fsymbols
๐Ÿ”
โ€บCollectionsโ€บLanguagesโ€บChakma Alphabet & Script

Chakma Alphabet & Script

The Chakma alphabet is the script of the Chakma people of Bangladesh and northeast India: 32 consonants such as ๐‘„‡ ๐‘„Œ ๐‘„– ๐‘„›, four vowel letters, vowel signs, its own digits ๐‘„ถโ€“๐‘„ฟ and danda punctuation; the script was first encoded in Unicode 6.1 (2012). Copy any Chakma letter below, and learn how the script works, how to type it and where the language is spoken.

Symbols

79

Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.

Vowel letters

Only four independent vowels. Every other vowel at the start of a word is written as ๐‘„ƒ with a vowel sign, so o is ๐‘„ƒ๐‘„ฎ.

Vowels๐‘„ƒ๐‘„„๐‘„…๐‘„†

Consonants

Each consonant carries the vowel aa by itself: ๐‘„‡ is kaa. The first five rows follow the order shared by the scripts of India and Myanmar, by where the sound is made in the mouth.

kaa๐‘„‡๐‘„ˆ๐‘„‰๐‘„Š๐‘„‹
caa๐‘„Œ๐‘„๐‘„Ž๐‘„๐‘„
ttaa๐‘„‘๐‘„’๐‘„“๐‘„”๐‘„•
taa๐‘„–๐‘„—๐‘„˜๐‘„™๐‘„š
paa๐‘„›๐‘„œ๐‘„๐‘„ž๐‘„Ÿ
yyaa yaa raa laa waa๐‘„ ๐‘„ก๐‘„ข๐‘„ฃ๐‘„ค
saa haa๐‘„ฅ๐‘„ฆ

Vowel signs

Added after a consonant to replace its aa: ๐‘„‡๐‘„ง ka, ๐‘„‡๐‘„จ ki, ๐‘„‡๐‘„ช ku, ๐‘„‡๐‘„ฌ ke, ๐‘„‡๐‘„ฎ ko. The o and au signs are built from the O mark ๐‘„ฑ or AU mark ๐‘„ฒ plus ๐‘„ง, and Unicode treats both spellings as the same text.

aโ—Œ๐‘„ง
iโ—Œ๐‘„จโ—Œ๐‘„ฉ
uโ—Œ๐‘„ชโ—Œ๐‘„ซ
eโ—Œ๐‘„ฌ
aiโ—Œ๐‘„ญ
oโ—Œ๐‘„ฎโ—Œ๐‘„ฑ
auโ—Œ๐‘„ฏโ—Œ๐‘„ฒ
oiโ—Œ๐‘„ฐ

Signs

Candrabindu nasalises a vowel, anusvara adds -ng, visarga -h. The virama ๐‘„ณ is invisible and stacks two consonants into a conjunct; maayyaa ๐‘„ด is the visible mark that silences a final consonant, also used to double one.

Signsโ—Œ๐‘„€โ—Œ๐‘„โ—Œ๐‘„‚โ—Œ๐‘„ณโ—Œ๐‘„ด

Digits

Chakma digits ๐‘„ถ to ๐‘„ฟ, written like any other decimal digits: ๐‘„ธ๐‘„ถ๐‘„ธ๐‘„ผ is 2026.

0โ€“9๐‘„ถ๐‘„ท๐‘„ธ๐‘„น๐‘„บ๐‘„ป๐‘„ผ
0โ€“9๐‘„ฝ๐‘„พ๐‘„ฟ

Punctuation

The danda ๐‘… ends a sentence, the double danda ๐‘…‚ a verse or paragraph; Chakma has its own question mark ๐‘…ƒ and a section mark ๐‘…€. Commas, quotation marks and spaces are the ordinary ones.

Marks๐‘…๐‘…‚๐‘…ƒ๐‘…€

Later additions

Added to Unicode after the script itself: lhaa ๐‘…„ and the vowel signs aa ๐‘…… and ei ๐‘…† in 2018 (Unicode 11.0), and vaa ๐‘…‡, used in Pali texts, in 2020 (Unicode 13.0). Everyday Chakma rarely needs them, and older fonts may lack them.

