Chakma Au Mark

It marks part of the Chakma AU/OU vowel. Chakma uses 𑄲 as a combining component. The one-character form is 𑄯; an equivalent two-mark spelling places 𑄲 and then 𑄧 after the base.

Chakma belongs to the Brahmic family of South Asian scripts and has historical links to Mon-Khmer and Myanmar script traditions. A Chakma chart from 1903 is an early dated record of the wider script; a 2009 encoding proposal documents the AU relation between 𑄯 and 𑄯.

Why can 𑄲 look out of place?

Stored order and visible placement do different jobs. A combining mark is stored after its base, while a Chakma-aware shaper can place visible parts before, after, or around that base. In the decomposed spelling, the order is base, 𑄲, then 𑄧. Without suitable font and shaping support, the mark may look misplaced or incomplete.

The component marks 𑄱 and 𑄲 are not usually found in text; they appear when the vowel is written as separate parts. For ordinary spelling, the single-sign AU/OU vowel 𑄯 is recommended.

The Chakma Autonomous District Council credits Boidyos, traditional healers, with preserving the script in medicinal-plant records. As of 2026, a simpler orthography is increasingly used alongside a more detailed traditional one; a 2009 proposal also records glyph variation between Chakma usage in India and Bangladesh. Those script-level changes do not alter this mark's AU role.