Ol Chiki
Ol Chiki ( 
[ɔl ˈciki] writing symbol, cursive ), sometimes also called Ol Chemet '( 
[ɔl cemet̚] learning to write ), is a script used for writing the Munda language Santali , spoken in India . The script is clockwise.
While all other autochthonous Indian scripts go back to the Brahmi script , Ol Chiki does not belong to the Indian group of scripts .
history
Traditionally, Munda languages are written with the scripts of the neighboring Indo-Aryan languages Hindi , Bengali and Oriya or with the Latin script introduced by Christian missionaries. In the first half of the 20th century, Raghunath Murmu (1905–1982) created the new font Ol Chiki especially for Santali. It should also be suitable for other Munda languages. Early on, attempts were made to trace the origin of this writing back to divine influence. On the Santals home page you can read: “The epoch-making invention of the Ol Chiki script was unveiled in 1925. In the novel Bidu Chandan he (i.e. Murmu) vividly described how the god Bidu and the goddess Chandan appeared on earth as human beings and naturally invented the Ol Chiki script in order to be able to communicate with one another in written Santali. "
There are some Santali newspapers in Ol Chiki. The use of this font is strongly promoted by the Santals (see website). The governments of Orissa and Bengal have already accepted Ol Chiki. Writing has not yet become an official writing medium. However, given that Santali is now the official language, this can be expected.
Typological classification
An essential characteristic of Ol Chiki is that in contrast to the Brahmi script and its descendants, all vowels are written in full. As in the European scripts, consonants and vowels are graphically equal in every position. So Ol Chiki is a real letter font . It gives the Phonembestand the Santali not largely, but completely again. Signs are missing for some vowels and for the synchronously phonemic aspirated plosives ; instead there is a diacritic for aspiration .
The two diacritics for opening and closing a junction are special.
Name and shape of the characters
Apparently there were no models for the shape of the characters. At most, the two vowels 
[ɔ] and 
[a] could have been inspired by the Bengali (অ আ) or the Devanagari script (अ आ). All letters are strongly stylized representations of objects and processes from the environment of the Santals. Objects were chosen that are familiar to every Santal and that are used in Santali to denote them with monosyllabic words consisting of one or two sounds. These are also the names of the letters. The names of the vowels consist of only one vowel; the corresponding symbol stands for this sound. The names of the consonants consist of vowel + consonant, whereby the symbol stands for this consonant (cf. German “ef” for ‹f›, “em” for ‹m›).
The columns of the following table show one after the other the character, the description of the form, the sound value in the usual Latin spelling and in IPA transcription , the name of the character, the pronunciation of the name in Latin and in IPA transcription and the meaning of the name, as far as it could be determined.
Alphabetical order
Presumably inspired by the two-dimensional arrangement of the characters common in all other Indian alphabets, the following representation was chosen:
When choosing this arrangement, the easy memorization of the order based on the letter names was obviously in the foreground. So in the lines there are characters whose names begin with the same vowel , one behind the other, e.g. B. 1st line: ɔ - ɔt - ɔk̚ - ɔŋ - ɔl. A phonetic grouping according to places of articulation and types of articulation , which is a significant achievement of the other Indian alphabets , was obviously deliberately considered to be of secondary importance. After all, the 1st column contains the vowels, the 2nd column all voiceless consonants , the 3rd column mostly voiced plosives with their voiceless , " glottalized " allophones (if available), the 4th column 5 nasals and a nasalized [w̃], for which no separate letter would actually be required, the 5th column 5 sonorants and 1 diacritic for aspiration . There are practically no similarities in articulation horizontally .
This alphabet is not complete. There are a number of other diacritics that may help you. a. missing vowels can be represented.
Ol Chiki and the Phonology of Santali
Vowels
The basic set of ol chiki characters only covers the following vowels :
The missing ones are derived from the above characters with a point ("Gahla Tudag" [ɡəhlə ʈuɖək̚]) as a diacritic :
The phonetic difference between and 
is not clearly defined. It is said that there is only a marginal phonemic difference between the two and that it is rarely used.
A superscript point ("Mu Tudag" [mu ʈuɖək̚]) is used as a diacritic for the nasalization , based on the Anusvara of the other Indian scriptures:
Although according to Neukom the vowel length should not be distinctive , a diacritical ("Rela" [rela]) was created for this too :
Emerson et al. (2002) give 2 examples for this, but no minimal pairs .
Consonants
The following phonemes have equivalents in the Ol Chiki alphabet:
There is also 
for [ɳ]. According to Neukom, however, this is not a phoneme , but an allophone of / n / before retroflex plosive , while Everson et al. (2002) Asserting Phoneme Status. 
[w̃] is just the nasalized version of 
[w]. It is unclear whether it is to be regarded as a separate phoneme.
Aspiration is also phonemic when viewed synchronously . However, it occurs mainly in borrowings from Indo-Aryan and was absent in the Proto- Munda . It would therefore be understandable for Diachron to be given a diacritic in Ol Chiki . However, this is incorrectly referred to as the “consonant” and as such ( derived from ) is contained in the “alphabet”. The aspirates are represented as digraphs (similar to the transliteration for Indian scripts according to ISO 15919):
Ol Chiki takes the allophony between voiced and " glottalized " plosives into account by providing the same symbol for both (3rd column of the alphabet).
There are two diacritics that open or close junctions and thus regulate the “ glottalized ” pronunciation of / b / / d / / ɟ / / ɡ /. Without a diacritic, an open junction can be recognized by a subsequent space or punctuation mark, e.g. B. 
[mit̚] one ; 
[dak̚] water . To ensure “ glottalization ” before the following vowel , a superscript horizontal line “Pharka” [pʰarka] has been created as a diacritic . So it causes the opening of a junction: 
[hiɟuk̚ (ʔ) a]. Without a diacritic , [hiɟuɡa] would be read. Pharka also serves as a hyphen.
The counterpart to Pharka is 
"Ahad" [ɔhɔt̚]. It closes a junction and thus the voiced , not “ glottalized ” pronunciation of / b / / d / / ɟ / / ɡ / in the final , e.g. B. 
[raɟ] rule against 
[raɟa] king ; 
[ɡidrə] child . In the Ol-Chiki script, Ahad is connected to the consonant in front of it to form a ligature .
The glottal closure is spelled with "h + Ahad" 
(contracted to ). An example of this is 
[nˀate] here , in the traditional Latin spelling ‹nhate›.
Digits
Own numerals were also created:
Ol Chiki in Unicode
The Unicode block Ol Chiki covers the range from 1C50 to 1C7F.
literature
- Campbell's English-Santali Dictionary , Calcutta 1984
- Campbell's Santali-English Dictionary , Calcutta 1988
- Everson, Michael; Hansdah R. C .; Murmu, N. C .: (Application for inclusion of Ol Chiki in Unicode) 2002
- Lukas Neukom: Santali . LINCOM Europa, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-89586-610-5 ( Languages of the world, Materials. Nr. 323)
Web links
- A portal for Santals (English)
- The Origin of Ol Chiki on YouTube , March 18, 2018, accessed November 25, 2018.