Odia phonology

This article is about the phonetics and phonology of the Odia language.

Pronunciation of Odia alphabet.

Odia has twenty-eight consonant phonemes, two semivowel phonemes and six vowel phonemes.

Vowel

Odia vowel phonemes

	Front	Back
High	i	u
Mid	e	o
Low	a	ɔ

All vowels except /o/ also have nasal counterparts, but these are not always contrastive. Final vowels are standard and pronounced, e.g. Odia [pʰulo] contra Bengali [pʰul] "flower".^[1]

Consonants

Odia consonant phonemes

		Bilabial	Alveolar /Dental	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n	ɳ		(ŋ)
Stop/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t̪	ʈ	tʃ	k
	voiceless aspirated	pʰ	t̪ʰ	ʈʰ	tʃʰ	kʰ
	voiced	b	d̪	ɖ	dʒ	ɡ
	voiced aspirated	bʱ	d̪ʱ	ɖʱ	dʒʱ	ɡʱ
Fricative			ɳ				h
Flap			ɾ	ɺ̢[2]
Lateral approximant			l

The velar nasal [ŋ] is given phonemic status in some analyses. Nasals assimilate for place in nasal–stop clusters. /ɖ ɖʱ/ have the flap allophones [ɽ ɽʱ] in intervocalic position and in final position (but not at morpheme boundaries). Stops are sometimes deaspirated between /s/ and a vowel or an open syllable /s/+vowel and a vowel. Some speakers distinguish between single and geminate consonants.^[3]

References

1. Ray (2003:488–489)
2. Masica (1991:97)
3. Ray (2003:490–491)

Bibliography

• Masica, Colin (1991). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-29944-2.
• Ray, Tapas S. (2003). "Oriya". In Cardona, George; Jain, Dhanesh. The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge. pp. 485–522. ISBN 9780700711307.