Re: Data and Musings...

David Peterson wrote:
>    Has anyone ever heard of a language called Cham ([tSAm], I imagine)?
Of course.  It's Austronesian; actually a group of languages, spoken mostly
in the mountains and interior of southern VN and to some extent in Cambodia.
Of distinguished and ancient lineage, now fallen on hard times.  In the
first millennium C.E. there was an Indianized state (probably based on
maritime trade) called Champa that occupied most of SVN, the principal city
was Panduranga (modern Phan Rang).  They fought back and forth with the
Angkorian state, to whom they ultimately lost out; while at roughly the same
time, the Viets were moving down from the north, pushing the Chams along
before them.  Some apparently took refuge in the mountains, and stayed;
others moved into Cambodia where some stayed (note  place names like Kompong
Cham, cf. Ml. kampong 'village'), others seem to have moved on-- it's very
likely IMPO that the modern Achehnese of N.Sumatra are their descendants.

The languages have been influenced phonologically/lexically by VNese and
other surrounding Mon-Khmer langs. -- Austronesian CVCVC structure tends to
be reduced to (C)CVC, and some langs. are incipiently tonal; stressed vowels
tend to diphthongize.  These features also characterize Achehnese (not the
tones, however).
There is a dictionary in French of (I think) Old Cham, based on
inscriptions-- as I recall from a breif glimpse long ago, the script more
closely resembled modern Cambodian than the one at omniglot, but I could be
wrong.  In the late 50s, during relative peace over there, the SIL did some
work with various Chamic groups; and there was a PhD diss. from Indiana U,
of which I have a copy somewhere.  Hard to say how much work has been done
there since 1975, but the language(s) is/are of great interest to us
Austronesianists.  They probably belong in the same subgroup as Malay.  If
you want, I can give you some references, or at least point you in some
right directions.  There's quite a lot out there.  Your UC library should
have most of it.

>If you go to www.omniglot.com and go to the scripts part you can see it.>
It _is_ elegant, though frankly I wonder if the languages are still
written???
All the scripts of SE Asia are Brahmic in origin, and came there along with
Hinduism and Buddhism (in that order, it seems)-- from the looks of them,
mostly from South India/Ceylon.  An interesting question to pursue.

I wondered what the characters "ngue", "nue" etc were for; looks like
labialization, but that's  very un-Austronesian; possibly for writing VNese
loan words?   The "nh" series BTW probably are palatal ñ-- "nh" is the VNese
form, VN was first romanized by Portuguese clerics, thank you very much.

Reply