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==Writing Systems==
==Writing Systems==
[[Cham script]] is a [[Brahmic scripts|Brahmic script]].<ref name="Uni11" /> The script has two varieties: ''Akhar Thrah'' (Eastern Cham) and ''Akhar Srak'' (Western Cham). Western Cham language is written with [[Arabic script]] or the aforementioned Akhar Srak.<ref>{{Citation |last=Hosken |first=Martin |title=L2/19-217 Proposal to encode Western Cham in the UCS |date=2019 |url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19217-western-cham.pdf}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bruckmayr |first=Philipp |date=2019 |title=The Changing Fates of the Cambodian Islamic Manuscript Tradition |journal=Journal of Islamic Manuscripts |volume=10 |issue=1 |pages=1–23 |doi=10.1163/1878464X-01001001}}</ref>
[[Cham script]] is a [[Brahmic scripts|Brahmic script]].<ref name="Uni11" /> The script has two varieties: ''Akhar Thrah'' (Eastern Cham) and ''Akhar Srak'' (Western Cham). The Western Cham language is written with the [[Arabic script]] or the aforementioned Akhar Srak.<ref>{{Citation |last=Hosken |first=Martin |title=L2/19-217 Proposal to encode Western Cham in the UCS |date=2019 |url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19217-western-cham.pdf}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bruckmayr |first=Philipp |date=2019 |title=The Changing Fates of the Cambodian Islamic Manuscript Tradition |journal=Journal of Islamic Manuscripts |volume=10 |issue=1 |pages=1–23 |doi=10.1163/1878464X-01001001}}</ref>


==Dictionaries==
==Dictionaries==

Revision as of 18:17, 13 May 2020

Not to be confused with Cham-Mona language, Cham Albanian dialect, or Dikaka language.
Cham
Pronunciation[caːm]
Native toCambodia and Vietnam
RegionSoutheast Asia
EthnicityCham
Native speakers
320,000 (2002 – 2008 census)[1]
Dialects
  • Western Cham (245,000)[2]
  • Eastern Cham (73,000)
Cham, Arabic, Latin
Official status
Recognised minority
language in
Language codes
ISO 639-3Either:
cja – Western Cham
cjm – Eastern Cham
Glottologcham1328
ELPEastern Cham

Cham is a Malayo-Polynesian language of the Austronesian family, spoken by the Cham of Southeast Asia. It is spoken primarily in the territory of the former Kingdom of Champa, which spanned modern eastern Cambodia and southern Vietnam. The Western variety is spoken by 220,000 people in Cambodia and 25,000 people in Vietnam. As for the Eastern variety, there are about 73,000 speakers in Vietnam,[2] for a total of approximately 320,000 speakers.

Cham is the principal and most spoken language among the Chamic languages, which are spoken in parts of mainland Southeast Asia, North Sumatra and on the island of Hainan. Cham is notable for being the oldest-attested Austronesian language, with the Dong Yen Chau inscription being verifiably dated to the late 4th century AD.

Phonology

Western Cham language has 21 consonants and 9 vowels.[3]

Consonants

Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Plosive voiceless unaspirated p t c k ʔ
voiceless aspirated pʰ tʰ cʰ kʰ
Implosive ɓ ɗ
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ
Liquid l
Fricative s h
Rhotic ɣ
Approximant j w

Vowels

Monophthongs

Front Central Back
High i ɨ u
Mid (Tense) e ə o
Mid (Lax) ɛ ɔ
Low a

Diphthongs

ia, iɯ (occurs only before -ʔ), ea, ua, oa, au (occurs only before -ʔ),

iə, ɛə, ɔə, uə.

Grammar

Word formation

There are several prefixes and infixes which can be used for word derivation.[4]

