Odia

About Odia

Odia, formerly spelled Oriya, is the official language of the Indian state of Odisha, with about 35 million native speakers. It was declared a classical language of India in 2014 because of its long literary history.

Odia is written in its own script, known for its rounded letters. Like many languages of India it has more than one word for "you": apana is polite and safe with strangers and elders, while tume is used with friends.

FamilyIndo-European, Indo-Aryan
Native speakersabout 34.5 million (2019)
Official inIndia (state of Odisha)
ScriptOdia script
Codesor (ISO 639-1), ory (ISO 639-3)

Speaker number: Ethnologue (2019), via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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