Oriya Language

The Oriya language is native to India where it is most widely spoken in the northeastern state of Odisha. Owing to its prevalence in that part of India, Oriya is alternately known as Odisha, though some linguists and local speakers also refer to it as Odia. Experts have noted that Oriya has a relatively rare quality among Indian languages in that it has largely resisted the outside influence of historically dominant regional languages such as Arabic and Persian. In 2014, in recognition of its historical significance and remarkably well-preserved state, Oriya was officially designated as one of India’s classical languages, becoming the sixth language to be so honored.

Though Oriya has not been significantly impacted by Arabic or Persian, it owes a significant debt to Indian philosophical and religious tradition, as it is believed to have originated as a Buddhist and Jain literary language. Contemporary Oriya displays six primary dialects beyond the standard form of the language: Halbi, Midnapore Oriya, North Balasore Oriya, Northwestern Oriya, Southern Oriya, and Western Oriya. Standard Oriya is alternately known as Mughalbandi, which is also the local name for the coastal region of Odisha.

History and Classification of the Oriya Language

Most scholars believe that Oriya descended from an ancient Indian form of Prakrit, a language that is highly significant to the Buddhist and Jainist traditions. It is believed that Gautama Buddha, the central figure in Buddhist philosophy, was a speaker of Prakrit, and many early Jain scriptures were also composed in the language. These links to important Indian religious traditions are a major part of the reason Oriya came to be granted classical status.

While the exact origins of Oriya as a distinct language are difficult to pinpoint, linguists typically trace its literary history to Indian texts from the third century BCE, which were written in a transitional dialect known as Apabhramsa, the wellspring from which Oriya and several other related languages are believed to have evolved. However, scholars who study the origin and evolution of language do not unanimously agree on exactly when or where Oriya emerged as a distinctive and uniquely identifiable tongue. A stone inscription dating back to the year 1051 CE is generally held to be the oldest known example of the written Oriya language, though additional inscriptions created in the thirteenth century seem to illuminate a more elaborate evolutionary pattern, suggesting that the language may actually have a much longer history than is commonly believed.

Despite these enigmas, Oriya was a firmly established language by the fourteenth century. During this period, a large number of lyrical epic poets and prose writers were producing highly polished and widely praised works in Oriya, which helped solidify its status as a major regional language. Over the ensuing centuries and into the present, Oriya’s unique and remarkable literary tradition flourished as the number of Oriya speakers continued to grow.

Oriya script is derived from the Brahmi alphabet, an ancient system dating back to at least the third century BCE that was used to write both Sanskrit and Prakrit. The Oriya alphabet is comprised of elegant, rounded characters, a feature that is believed to have evolved from necessity. Early scribes used sharp styluses to write on palm fronds, and rounded script characters prevented the stylus tips from tearing the leaves during the writing process.

The formal characteristics of Oriya place it in the Indo-Aryan branch of a larger phylum known as the Indo-European family. Linguists include more than two hundred languages in the Indo-Aryan branch, including Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Marathi, Punjabi, Gujarati, and many others. Like Oriya, many Indo-Aryan tongues can trace their ancestry back to ancient languages including Apabhramsa, Prakrit, and Sanskrit.

Oriya word order generally follows a subject-object-verb structure, with adjectives preceding nouns. Nouns themselves are not marked with discrete definite or indefinite articles but are gendered as either masculine or feminine and display a complex set of agreement conventions. Oriya verbs exist in the standard tenses of past, present, and future and feature different conjugations for first-person, second-person, and third-person usage cases. Oriya also has a conjugation form known as "second-person honorific," which is used when a writer or speaker is addressing a dignitary, an elder, or other individual of higher status.

Like its Indo-Aryan siblings, Oriya has a wide and highly varied assortment of consonant sounds and consonant clusters. Six different vowel sounds are used, roughly corresponding to the English a, e, i, long o, short o, and u. In spoken Oriya, stress is usually placed on a word’s second-to-last syllable.

Geographic Distribution and Modern Usage

Today, Oriya is one of twenty-two official languages in India. While it is most widely spoken in the state of Odisha, many Oriya-speaking people live in adjacent regions, including Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and West Bengal. In Odisha, Oriya enjoys lingua franca status and is the primary language of communication. It is taught in schools, used in broadcasting and government administration, and effectively serves as the state’s default language of wider communication.

Current estimates suggest that approximately thirty-two million people speak Oriya as a first language, with the vast majority of those speakers living in Odisha. Worldwide, about forty-five million people speak Oriya. Outside India, notable Oriya-speaking populations are in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

In 2014, India’s Culture Ministry voted to make Oriya the sixth "classical language" to be officially recognized. In so doing, Odiya met rigid qualification standards, including a recorded history spanning at least 1,500 years, a distinctive and unique literary tradition, and documented usage in prominent texts of the ancient world. Oriya joined a pantheon of classical Indian languages that also includes Kannada, Malayalam, Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu.

Bibliography

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