Cham medial wa sign

ꨶ adds a brief w-like glide to Cham syllables. Full letter ꨥ can sound the same, but plays a different spelling role.

Text symbol

What ꨶ means

It marks a medial consonant glide.

Cham consonants carry a built-in vowel; ꨶ follows a consonant or the independent vowel ꨀ.

Cham writing descends from Brahmi, an ancient South Asian script; its inscriptions begin around 500 CE. ꨶ belongs to Eastern Cham; by 2019, Eastern and Western Cham had diverged enough that plain text from one tradition could be unreadable to readers of the other. Since the mid-19th century, many Cambodian Muslims turned from Cham-script Islamic manuscripts to Malay books in Jawi, an Arabic-based script; as of 2019, the Imam San Muslim community preserved Cham-script manuscripts.

Part of the collection

ꤊ

Southeast Asian Minority Scripts (Kayah Li, Kawi, Ahom, Cham …)

Who writes ꨶ

Loading…

Don't confuse it with

ꨥ

Cham Letter Va

ꨥ is a full Cham letter; it can share a sound with a base-plus-ꨶ spelling, but ꨶ is a sign following its base.

Questions people ask

Why does ꨶ show as a box on some devices?

Not every system ships a font for the Cham block. Where none is installed, the character shows as an empty box; adding a font such as Noto fixes it. The character itself is still correct and copies correctly.