Cham Letter Ai

It is the independent Cham letter for the ai vowel. Its sound glides from an a toward an i in one syllable, much like the vowel in English “eye.” It marks a vowel at a syllable’s start and can also appear inside a word after a syllable break.

An early surviving Cham-language text, the Đông Yên Châu stone inscription, is undated but commonly placed c. 350 CE. The Cham script developed from Pallava, a South Indian script in the older Brahmi family, and spread through Southeast Asia alongside Indian religions.

Cham writing served royal and religious inscriptions, then manuscripts and administrative, legal, literary, and historical records. Eastern and Western Cham developed distinct writing traditions. Western Cham also uses Jawi, an Arabic-derived way to write Cham, alongside its Indic script tradition; Jawi is not the ancestor of ꨄ.