiration of consonants, and a raised
dot for vowel nasalization.
Santali language:
Santali language contains some phonetics
which are generally not used in English and
neighbouring Indian languages, and hence,
learning the correct pronunciations of Ol
Chiki letters is very important. In fact, these
pronunciations give a feeling of why Santali
language needs a separate script, specially
the pronunciations of unreleased stops/ k',
c', t', p' /, which are not found in English and
other Indic languages. It is a momentary
obstruction of the passage of air by the
glottis and its sudden release, which creates
a small explosion of air, giving the
consonant a hard sound. Another notable
feature of Santali language is the presence
of voiced and voiceless /h/. The voiceless /
h/ occurs frequently in Santali language. The
occurance of nasals are also extremely
regular and they have the phonological
distinctions in even word final position.
Ol Chiki:
The Ol Chiki letters are arranged in a matrix
of 6 by 5, in which the six letters in the first
column of the matrix are vowels, and the
rest 24 letters are consonants. However,
the five letters of the third column represent
dual consonants, and this, eventually, helps
to represent 29 consonants with the help of
diacritic Ahad. Ol Chiki gives 5 basic
diacritics, and the combination of diacritics
Mu Tudag and Gahla Tudag gives rise to
another diacritic, called Mu-Gahla Tudag.
The matrix of Ol Chiki letters are listed with
transliteration of alphabets, with
pronounciation in brackets and their sounds
in bracelets.
The above table gives Ol Chiki letters, their
transliterations, their pronunciation and the
corresponding phonetic alphabets(IPA).
Phonetic alphabets are given to understand
the correct pronunciations of Ol Chiki
letters. Note: sometimes /AAW/ also
approximates to /v/.
Diacritics:
The diacritic Mu Tudag functions like
Devnagari chandrabindu, and it is used for
nasalization of vowels. Gahla Tudag is used
for generating additional vowels, and Rela is
used for generating extra length in the
vowels. Pharka is used as separator and
Ahad has special properties, that will be
discussed later.
Vowels:
The important component of any writing
system is the vowels, which are, indeed,
responsible for producing words by joining
the consonants. The description of vowel
system of Ol Chiki script is given here. The
Santali language has 9 vowels. The first six
vowels are shown in first column of the Ol
Chiki alphabets matrix. The next three
vowels are generated juxtaposing the Gahla
Tudag. But one of the vowel generated by
placing Gahla Tudag (/A/+ Gahla Tudag) has
marginal phonemic status and rarely used. In
Santali all vowels may be long or short and
all vowels may be nasalized. The Santali
diphthongs consists of two vowels; unlike
English they never consist of a vowel and a
semi-consonant. The below is that list of
Santali language vowels along with their
corresponding International phonetic
alphabets.
pic3
The first six are familiar vowels in English
and many other Indian languages like
Bengali, Hindi or Oriya. First vowel is
equivalent to /o/ of boil, boy , coy. The
pronunciation of this vowel is similar to that
of Bengali or Oriya first vowel which is also
the inherent vowel of Bengali/Oriya script. /
a/ is pronounced as in /a/ of English word
car. The pronunciation of /i/ is similar to
that of /i/ in English word city or sit, and
that of /u/ is similar to /u/ of put. The
pronunciation of /e/ is similar to /e/ of
English word get, and that of /o/ is more
like /o/ of more. The remaining three vowels
are discussed in the Gahla Tudag section.
Word Formation:
Ol Chiki writing system is alphabetic, and
so, it is better understood using Roman
script. Normally, in Santali language, all
words begin with either a vowel or single
consonant. However, it is observed that
inside a word, a combination of two
consonants may occur, and, sometimes even
three. But then one of these is a nasal. It is
worth mentioning that, in Santali language,
the occurrence of nasals is extremely
regular. These are even distinguishable in
word final position.
Let us look at some of the examples that
illustrate how words can be formed using Ol
Chiki letters. Suppose, one needs to
construct a Santali word /am/, then just put
the vowel /a/ followed by the consonant /
m/. so, we write /a/ + /m/ = a + m = /am/
which, in Santali, means 'you'. Similarly,
when we need to write /ipil/, we write /i/
+ /p/ + /i/ + /l/ = i+p+i+l = /ipil/ which, in
Santali, means 'star'. Given below is a list of
examples which would help to understand
the mechanism of forming words using Ol
Chiki vowels and consonants.
Additonal consonants :
Apart from the consonants mentioned above,
Santali language does use other aspirated
consonants. An aspirated consonant is
generated by juxtaposing /OH/, which
functions more like English /h/, immediately
after another consonant. For example : /dh/
of Dhanbad, is generated using /EDD/
followed by /OH/. It should be noted that, in
Ol Chiki, it is /OH/(and not /IH/) that is
used to generate the aspirated consonants,
and this is in contrast to the English
language, where no such distinction is made.
