Yi syllable bba

In Nuosu, ꁠ is bba, glossed “carry on the back.”

That dictionary gloss identifies a lexical entry, not a complete sentence. In Yi Pinyin, the Latin-letter system used to spell and enter Liangshan Nuosu, bba has no final tone letter; that absence marks mid-level tone, while final t, p, and x mark other tones.

How did Yi writing develop?

The Liangshan standard reshaped a varied Yi writing tradition.

Some Yi origin traditions credit Aki, a figure in those stories, with creating writing. The earliest securely dated surviving monument is a bronze bell from 1485; claims for older pottery, stone, bronze, and bone examples remain disputed. Bimo, Yi religious specialists, transmitted texts for ceremonies, divination, medicine, and family histories.

The Liangshan standard, devised in 1974 and officially promulgated in 1980, recast an older tradition whose signs often represented ideas as a syllabary for Liangshan Nuosu. In a syllabary, each sign represents a spoken syllable. It grew within Yi writing traditions rather than as a direct borrowing from Han characters, the characters used to write Chinese; other Yi regions retain distinct writing traditions.

How do I type ꁠ?

Enter bba in a Yi input method, or use Unicode input.

Yi Pinyin uses Latin letters to spell and enter Liangshan Nuosu. In an input method that supports it, enter bba; its missing final tone letter marks mid-level tone.

For direct Unicode entry, use U+A060 in an editor that accepts code-point input.