  • prefix pa-: causative, sometimes giving more force to the word
    • thău (to know) → pathău (to inform)
    • blẽi (to buy) → pablẽi (to sell)
    • bier (low) → pabier (to lower)
    • yău (like, as) → payău (to compare)
    • jœû (finished) → pajœû (well finished)
  • prefix mœ-: sometimes causative, often indicates a state, possession, mutuality, reciprocity
    • jruu (poison) → mœjruu (to poison)
    • gruu (teacher) → mœgruu (to study)
    • téan (belly) → mœtéan (pregnancy)
    • boḥ (egg, fruit) → mœboḥ (lay an egg, give fruit)
    • daké (horn) → mœdaké (having horns)
  • prefix ta- or da-: frequentative
    • galuṇg (to roll) → tagaluṇg (to roll around)
    • dâp (to hide oneself) → dadâp (to be wont to hide oneself)
  • infix -an-: noun formation
    • pvâch (to speak) → panvâch (speech)
    • tiêu (row) → taniêu (oar)
    • dok (to live) → danok (house, living place)
  • infix -mœ-: no specific meaning
    • payău (to compare) → pamœyău (to compare)

Reduplication is often used:[4]

  • palẽi, pala-palẽi (country)
  • raḅaḥ, raḅaḥ-raḅœp (misery)

Syntax and word order

Cham generally uses SVO word order, without any case marking to distinguish subject from object:[5]

Dummy pronominal subjects are sometimes used, echoing the subject:

Inœû hudiêp dahlak nhu atong adẽi puthang nhu.
my wife's mother she beat her husband's younger sister
"My wife's mother beats her husband's younger sister."

Composite verbs will behave as one inseparable verb, having the object come after it:

Bloḥ nhu ḍiḥ dii apvẽi anẽk lakẽi.
then she lie at fire (i.e.: give birth) son
"Then she gave birth to a son."

Sometimes, however, the verb is placed in front of the subject:

Lêk dahlak.
fall I
"I fall."

Auxiliary verbs are placed after any objects:

Nhu ba hudiêp nhu nau.
he bring his wife go
"He brings his wife."

If a sentence contains more than one main verb, one of the two will have an adverbial meaning:

Nhu dâp klaḥ mœtai.
he hide evade death
"He evaded death by hiding."

Adjectives come after the nouns they modify:[6]

thang prong
house big
"a big house"

If the order is reversed, the whole will behave like a compound:

ôrang prong shap
person big noise
"a noisy person"

Composite sentences can be formed with the particle krung:[7]

It is also possible to leave out this particle, without change in meaning:[5]

Dahlak brẽi athêh nan kaa va dahlak ∅ dok dii palẽi Ram.
I give this horse to my uncle who live in the village of Ram
"I have given this horse to my uncle, who lives in the village of Ram."

Questions are formed with the sentence-final particle rẽi:[8]

Anẽk thău vakhar rẽi?
child know writing q
"Can you write, child?"

Other question words are in situ:

Hẽû nau hatau?
you go where
"Where are you going?"

Nominals

Like many languages in Eastern Asia, Cham uses numeral classifiers to express amounts.[9] The classifier will always come after the numeral, with the noun coming invariably before or after the classifier-numeral pair.

The above examples show the classifier boḥ, which literally means "egg" and is the most frequently used — particularly for round and voluminous objects. Other classifiers are ôrang (person) for people and deities, ḅêk for long objects, blaḥ (leaf) for flat objects, and many others.

The days of the month are counted with a similar system, with two classifiers: one (bangun) used to count days before the full moon, and the other one (ranaṃ) for days after the full moon.[10]

Personal pronouns behave like ordinary nouns and do not show any case distinctions. There are different forms depending on the level of politeness. The first person singular, for example, is kău in formal or distant context, while it is dahlak (in Vietnam) or hulun (in Cambodia) in an ordinarily polite context. As is the case with many other languages of the region, kinship terms are often used as personal pronouns.[7]

Comparative and superlative are expressed with the locative preposition di/dii:[11]

tapaa di aï nhu
big at his brother
"bigger than his brother"

Verbs

There are some particles that can be used to indicate tense/aspect.[12] The future is indicated with shi or thi in Vietnam, with hi or si in Cambodia. The perfect is expressed with jϞ. The first one comes in front of the verb:

Arak ni kău shi nao.
now I fut go
"I will go now."

The second one is sentence-final:

Shit traa kău nao jœû.
little more I go prf
"I'll be gone in a moment."

Certain verbs can function as auxiliaries to express other tenses or aspects.[13] The verb dok ("to stay") is used for the continuous, vœk ("to return") for the repetitive aspect, and kiœng ("to want") for the future tense.

