Eastern Cham (draft)

Letters

Combining marks

Numbers

Punctuation

Vowel sounds

Consonant sounds

	labial	alveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
stop	p b	t d	c	k ɡ͡ɣ	ʔ
	pʰ bʰ	tʰ dʰ	cʰ	kʰ ɡʰ
	ɓ	ɗ
affricate			d͡ʑ
			d͡ʑʰ
fricative		s			h
nasal	m	n	ɲ	ŋ
approximant	w	l	j
trill/flap		ɾ

Tone

Cham is not a tonal language.

Structure

tbd

Vowel summary table

The following table summarises the main vowel to character assigments.

ⓘ represents the inherent vowel. The right-hand column shows standalone vowels. A number of diphthongs listed in the phonology section are missing from this table.

ɨ is an inherent vowel only after nasals (see just below).

Observation: The phonology sources say that the Cham language distinguishes between the phones e, ə, and ɛ, but it isn't clear how to write e. There is a letter than appears to be transcribed as eɪ, which is close - could this be a plain vowel rather than a diphthong?

This is the full set of characters needed to represent the vowels of the Cham language.

Inherent vowel

ꨆ ka U+AA06 CHAM LETTER KA

ꨗ nɨ U+AA17 CHAM LETTER NUE

Cham has 2 inherent vowels.

Most consonants have an inherent vowel a.

ꨓꨊꨪꩆ

For nasals, however, the default inherent vowel is ɨ or ə.

ꨀꨗꩀ

ꨟꨓꨩ

To produce a nasal followed by a Cham appends a special mark, called kai, below the nasal (see fig_na). In Unicode these combinations are fused and become atomic code points. For example:

ꨘꩌ

Vowels after consonants

Post-consonant vowels are written using one or more of 10 combining vowel signs per consonant (this page lists 7 multipart vowels). There is 1 pre-base vowel, but no circumgraphs (although multipart vowels may add glyphs to more than one side of the base).

Pre-base vowel signs

ꨆꨯ ko U+AA06 CHAM LETTER KA + U+AA2F CHAM VOWEL SIGN O

ꨯ␣ꨰ

Cham has 2 characters whose glyphs, when rendered, appear before the consonant letter. For example:

ꨝꨯꨱꩍ

ꨚꨈꨯꨮꨩ

This combining mark is always typed and stored after the base consonant. The rendering process places the glyph before the base consonant. The first code point just above can be used on its own, but is also used in conjunction with other vowel combining marks as shown in the examples just above (see compositeV). In this case, it should be typed and stored immediately after the consonant and the other combining marks follow it.

When an orthographic syllable begins with a consonant cluster, the vowel sign is actually placed before the start of the onset, ie. to the left of the syllable as a whole. See fig_prebase.

show composition

ꨚꨴꨯꨱꩃ

Standalone vowels

ꨁ ʔi U+AA01 CHAM LETTER I

Cham has 3 ways of writing standalone vowel sounds. The IPA transcriptions show a glottal stop before word-initial standalone vowels.

Six standalone vowels can be written using dedicated independent vowel letters.

ꨀꨗꩀ

ꨁꨗꨤꩃ

ꨂꨣꩃ

The independent vowels may also appear inside a word at a syllable break.

ꨓꨂꩀ ta.ʔuk

Other standalone vowel sounds can be written using dependent vowels attached to AA00. In fact, that arrangement can also sometimes be used for the sounds normally represented by independent vowels.

This can also support medial consonants -j and -we,1, and other independent vowels may support combining vowels (which may be redundant or may alter the sound). For example:

ꨀꨳꨩ

Vowel absence

Cham has no code point to kill the inherent vowel. To write a consonant without a following vowel it is necessary to use one of the final consonants (see finals).

Vowel sounds to characters

This section maps Eastern Cham vowel sounds to common graphemes in the Cham orthography. Sounds listed as 'infrequent' are allophones, or sounds used for foreign words, etc.

The left column shows dependent vowels, and the right column independent vowel letters.

NOTE: Some areas of this list need examples to provide greater accuracy. Use with care.

Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.

Consonant summary table

The following table summarises the main consonant to character assigments.

The left column is lowercase, and the right uppercase.

Basic consonants

Whereas the table just above takes you from sounds to letters, the following simply lists the basic consonant letters (however, since the orthography is highly phonetic there is little difference in ordering).

Observation: It's not clear why there are 2 letters for p.

Note that there are 2 sets of nasal letters. The first has the inherent vowel ɨ, which is the default for nasals, and the second, with the extra strokes below, has the normal default inherent vowel a (see inherent).

Onsets

Cham has the 4 medial consonants shown just above. They are all combining marks, and should be typed and stored immediately after the initial consonant. They carry an inherent vowel, and kill the inherent vowel of the initial consonant.

ꨕꨶ

ꨆꨴꨩ

ꨆꨵꨮꨭ

ꨟꨣꨳꩍ

The multiple medials -rw-, -lj-, and -lw- can be found.e,2

Finals

Syllable codas are not followed by a vowel and, since Cham has no virama, they are written using a dedicated set of letters, or in 3 cases combining marks.

The final consonant letters are generally similar to the non-final consonants, but they have a lengthened stroke to the right side of the glyph.

ꨀꨆꨯꨱꩀ

ꨔꩆꨕꨩ

The major exception is ꨥ, which uses the same code point and glyph whether it appears as an initial or final consonant.

ꨎꨥꨩ

ꨟꨢꨥ

Examples of the combining marks.

ꨁꨗꨤꩃ

ꨚꨵꨭꩍ

ꨌꩌ

Consonant clusters

Cham has no conjuncts. Consonant clusters occur only in onsets and after a syllable coda, and those are handled by dedicated code points (see onsets and finals).

Consonant sounds to characters

This section maps Eastern Cham consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Cham orthography. Sounds listed as 'infrequent' are allophones, or sounds used for foreign words, etc.

The right-hand column shows medial or final consonants.

Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.

Codepoint sequences

Characters in a syllable, if they occur, should always occur in the following order.

1. A consonant or independent vowel.
2. One or 2 medial consonants.
3. A pre-base dependent vowel.
4. A non-prebase dependent vowel.
5. A vowel lengthener.
6. A final consonant letter or combining mark.

Digits

Cham has a set of native digits

Context-based shaping & positioning

Cham letters don't form conjuncts and don't normally involve significant shaping in different contexts, but there are a number of combining marks, which often occur in multiples for a given base letter. The positioning of these combining marks may involve adaptations to fit the space available, as well as the need to position them correctly around the base letter.

For instance, the small wavy line below the base is positioned and sized differently in the following 2 words.

ꨔꨮꨭ

ꨆꨵꨮꨭ

Another example of contextual shaping occurs at the end of the word

ꨚꨈꨯꨮꨩ

Click on the example above to see the composition, and note that the displayed order of the 2 rightmost combining marks has been switched, and the glyphs ligated.

Word boundaries

Words are separated by spaces.

Graphemes

tbd

Phrase, sentence, and section delimiters are described in phrase.

Phrase & section boundaries

Cham uses a mixture of ASCII and native punctuation.

Line breaking & hyphenation

Everson indicates that lines are generally broken between syllables.e,3