a portal for Santals Ol Chiki Script Ol Chiki is alphabetic, and does not share any of the syllabic properties of the other Indic scripts. It contains 30 letters and five basic diacritics. It has 6 basic vowels and additional three vowels are generated using Gahla Tudag. On commenting about Ol Chiki, Norman Zide (1996) observes, One ingenous - scientific and unique feature of Ol Cemet(Ol Chiki) 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:... Pandit Raghunath Murmu Born on 5th May,1905 and expired on 1st February, 1982 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.
Posted on: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 03:51:06 +0000
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