Cham Letter La

Read it as the Cham consonant la — the l sound. Cham is an abugida: each consonant letter carries a built-in a vowel, so ꨤ alone spells the syllable la. A dependent vowel sign swaps that a for another vowel.

Cham writing is attested from the late fourth century on an inscribed stone at Đông Yên Châu, in present-day Vietnam. Brahmi-descended, it served record-keeping — royal inscriptions, then administrative, literary, historical, and religious texts.

How do I type ꨤ?

Use a Cham input method; iCham's Rumix maps -l to ꨤ. Inside a word, type the syllable's Latin letters and Rumix adds the signs — the hyphen just means 'letter alone'.

Cham runs left to right, but vowel signs can sit above, below, before, or after the consonant; some are even stored after the base yet drawn to its left. A box or blank means missing font support.

Does Cham script mean the same thing everywhere?

Yes for the sound — the communities differ. In south-central Vietnam, Eastern Cham communities keep the Indic Cham alphabet, Akhar Thrah, in religious life. In Cambodia's Western Cham communities, the Arabic-based Jawi script spread with Islam, while Akhar Srak, the western Cham-script form, held on — for some writers, a counterweight to writing Cham in Arabic letters.

The kinship is historical, not visual: Cham sits in the Brahmi-descended family beside Khmer, Balinese, and Batak — relatives by ancestry, not interchangeable letters.