The Chakma people were in origin Tibeto-Burman, related to the Burmese. The Chakma language (Changma Vaj or Changma Kodha) which they now speak is Indo-European, part of the Southeastern Bengali branch of Eastern Indo-Aryan. Its better-known closest relatives are Bengali, Assamese, Chittagonian, Bishnupriya, and Sylheti. It is spoken by nearly 310,000 people in southeast Bangladesh near Chittagong City, and another 300,000 in India in Mizoram, As...
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The Chakma people were in origin Tibeto-Burman, related to the Burmese. The Chakma language (Changma Vaj or Changma Kodha) which they now speak is Indo-European, part of the Southeastern Bengali branch of Eastern Indo-Aryan. Its better-known closest relatives are Bengali, Assamese, Chittagonian, Bishnupriya, and Sylheti. It is spoken by nearly 310,000 people in southeast Bangladesh near Chittagong City, and another 300,000 in India in Mizoram, Assam, and Tripura. Literacy in Chakma script is low. The script itself is also called Ajhā pāṭh, sometimes romanized Ojhopath.
Chakma is of the Brahmic type: the consonant letters contain an inherent vowel. Consonant clusters are written with conjunct characters, and a visible vowel killer shows the deletion of the inherent vowel when there is no conjunct.
Four independent vowels exist: a, i, u, and e. Other vowels in initial position are formed by adding the vowel sign to a, as in ī, ū, ai, oi. Some modern writers...
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