Cham script

The Cham script is a descendant of the Brahmi script of India. Cham was one of the first scripts to develop from the Pallava script around 350 CE. It came to Southeast Asia during the expansion of Hinduism and Buddhism. Hindu stone temples of the Champa civilization contain both Sanskrit and Chamic language stone inscriptions. The earliest inscriptions in Vietnam are found in Mỹ Sơn, a temple complex dating from c. 300 CE to c. 1200 CE. The oldest inscription is written in faulty Sanskrit. After this, inscriptions alternate between Sanskrit and the Cham language of the times.

Cham kings studied classical Indian texts, such as the Dharmaśāstra, and inscriptions make reference to Sanskrit literature. Eventually, Cham culture assimilated Hinduism, and Chams were eventually able to adequately express the Hindu religion in their own language. By the 8th century, the Cham script had outgrown Sanskrit and the Cham language was in full use. Most preserved manuscripts focus on religious rituals, epic battles and poems, and myths.

Modern Chamic languages have Southeast Asian areal features of monosyllabicity, tonality, and glottalized consonants. However, they had reached the Southeast Asia mainland disyllabic and non-tonal. The script needed to be altered to meet these changes.

The Cham now live in two groups: the Western Cham of Cambodia and the Eastern Cham (Panduranga/Phan Rang Cham) of Vietnam. For the first millennium AD, the Chamic languages were a dialect chain along the Vietnam coast. The breakup of this chain into distinct languages occurred once the Vietnamese pushed south, causing most Cham to move back into the highlands while some like Phan Rang Cham became a part of the lowland society ruled by the Vietnamese. The division of Cham into Western and Phan Rang Cham immediately followed the Vietnamese overthrow of the last Cham polity. The Western Cham people are mostly Muslim and therefore prefer the Arabic script. The Eastern Cham are mostly Hindu and continued to use the Indic script. During French colonial times, both groups had to use the Latin alphabet.

There are two varieties of the Cham script: Akhar Thrah (Eastern Cham) and Akhar Srak (Western Cham). The two are distinct enough to be encoded in separate blocks, the Eastern Cham block included in Unicode Standard version 5.1 since March 2008, the Western Cham block approved but still awaiting inclusion as of late 2023. A standard ALA-LC romanization of both varieties, which is based on EFEO romanization of Cham, is available.

The script is highly valued in Cham culture, but this does not mean that many people are learning it. There have been efforts to simplify the spelling and to promote learning the script, but these have met with limited success. Traditionally, boys learned the script around the age of twelve when they were old and strong enough to tend to the water buffalo. However, women and girls did not typically learn to read. The traditional Indic Cham script is still known and used by Vietnam's Eastern Cham but no longer by the Western Cham.

Similar to other abugidas, the consonants of Cham have the inherent vowel. Dependent vowel diacritics are used to modify the inherent vowel. Since Cham does not have virāma, special characters should be used for pure consonants. This practice is similar to the chillu consonants of the Malayalam script.

Most consonant letters, such as [b], [t], or [p], include an inherent vowel [a] which does not need to be written. The nasal stops, [m], [n], [ɲ], and [ŋ] (the latter two transliterated ny and ng in the Latin alphabet) are exceptions, and have an inherent vowel [ɨ] (transliterated â). A diacritic called kai, which does not occur with the other consonants, is added below a nasal consonant to write the [a] vowel.

Cham words contain vowel and consonant-vowel (V and CV) syllables, apart from the last, which may also be CVC. There are a few characters for final consonants in the Cham script; other consonants merely extend a longer tail on the right side to indicate the absence of a final vowel.

Consonants

Medial consonants

Final consonants

Cham does not employ a virama to suppress vowels. Final consonants are indicated in one of three ways: an explicit final consonant letter, a combining diacritic mark, or by ꨥ.

Independent vowels

Six of the initial vowels are represented with unique letters:

Dependent vowels

Other initial vowels are represented by adding a diacritic to the letter ꨀ (a). The same diacritics are used with consonants to change their inherent vowel:

Cham has a distinctive set of digits:

Cham script was added to the Unicode Standard in April, 2008 with the release of version 5.1.

The Unicode block for Cham is U+AA00, U+AA5F:

Below is a sample text in Cham, in Rumi, Jawi, and Cham scripts. This text is the translation of a Vietnamese short poem.