The consonant /OH/, when placed
immediately after the unaspirated
consonants t/AT/, g/AG/, k/AAK/, j/AAJ/, c/
UCH/, d/UD/, p/EP/, D/EDD/, t/OTT/, b/OB/
generates the corresponding aspirated
consonants.
Glottal stop:
Here is an example, where /OH/ is used
along with /EN/ as in the word, /nhate/
which means 'this side'. This sound is a bit
voiceless. This is a prolongation of /n/ along
with /h/ sound, and it is an example of
glottal stop. A point to be noted here is that
this glottal stop is generated in combination
of /IH/ with Ahad, but it is normally written
in a shorter form using /OH/. Although there
are few words in Santali language that use
the glottal stop, but the use of such words
are very frequent in Santali language. Here
is a list of words where glottal stop is used.
Mu Tudag:
This diacritic is used for the nasalization of
vowels. As already mentioned that in Santali
language, all vowels and diphthongs may be
nasalized. It works in the same way as the
chandrabindu of Devnagari script. When it is
placed immediately after a vowel, the vowel
gets nasalized. The example of nasalized
vowels that are used in the words of Santali
language are given below.
Gahla Tudag:
Gahla Tudag is used to generate the
additional vowels from the following vowels,
viz., open vowel /o/(first vowel), /a/, and /e/.
The vowel /a/+/Gahla Tudag/ is the most
frequently used vowel, and there is no exact
English equivalent for the same. This is a
half open central vowel and its
pronunciation is approximately equivalent to
that of /a / in ago. The vowel /e/+/Gahla
Tudag/ is pronounced as in /a/ of
English word gate and it is open /e/(half
open front vowel). But the pronunciation of
the vowel /o/+/Gahla Tudag/ is very nearly
the same as that of the original vowel, and
it occurs in a few words only.
Mu-Gahla Tudag:
The Mu-Gahla Tudag indicates that the new
vowel generated by the Gahla Tudag is
nasalized.
Rela:
In Santali language, all vowels may be short
or longs and it is Rela that is used to
lengthen the pronunciation of vowels. For
example, in the pair of words /hit/ and /
heat/ (or /bit/ and /beat/ ) in English, the
former uses a short vowel , but the later
uses a long vowel. In case of Ol Chiki, the
long vowels are pronounced much longer
than those of English, and a long vowel
corresponding to a vowel is indicated by
immediately following the vowel with the
diacritic Rela. The Rela is extensively used
in the adverb of Santali language. Here is a
list of words that use the rela and their
pronunciations and meanings.
Ahad:
In Ol Chiki, the letters, /AG/, /AAJ/, /UD/,
and /OB/ are semi-consonants . These semi-
consonants become consonants (voiced
equivalents), when they are immediately
followed by a vowel or Ahad . This generates
dual sounds from these semi-consonants
depending on whether they are immediately
followed by a vowel/Ahad or not. This is a
feature unique to Ol Chiki, which is not
observed in any other writing system.
Take the example of /AG/ : it produces two
sounds, viz., / k' / and /g/. The use of /k' / is
in words like /amak' /your/ or /senok' /go/.
The /k' / is not fully released in these
circumstances. The pronunciation of this
consonant is a bit unique to Santals, and it
is in-between /k/ and /g/. It starts with /k/
and glides towards /g/. Similar is the
case with /AAJ/ , which gives /c'/ and /j/
(Here /c/ is unreleased /ch/ of church ).
Similarly, /UD/ gives /t'/ and /d/, and /OB/
gives /p'/ and /b/ .
Whenever a semi-consonant occurs at the
end of a word, and the word is naturally
extended for a different use using a vowel or
Ahad, it is always the corresponding
consonant as given above that appears in
the new word. What it means is that /k'/ will
always get extended to /g/, and never to /
k/, and so on. This behaviour of semi-
consonants normally occurs in verb
formations, and hence, this transformation is
very widely used in Santali language. As an
example, consider the following pair of
sentences: /Uniy rak' kek'a /He wept/ and /
Uniy rag a/He will weep/. In this example, /
kek'a / in the first sentence gets replaced
by /a/ in the second sentence, and
therefore, /k' / in /ra k' / gets extended to /g/
in /ra g a/. Exmaples of pairs of sentences
using other semi-consonants are as
follows: /Uni toway hede c' kek'a /He boiled
milk/ and /Uni toway hede ja /He will boil
milk/, /Uniy ut' kek'a /He swallowed/ and /
Uniy u da/He will swallow/, and /Uniy u p'
kek'a /He poured/ and /Uniy uba /He will
pour/. An example of a pair of words that
can show this behaviour is /rakap' /lift
(intransitive verb)/ and /rakab/lift(transitive
verb)/. This is the reason why each of
the Ol Chiki letters /AG/, /AAJ/, /UD/, and
/OB/ has been used to represent the dual
sounds as given above, and because of
this special behaviour of these letters in
word formation, they have been termed as
"semi-consonants" . However, a better name
can be sought if it is deemed so.