The negation is formed with ôh/ô at either or both sides of the verb, or with di/dii[14] in front.[12]

The imperative is formed with the sentence-final particle bêk, and the negative imperative with the preverbal jvai/jvẽi (in Vietnam and Cambodia respectively).[12]

Sociolinguistics

Diglossia

Brunelle observed two phenomena of language use among speakers of Eastern Cham: They are both diglossic and bilingual (in Cham and Vietnamese). Diglossia is the situation where two varieties of a language are used in a single language community, and oftentimes one is used on formal occasions (labelled H) and the other is more colloquial (labelled L).[15][16]

Dialectal differences

Cham is divided into two primary dialects. Western Cham is spoken by the Cham in Cambodia as well as in the adjacent Vietnamese provinces of An Giang and Tây Ninh. Eastern Cham is spoken by the coastal Cham populations in the Vietnamese provinces of Bình Thuận, Ninh Thuận, and Đồng Nai. The two regions where Cham is spoken are separated both geographically and culturally. The more numerous Western Cham are predominantly Muslims (although some in Cambodia now practice Theravāda Buddhism), while the Eastern Cham practice both Islam and Hinduism. Ethnologue states that the Eastern and Western dialects are no longer mutually intelligible. The table below gives some examples of words where the two dialects differed as of the 19th century.[17]

Cambodia southern Vietnam
vowels
child anœk anẽk
take tuk tôk
not jvẽi jvai
sibilants
one sa tha
save from drowning srong throng
salt sara shara
equal samu hamu
final consonants
heavy trap trak
in front anap anak
lexical differences
market pasa darak
hate amoḥ limuk

Lê et al. (2014:175)[18] lists a few Cham subgroups.

Writing Systems

Cham script is a Brahmic script.[2] The script has two varieties: Akhar Thrah (Eastern Cham) and Akhar Srak (Western Cham). The Western Cham language is written with the Arabic script or the aforementioned Akhar Srak.[19][20]

Dictionaries

The Ming dynasty Chinese Bureau of Translators produced a Chinese-Cham dictionary.[citation needed]

John Crawfurd's 1822 work "Malay of Champa" contains a dictionary of the Cham language.[citation needed]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Western Cham at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
    Eastern Cham at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ a b c Cham. In The Unicode Standard, Version 11.0 (p. 661). Mountain View, CA: Unicode Consortium.
  3. ^ Ueki, Kaori (2011). Prosody and Intonation of Western Cham (PDF) (Ph.D. thesis). University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
  4. ^ a b Aymonier 1889, chapt. X
  5. ^ a b Aymonier 1889, chapt. XXI
  6. ^ Aymonier 1889, chapt. XIII
  7. ^ a b Aymonier 1889, chapt. XII
  8. ^ Aymonier 1889, chapt. XIX
  9. ^ Aymonier 1889, chapt. XI
  10. ^ Aymonier 1889, chapt. VIII
  11. ^ Aymonier 1889, chapt. XVI
  12. ^ a b c Aymonier 1889, chapt. XV
  13. ^ Aymonier 1889, chapt. XIV
  14. ^ This happens to be homophonous with the locative preposition.
  15. ^ Brunelle, Marc (2008). "Diglossia, Bilingualism, and the Revitalization of Written Eastern Cham". Language Documentation & Conservation. 2 (1): 28–46. hdl:10125/1848.
  16. ^ Brunelle, Marc. (2009). Diglossia and Monosyllabization in Eastern Cham: A sociolinguistic study. In J. N. Stanford & D. R. Preston (Eds.), Variation in Indigenous Minority Languages (pp. 47-75). John Benjamins.
  17. ^ Aymonier 1889, chapt. IX
  18. ^ Lê Bá Thảo, Hoàng Ma, et. al; Viện hàn lâm khoa học xã hội Việt Nam - Viện dân tộc học. 2014. Các dân tộc ít người ở Việt Nam: các tỉnh phía nam. Ha Noi: Nhà xuất bản khoa học xã hội. ISBN 978-604-90-2436-8
  19. ^ Hosken, Martin (2019), L2/19-217 Proposal to encode Western Cham in the UCS (PDF)
  20. ^ Bruckmayr, Philipp (2019). "The Changing Fates of the Cambodian Islamic Manuscript Tradition". Journal of Islamic Manuscripts. 10 (1): 1–23. doi:10.1163/1878464X-01001001.

Further reading

Eastern Cham language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
Western Cham language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

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