Newa letter cha

It marks an aspirated “cha,” pronounced with a puff of breath. For an English sound cue, think of the “ch” in “church” with extra breath. Newa is an abugida: each consonant carries a built-in vowel; a vowel sign changes it, and a virama, a mark that removes the built-in vowel, suppresses it. In Newa charts, 𑐔 is the unaspirated partner to 𑐕.

Newa developed from Brahmi, an early South Asian writing tradition, through later northern Gupta- and Kutila-related forms. It was used chiefly for Newar, also called Nepal Bhasa, and also carried Sanskrit and Nepali writing, plus historical Maithili, Bengali, and Hindi. The earliest known Newa manuscript is a Buddhist Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra manuscript dated 908 CE.

Newa appears in inscriptions, coins, manuscripts, official records, religious texts, signs, periodicals, and digital publications. Use declined after Gorkha rule ended the Newar dynasties in 1769; the script was banned in 1905, with the ban ending in 1951, and revival work gained momentum in the 1980s. Two Newa styles, Bhujimol and Ranjana, developed from the flat-headed pācumola model in the 11th century. Newa, Bengali, Odia, and Tirhuta scripts share ancestry in the broader Brahmi family.

How can I type or display it?

Choose a Newa input layout for the script. As of 2026-09-14, Keyman lists Newa Traditional and Romanized layouts for desktop and mobile; on phones, less common letters are available in long-press menus. The Romanized layout lets you enter Newa sound values using Latin letters.

A font with Newa coverage is needed to display the letter; Noto Sans Newa was listed as a dedicated font on 2026-09-14. A square such as □ indicates missing glyph support. Newa shaping can also change how the letter looks beside vowel signs or virama, so the resulting syllable may look different from the isolated consonant.