Cham Vowel Sign Ai

It marks the Cham vowel called ai on a consonant.

Most Cham consonant letters carry a built-in vowel. ꨰ replaces that default with the vowel called ai; the independent letter ꨄ can write the same vowel at a syllable start.

Cham writing developed around 200 CE from Pallava, a southern Indian script descended from Brahmi, an early South Asian writing system. The oldest surviving Old Cham inscription, Đông Yên Châu, is conventionally dated to around 350 CE. Early inscriptions served temple and royal life; later manuscripts carried prayers, rituals, calendars, astronomy, and literature. Akhar Thrah, a later Eastern Cham writing tradition, is first attested on the Po Romé tower in the seventeenth century. Eastern Cham writing uses an Indic-derived script; Western Cham writing in Cambodia has also used Jawi, a form of Arabic script.

How do I type ꨰ?

Enter the consonant first, then ꨰ.

A dedicated Cham keyboard may assign dependent vowel signs to keys; the exact key depends on its layout.

Why does ꨰ appear before the consonant?

Its code point follows the consonant, though its glyph appears before it.

This is Cham’s logical-versus-visual order: the sign is stored after its base but shaped to the left. If a syllable starts with a consonant group, the glyph appears before that whole group.

If it stays after the consonant or disappears, the font or text-shaping support may be missing.