Added later๐‘…„๐‘…‡โ—Œ๐‘……โ—Œ๐‘…†

Currency

Indian rupee โ‚น for Mizoram, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh; Bangladeshi taka เงณ for the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

Moneyโ‚นเงณ

Where it's spoken

India (about 395,000 speakers) and Bangladesh (about 370,000), CLDR estimates.

Flags๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ๐Ÿ‡ง๐Ÿ‡ฉ

Chakma life in emoji

The wheel of the Buddha's teaching for a mostly Buddhist people, palms together for a greeting or a prayer, the flowers of Phul Bizu at the New Year, and the thread of Chakma handweaving.

Chakmaโ˜ธ๏ธ๐Ÿ™๐Ÿ’๐Ÿงต

On the map

Loadingโ€ฆ

The Chakma alphabet and script

Chakma, or Changma as its speakers call themselves, has its own script, one of the Brahmic family that descends from the ancient Brahmi of India. It sits closer to Burmese than to Bengali in the way it looks and works: rounded letters hanging from no headline, and a visible vowel-killing mark like the Burmese asat. The same script is used to write Pali, the language of Theravada Buddhist scripture, which matters in a community that is mostly Buddhist.

Unicode added the Chakma alphabet in version 6.1 (2012), in the block U11100โ€“U1114F. That makes every letter on this page real text that pastes into messages, documents and social media, not a picture. Because the block lies outside the Basic Multilingual Plane, older software may mishandle these characters; modern display still depends on font and shaping support.

How Chakma letters work: aa, vowel signs, maayyaa and the virama

Every consonant carries the vowel aa on its own, which is why Unicode names them kaa, khaa, gaa and so on: ๐‘„‡ alone reads kaa. Vowel signs placed after the consonant in typing replace that aa: ๐‘„‡๐‘„จ ki, ๐‘„‡๐‘„ฉ kii, ๐‘„‡๐‘„ช ku, ๐‘„‡๐‘„ฌ ke, ๐‘„‡๐‘„ญ kai, ๐‘„‡๐‘„ฎ ko, ๐‘„‡๐‘„ฏ kau, ๐‘„‡๐‘„ฐ koi. Because the inherent vowel is long /ฤ/, ๐‘„ง is the vowel sign for /ษ”/: ๐‘„‡๐‘„ง changes bare ๐‘„‡ /kฤ/ to /kษ”/.

There are only four independent vowel letters, ๐‘„ƒ ๐‘„„ ๐‘„… ๐‘„† (aa, i, u, e). A word that starts with any other vowel uses ๐‘„ƒ as a seat for a vowel sign, so a word-initial o is ๐‘„ƒ๐‘„ฎ. The o and au signs are two-part vowels: ๐‘„ฎ is the O mark ๐‘„ฑ together with ๐‘„ง, and ๐‘„ฏ is the AU mark ๐‘„ฒ with ๐‘„ง. Unicode treats the one-character and two-character spellings as the same text.

Chakma has two ways to remove an inherent vowel. Maayyaa ๐‘„ด is visible: it usually marks a consonant with no following vowel, as in ๐‘„‡๐‘„ด k, and it also marks a doubled consonant. The virama ๐‘„ณ is invisible: typed between consonants, it forms conjuncts with certain consonants, such as ๐‘„‡๐‘„ณ๐‘„ , where ka joins yaa. Candrabindu ๐‘„€ nasalises a vowel, anusvara ๐‘„ marks final -ng, and visarga ๐‘„‚ marks final -h.

Chakma numbers and punctuation

Chakma digits work like Western ones, one sign per digit, written left to right: ๐‘„ถ ๐‘„ท ๐‘„ธ ๐‘„น ๐‘„บ ๐‘„ป ๐‘„ผ ๐‘„ฝ ๐‘„พ ๐‘„ฟ are 0 to 9, so the year 2026 is ๐‘„ธ๐‘„ถ๐‘„ธ๐‘„ผ and 10 is ๐‘„ท๐‘„ถ.