Pharka:
The diacritic Pharka is used very frequently
in Santali writings and works as separator in
two ways. First, it is used to separate two
consonants of similar paired words as in /
sujh-bujh/understanding/. Second, it is used
to separate a consonant from the following
vowel. It is generally used to prevent the
semi-consonants from becoming full
consonants and these cases occur in a large
number of verb formations such as /
menak'-a/have/Verb/, /hijuk'-a/come/Verb/
etc. Also, there is another situation, where
nasal consonant /ANG/, is separated by
Pharka from the following vowel.
Punctuation marks:
The main punctuation mark used is the
single vertical line " | ", and it marks the end
of a sentence. There are other familiar
punctuation marks which are also used in
Santali language. The names of punctuation
marks as given in the grammar book Ranal
written by Pandit Raghunath Murmu are as
given in the following table.
The hand writing of Ol Chiki letters:
The Ol Chiki gives hand writing letters for
fast writing. It is called /usA.ra ol/. The
hand writing letters consist of all
letters which are vowels and consonants,
and the letters which are formed in
combination of /IH/ and four semi-
consonants , /AG/, /AAJ/, /UD/, /OB/ with
Ahad. In normal writing, the combination
of /IH/ with Ahad is not found, as it is
generally written in a shorter form that is /
OH/.
Digits:
Ol Chiki uses decimal system, and
the symbol for basic digits 0-9 are as
follows:
Origin of Ol Chiki letters:
The great novelties and usages in Santali
language are as a result of the natural
derivation of the forms for words, where,
sounds generating out of actions or
movements from animated or unanimated
objects or sounds associated with living
being and their corresponding words, are
robustly approximated. Therefore, Pandit
Raghunath Murmu tried to infuse this
concept of natural formation of
Santali words into Ol Chiki. When Pandit
Raghunath Murmu devised the script, he
carefully choose the shapes of the scripts
from the nature, the surroundings which is
long familiar to the Santals, and is close to
them. The Santals form a community which
has wonderful relationship with nature, and
they respect it very well. Santal mythology
gives many stories and songs that depict
very importance of respecting nature and
sense of preserving it. The selection of
shapes for Ol Chiki letters is directly based
on the shapes of objects or actions which
the sounds for the letters represent, or with
which the sounds for the letters are in some
way associated. Naturally, the sources for
the shapes of letters were fire, soil, water,
air and sky- an environment that surrounds
them. This is an indigenous concept and has
multiple objectives. It would greatly help
them to remember the letters easily, since
they are familiar with the shapes and sounds
that can be easily retrieved from the
corresponding image from the nature. It can
be observed that the shapes of most of the
letters are either oval or round. This is
due to the nature of origin of letters, whose
shapes are often derived from the shape of
an object or action of natural environment.
For example, the word /AT/ means Earth and
the shape of letter /AT/ is derived from the
round shape of Earth. Similarly /UD/ means
mushroom and so looks the shape of the
letter /UD/. Here is the list of meaning of all
letters given in Ol Chiki writing system.
/A/ : The shape of burning fire.
/AT/ : The shape of Earth.
/AG/ : The shape of mouth during vomiting
which produces the
same sound as the name of the
letter.
/ ANG/: Blowing air.
/AL/ : Writing.
/AA/ : The shape of working in the field
with a spade.
/AAK/ : Sound of Swan or shape of a bird.
/AAJ / : The shape of a person pointing
towards a third person with
right hand(saying he).
/AAM/: The shape of a person pointing
towards a second
person with left hand(saying you).
/AAW/: Opening lips.
/I/ : Bending tree .
/IS / : The shape of plough.
/IH/ : The shape of hand ups.
/INY/ : The shape of a person pointing
towards himself or herself with
left hand.
/IR/ : The shape of a sickle used for
cutting or reaping(IR).
/U/ : The shape of a vessel used for
preparing food.
/UCH/: The shape of a peak of a mountain
which is usually high.
/UD/ : The shape of mushroom.
/UNN /: The picture of a flying bee which
makes this sound.
/UY/ : The shape of a man bending towards
ground to cut something.
/ E/ : Overflowing rivers changing course.
/EP/ : A person receiving with both hands.
/EDD /: The shape of a man with two legs
stretching towards his
chest and mouth.
/EN/ : The picture of thrashing grains with
two legs.
/ERR /: A picture of a path that turns to
avoid an obstruction or a
danger.
/O/ : The shape of mouth when sounding
this.
/OTT/: The hump of a camel.
/OB/ : Curly hair.
/OV/ : Nasalized.
/OH/ : The figure of a man throwing
something with one hand.
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