Odd Define of Table Column Includes CHAR in Column Length

We have an Oracle 11g database.

Recently a vendor altered a column this way:

ALTER TABLE myTable MODIFY myColumn varchar2(12 char);

I don't know what the column looked like before but when you describe the table it looks like this for that column:

Name                 Type
-----------------      -----------------------------
myColumn       VARCHAR2(12 CHAR)


In looking at the dba_tab_columns table, the column shows this way:

table_name    column_name    data_type     data_length
-------------         -----------------        ----------------   ---
myTable          myColumn          VARCHAR2   12


Google searches show others have done this but I haven't found an explanation on WHY?  
Can anyone explain why you would want to specify "CHAR" in the length of a column?

Thank you.