A sentence ends with the danda ๐‘…, and a verse or paragraph with the double danda ๐‘…‚, as in Bengali and Devanagari. Chakma also has its own question mark ๐‘…ƒ and a section mark ๐‘…€. Words are separated by spaces, and the ordinary comma and quotation marks are used alongside these.

Four characters came later: lhaa ๐‘…„ and the vowel signs ๐‘…… aa and ๐‘…† ei in Unicode 11.0 (2018), and vaa ๐‘…‡, used in Pali texts, in Unicode 13.0 (2020). They are on this page so the set is complete, but everyday Chakma rarely needs them and some older fonts do not draw them.

How to type Chakma: keyboard, fonts and copy and paste

There are no Alt codes or Mac Option shortcuts for Chakma. To type it you install a Chakma keyboard layout or a Chakma keyboard app on your phone, use an online Chakma keyboard, or copy letters from a page like this one. Letters are stored in reading order: type the consonant first and its vowel sign next; maayyaa follows the consonant it kills, while virama goes between the two consonants of a conjunct.

To see the letters you need a font that covers the script, such as the free Noto Sans Chakma from Google. Without font coverage, Chakma text may show as empty boxes; if it still fails after installing a font, the app may lack the script-shaping support Chakma needs. In HTML you can write a letter as a numeric reference, for example 𑄇 for ๐‘„‡.

Where the Chakma language is spoken

Chakma is an Indo-Aryan language, closely related to Tanchangya and Chittagonian and more distantly to Bengali and Assamese. The Unicode Standard estimates about 500,000 speakers, mostly in Bangladesh and India.

In Bangladesh the Chakma homeland is the Chittagong Hill Tracts, above all Rangamati and Khagrachari, where the Chakma Raja heads the Chakma Circle, one of the three traditional chiefdoms of the hills. In India most Chakma live in Mizoram, which has a Chakma Autonomous District Council, and in Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh, with smaller groups in Assam. Chakma is also sometimes written in Bengali or Latin letters. For neighbouring scripts see the Bangla, Assamese and Burmese collections, and the Bangladesh and India pages for each country's emoji.

How to use them

6 situationsClick to copy
Learning to read Chakma
Start with the four vowel letters and the 32 consonants row by row, then put every vowel sign on one letter (๐‘„‡๐‘„ง ๐‘„‡๐‘„จ ๐‘„‡๐‘„ช ๐‘„‡๐‘„ฌ ๐‘„‡๐‘„ฎ), then learn maayyaa ๐‘„ด for final consonants and the virama ๐‘„ณ for clusters.
Sending a Bizu greeting
For the Chakma New Year in mid-April, flowers are the symbol: with the name ๐‘„๐‘„จ๐‘„Ž๐‘„ช (Bizu) in Chakma letters, or Happy Bizu in English.
Writing a name for a sign, card or wedding invitation
Copy the letters here, then have a Chakma reader check the spelling: a missing maayyaa or the wrong vowel sign changes the word.
Copying Pali verses for a vihara
Pali Buddhist texts are sometimes written in Chakma script. Use the danda ๐‘… and double danda ๐‘…‚ to end lines and verses, and vaa ๐‘…‡ where a Pali word needs it.
Seeing boxes instead of letters
Install a Chakma font such as Noto Sans Chakma. If boxes remain, the app may lack font coverage or Chakma shaping support.
Designing a tattoo or logo in Chakma
Paste the word into a document set in a Chakma font so conjuncts and vowel signs are drawn properly, and ask a native reader to check it before it goes on skin or print.

