Chakma Letter U

It marks the independent Chakma vowel u. The Chakma u vowel is used when a syllable begins with that vowel; its sound is close to “oo” in “moon.”

Chakma uses both independent vowels and dependent vowel signs: 𑄅 stands alone at the start of a vowel-initial syllable, while 𑄪 attaches to a consonant as its u sign.

What is the history of Chakma writing?

Accounts describe Chakma writing through Brahmi and Mon-Burmese traditions. Unicode's proposal describes the script as descended from Brahmi, an older South Asian writing system; a script catalogue also places its ancestry in a Mon-Burmese line. The catalogue dates its Western record to 1903 CE, during British colonial rule; that is a record date, not a start date for the script.

The council's account says village healers preserved Chakma writing for notes on medicinal plants, herbs and roots. A January 2026 case study reports treatments written on palm leaves and later paper. It also describes classes and social media as places where Chakma is used in language revitalization and community identity.

The Chakma language has close ties to Bengali and Assamese, and some Chakma writing uses Bengali script. That is a different writing system: 𑄅 is not a Bengali letter, and there is no automatic character-for-character replacement. Unicode's proposal also records adapting Chakma script for Tanchangya, a closely related language.

How do you type 𑄅?

Choose the shortcut for your Chakma input layout. On the Institute of Policy Dynamics' v1.0.0 Linux layout, u produces 𑄅; Shift+u produces 𑄪, and AltGr+u enters the long-u sign.

The Easy Chakma guide, version 1.18, assigns Shift+P to 𑄅. Those are different layout choices, so the same letter does not have one universal shortcut.

A font without Chakma coverage can show an entered letter as an empty box. The Institute of Policy Dynamics' v1.0.0 layout includes Noto Sans Chakma because Ubuntu's built-in Noto coverage misses some glyphs it can produce. A January 2026 study also reports older phones, fonts and keyboards as barriers to writing Chakma.