Cham letter Na

Use an Eastern Cham Unicode keyboard layout.

Cham stores vowel signs after the base letter, even when the text shaper places a sign before, above, or below it. That shift is normal. If a sign is missing or misplaced, check the font and shaping support. Medial marks—marks for consonant sounds inside a syllable—and dedicated final letters let Cham spell syllables without stacking consonants into joined forms.

What does ꨘ do inside a Cham word?

It is the n consonant used in Cham's a-vowel series.

Cham writing served religious, political, and social records. Its inscriptional tradition appears around the 5th century; early inscriptions include Sanskrit and Cham. Manuscript writing shifted to a cursive Middle Cham form from the 15th century, then to Modern Cham from the 19th century.

Cham belongs to the Brahmi family, an ancient South Asian script family, and reached Southeast Asia through transmission associated with Pallava writing. A 2022 Unicode proposal describes Western Cham writing in Cambodia as another Indic tradition and notes that some Muslim Cham communities also use Jawi, a script derived from Arabic, as another writing choice.