Cham letter nhue

It starts an Eastern Cham syllable with a palatal nasal. The sound is like Spanish ñ in señor: a nasal made with the tongue raised near the roof of the mouth. Cham’s nasal series has a built-in central vowel, written ɨ in linguistic descriptions; vowel signs can change it. In an Eastern Cham syllable, enter ꨐ before its vowel sign. The mark is stored after the base even when it displays to the left or around it.

Cham writing descends from the Pallava–Grantha branch of Brahmi, an older South Asian script. The oldest known Cham text, inscription C. 174 in Quảng Nam, dates to the 4th or 5th century. Early writing appears on stone and temple towers; administrative, literary, and commercial records later broadened its use. The Akhar Thrah script used for modern Eastern Cham is first attested in a 17th-century inscription on the Po Romé tower.

Is this Eastern Cham or Western Cham?

ꨐ belongs to Eastern Cham; Western Cham has a distinct writing tradition. The two are related Cham traditions, but plain Eastern Cham text may not be intelligible to a Western Cham reader. Match the spelling to the variety of the text.

Cham settlers carried an Islamic manuscript tradition written in Cham script into Cambodia. From the mid-19th century, most Cambodian Muslims increasingly turned to Malay religious books printed in Jawi, an Arabic-based script for writing Malay, while Imam San communities preserved Akhar Srak. As of 2026, Eastern Cham has a primary-school curriculum in Vietnam; documented Western Cham literacy programs in Cambodia are supplementary, community-run instruction.