Chakma Alphabet & Script combos

12
Changma, the Chakma people's own name, spelled letter by letter (caa, ngaa with maayyaa, maa)
Changmha bhach, the Chakma language, spelled letter by letter
Bizu, the Chakma New Year, with its flowers
a New Year greeting in English
Rangamati, the Chakma heartland on Kaptai Lake
Buddhist greeting or prayer, for Buddha Purnima and Kathin
the first row of the alphabet: kaa khaa gaa ghaa ngaa
ka ki kii ku kuu ke kai ko kau koi: one consonant with every vowel sign
KAA joined to YAA by the invisible virama
2026 in Chakma digits
the numbers 1 to 10
Chakma across Bangladesh and India

Worth knowing

  • Chakma has two marks with different roles: visible maayyaa ๐‘„ด usually marks a missing inherent vowel, while the invisible virama ๐‘„ณ joins consonants in standard conjuncts.
  • Because Chakma consonants carry long /ฤ/, the sign ๐‘„ง represents /ษ”/.
  • Only four vowels have letters of their own; a word that begins with o, ai or oi borrows ๐‘„ƒ as a seat for the vowel sign.
  • The Kaptai dam on the Karnaphuli river, finished in the early 1960s, flooded much of the old Chakma heartland around Rangamati and displaced tens of thousands of people, many of whom settled in India.
  • Chakma New Year is part of Boisabi, the shared spring festival of the hill peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts: Boisuk of the Tripura, Sangrai of the Marma and Bizu of the Chakma.

Questions people ask

8

What is the Chakma alphabet?

The Chakma alphabet is the Brahmic script of the Chakma language: 32 consonants that each carry the vowel aa, 4 independent vowel letters, 10 vowel signs, the marks maayyaa ๐‘„ด and virama ๐‘„ณ, digits ๐‘„ถโ€“๐‘„ฟ and the danda ๐‘…. It is also used for Pali Buddhist texts.

How many letters are in the Chakma alphabet?

32 consonants (๐‘„‡ to ๐‘„ฆ) and 4 vowel letters (๐‘„ƒ ๐‘„„ ๐‘„… ๐‘„†), plus 10 vowel signs and 5 signs. Unicode later added lhaa ๐‘…„ and vaa ๐‘…‡ and two more vowel signs, for 71 characters in the block in all, digits and punctuation included.

What is the Chakma alphabet in English?

In order: kaa khaa gaa ghaa ngaa, caa chaa jaa jhaa nyaa, ttaa tthaa ddaa ddhaa nnaa, taa thaa daa dhaa naa, paa phaa baa bhaa maa, yyaa yaa raa laa waa, saa haa; vowels aa i u e.

How do I get a Chakma keyboard?

Install a Chakma keyboard app on Android or iPhone, add a Chakma layout on your computer, or use an online Chakma keyboard. You can also copy letters straight from this page. Type the consonant first, then the vowel sign.

Why does Chakma script show as boxes?

Your device or app may lack a Chakma font or Chakma shaping support. Install a font such as Noto Sans Chakma; the text is standard Unicode, but the app must also support its text layout.

What are Chakma numbers 1 to 10?

๐‘„ท ๐‘„ธ ๐‘„น ๐‘„บ ๐‘„ป ๐‘„ผ ๐‘„ฝ ๐‘„พ ๐‘„ฟ ๐‘„ท๐‘„ถ, with ๐‘„ถ for zero. They are written place by place like Western digits.

Chakma language is spoken in which state?

In India mainly in Mizoram, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh, with smaller groups in Assam; in Bangladesh in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (Rangamati, Khagrachari and Bandarban). The Unicode Standard estimates about 500,000 speakers.

What is the difference between maayyaa and virama in Chakma?

Maayyaa ๐‘„ด is a visible vowel killer, usually marking a consonant with no following vowel (๐‘„‡๐‘„ด k). The invisible virama ๐‘„ณ forms Chakma conjuncts with certain consonants; a 2001 orthographic reform recommended YAA, RAA, LAA, WAA and NAA as the subjoined letters, as in ๐‘„‡๐‘„ณ๐‘„  (KAA joined to YAA).

Where it is spoken

2
๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณIndia Emoji158 symbols๐Ÿ‡ง๐Ÿ‡ฉBangladesh Emoji131 symbols