Cham Final Ng Sign

It marks the nasal sound at the end of an Eastern Cham syllable. The sound is the velar nasal /ŋ/, like the ending of English “sing”: the back of the tongue closes near the soft palate while air passes through the nose. ꩃ is a coda, the consonant that closes a syllable, and has no vowel of its own.

In Eastern Cham, it follows the consonant base, medial signs, and vowel signs. The script has no virama—a mark that cancels a consonant’s inherent vowel—and no productive conjuncts; it writes final consonants with dedicated final letters or combining marks. When ꩃ appears alone in a character chart, a dotted circle may show where it attaches; the circle is only a display aid.

Where does Cham final ng come from?

Pallava is the script ancestor; the mark’s first use is uncertain. Cham script developed from Pallava writing, a script used in India, around 200 CE as Indian religions spread through Southeast Asia. The oldest identified Cham inscription, C.174, dates to the 4th or 5th century. These dates describe the script’s ancestry and early record; as of 2026, the exact first use of ꩃ remains uncertain.

Cham writing carried the Cham language through inscriptions and manuscripts, including religious and political records. Its final letters and combining marks provide ways to write consonants at the ends of syllables.

In Cambodia, much of the Islamic manuscript tradition shifted toward Jawi Malay—the Malay language written in an Arabic-derived script—for religious scholarship and print by the mid-19th century. A minority kept using akhar srak, the local Cham script. The change in writing tradition did not change ꩃ’s sound.