Katana VentraIP

Cham language

Cham (Cham: ꨌꩌ, Jawi: چام) is a Malayo-Polynesian language of the Austronesian family, spoken by the Chams of Southeast Asia. It is spoken primarily in the territory of the former Kingdom of Champa, which spanned modern Southern Vietnam, as well as in Cambodia by a significant population which descends from refugees that fled during the decline and fall of Champa. 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 491,448 speakers.[1]

Not to be confused with Cham language (Nigeria) or Cham Albanian dialect.

Cham

[cam]

Cambodia and Vietnam

Mainland Southeast Asia

Cham

490,000 (2019)[1]

  • Western Cham (245,000)[2]
  • Eastern Cham (180,000)[3]

Cham, Jawi (Arabic), Latin

Either:
cja – Western Cham
cjm – Eastern Cham

cham1328

Eastern Cham

Cham belongs to the Chamic languages, which are spoken in parts of mainland Southeast Asia, Indonesia's Aceh Province, and on the island of Hainan. Cham is the oldest-attested Austronesian language, with the Đông Yên Châu inscription being verifiably dated to the late 4th century AD. It has several dialects, with Eastern Cham (Phan Rang Cham) and Western Cham being the main ones. The Cham script, derived from the ancient Indic script, is still used for ceremonial and religious purposes.

Sociolinguistics[edit]

Diglossia[edit]

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).[17][18]

Dialectal differences[edit]

Cham is divided into two primary dialects.

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 Hinduism and Islam. 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.[19]


Lê et al. (2014:175)[20] lists a few Cham subgroups.

Dictionaries[edit]

The Ming dynasty Chinese Bureau of Translators produced a Chinese-Cham dictionary.


John Crawfurd's 1822 work "Journal of an Embassy to the Courts of Siam and Cochin-China" contains a wordlist of the Cham language.[23]: 40 

Old Cham

Cham script

Cham people

Cham calendar

Champa kingdom

Grant, Anthony (Ed.); Sidwell, Paul (Ed.) (2005). Grant, Anthony; Sidwell, Paul (eds.). Chamic and Beyond: Studies in Mainland Austronesian Languages. Pacific Linguistics. Vol. 569. Canberra: Australian National University. :10.15144/PL-569. hdl:1885/146271. ISBN 0-85883-561-4. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)

doi

Thurgood, Graham (1999). . Oceanic Linguistics Special Publication No. 28. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-2131-9.

From Ancient Cham to Modern Dialects: Two Thousand Years of Language Contact and Change: With an Appendix of Chamic Rreconstructions and Loanwords

; Cabaton, Antoine (1906). Dictionnaire čam-français. Volume 7 of Publications de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient. Paris: E. Leroux.

Aymonier, Étienne

Aymonier, Etienne (1889). . Saigon: Imprimerie coloniale.

Grammaire de la langue chame

Blood, D. L., & Blood, D. (1977). East Cham language. Vietnam data microfiche series, no. VD 51-72. Huntington Beach, Calif: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Blood, D. L. (1977). A romanization of the Cham language in relation to the Cham script. Vietnam data microfiche series, no. VD51-17. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Edwards, E. D.; Blagden, C. O. (1939). "A Chinese Vocabulary of Cham Words and Phrases". Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London. 10 (1): 53–91.  607926.

JSTOR

Braginsky, Vladimir (2014). . Routledge. pp. 398–. ISBN 978-1-136-84879-7.

Classical Civilizations of South-East Asia

Moussay, Gerard (1971). Dictionnaire Cam-Vietnamien-Français (in French). Phan Rang: Centre Culturel Cam.

Sakaya (2014). Từ điển Chăm (in Vietnamese). Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Tri Thức.  978-604-908-999-2.

ISBN

Various (2011). Ngôn ngữ Chăm: thực trạng và giải pháp (in Vietnamese). Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Phụ Nữ.

has an archive including written materials of Cham

Kaipuleohone