Cham script Akhara Cam ꨀꨇꩉ ꨌꩌ
Script type	Abugida
Time period	c. 350 CE – present[1]
Direction	Left-to-right
Languages	Cham,Sanskrit
Related scripts
Parent systems	Proto-Sinaitic script Phoenician alphabet Aramaic alphabet Brahmi script Tamil-Brahmi Pallava script[2] Cham script
Sister systems	Khmer,Kawi,Old Mon,Grantha,Tamil
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Cham(358), ​Cham
Unicode
Unicode alias	Cham
Unicode range	U+AA00–U+AA5F
This article containsphonetic transcriptions in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. For the distinction between[ ],/ / and ⟨ ⟩, seeIPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

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TheCham script (Cham: ꨀꨇꩉ ꨌꩌ)is aBrahmicabugida used to writeCham, anAustronesian language spoken by some 245,000Chams inVietnam andCambodia.^[3] It is written horizontally left to right, just like other Brahmic abugidas.

The Cham script is a descendant of theBrahmi script of India.^[3] Cham was one of the first scripts to develop from thePallava script, this happened in the mid 350s CE. It came to Southeast Asia as part of the expansion ofHinduism andBuddhism. Hindu stone temples of theChampa civilization contain bothSanskrit and Chamic language stone inscriptions.^[4] The earliest inscriptions in Vietnam are found inMỹ Sơn, a temple complex dating fromc. 300 CE toc. 1200 CE.[5]^[6] The oldest inscription is written in faulty Sanskrit. After this, inscriptions alternate between Sanskrit and the Cham language of the times.^[7]

Cham kings studied classical Indian texts, such as theDharmaśāstra, and inscriptions make reference toSanskrit literature. Eventually, while the Cham and Sanskrit languages influenced one another, Cham culture assimilated Hinduism, and Chams were eventually able to adequately express the Hindu religion in their own language.^[7] By the 8th century, the Cham script had outgrown Sanskrit and the Cham language was in full use.^[8] Most preserved manuscripts focus on religious rituals, epic battles and poems, and myths.^[7]

Modern Chamic languages have the Southeast Asianareal features ofmonosyllabicity,tonality, andglottalized consonants. However, they had reached the Southeast Asia mainland disyllabic and non-tonal. The script needed to be altered to meet these changes.^[4]

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, theChamic 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.^[4] The Western Cham people are mostlyMuslim^[9] and therefore prefer theArabic script. The Eastern Cham are mostlyHindu and continued to use the Indic script. During French colonial times, both groups had to use theLatin alphabet.^{[citation needed]}

There are two varieties of the Cham script:Akhar Thrah (Eastern Cham) andAkhar 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.^[10][11][12] A standardALA-LC romanization of both varieties, which is based on EFEO romanization of Cham, is available.^[13][14]

The script is highly valued in Cham culture, but this does not mean that many people are learning it.^[15] There have been efforts to simplify the spelling and to promote learning the script, but these have met with limited success.^[16][17] 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.^[8] The traditional Indic Cham script is still known and used by Vietnam's Eastern Cham but no longer by the Western Cham.^[18]

Similar to other abugidas, the consonants of Cham have the inherent vowel. Dependent vowel diacritics are used to modify the inherent vowel.^[3] Since Cham does not havevirāma, special characters should be used for pure consonants. This practice is similar to thechillu consonants of theMalayalam script.

Most consonant letters, such as[b],[t], or[p], include aninherent vowel[a] which does not need to be written. Thenasal stops,[m],[n],[ɲ], and[ŋ] (the latter two transliteratedny andng in the Latin alphabet) are exceptions, and have an inherent vowel[ɨ] (transliteratedâ). A diacritic calledkai, which does not occur with the other consonants, is added below a nasal consonant to write the[a] vowel.^[8]

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.^[8]

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

Six of the initial vowels are represented with unique letters:^[19]

Other initial vowels are represented by adding a diacritic to the letterꨀ (a).^[19] The same diacritics are used with consonants to change their inherent vowel:

Cham has a distinctive set of digits:^[19]

Cham script was added to theUnicode Standard in April, 2008 with the release of version 5.1.^[19]

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 famous Vietnamese short poetry.

• Marrison, Geoffrey Edward (1975), "The Early Cham language and its relation to Malay",Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society,48 (2 (228)):52–59,JSTOR 41492110
• Etienne Aymonier,Antoine Cabaton (1906).Dictionnaire čam-français. Vol. 7 of Publications de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient. E. Leroux. Retrieved2011-05-15.
• Blood, Doris (1980a). Cham literacy: the struggle between old and new (a case study).Notes on Literacy 12, 6–9.
• Blood, Doris (1980b). The script as a cohesive factor in Cham society. InNotes from Indochina, Marilyn Gregersen and Dorothy Thomas (eds.), 35–44. Dallas: International Museum of Cultures.
• Blood, Doris E. 2008. The ascendancy of the Cham script: how a literacy workshop became the catalyst.International Journal of the Sociology of Language 192:45-56.
• Brunelle, Marc. 2008. Diglossia, Bilingualism, and the Revitalization of Written Eastern Cham.Language Documentation & Conservation 2.1: 28–46. (Web based journal)
• Moussay, Gerard (1971).Dictionnaire Cam-Vietnamien-Français. Phan Rang: Centre Culturel Cam.
• Trankell, Ing-Britt and Jan Ovesen (2004). Muslim minorities in Cambodia. NIASnytt 4, 22–24. (Also on Web)
• R. Malatesha Joshi, Catherine McBride(2019). Handbook of Literacy in Akshara Orthography

Media related toCham script at Wikimedia Commons

• Omniglot Entry on Cham
• more info on Cham alphabet (in Spanish)
• Brunelle's article
• Conservation of Cham language and script on Lauthara.org
• https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2022/22095-western-cham.pdf

• Brahmic scripts
• Writing systems introduced in the 1st millennium
• 350s establishments
• Chamic languages
• Sanskrit transliteration

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Scripts with ISO 15924 four-letter codes
• Pages with plain IPA
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from June 2019
• CS1: long volume value
• Commons category link from Wikidata