Yi syllable byp

It records a spoken syllable; context gives its word meaning.

In the standard spelling byp, final p marks a low-falling voice pitch, not a final consonant. The syllable alone has no fixed English translation.

Older Yi writing used locally varied signs for meanings, modeled on Chinese characters but apparently not descended directly from them. Priests in individual villages passed manuscripts down for religious, magical, medical, and family-history texts. Tradition credits Aki with creating this older script during the Tang dynasty (618–907); the earliest reliably dated surviving example is a bronze-bell inscription from 1485. A Latin-letter scheme appeared in 1956. The standardized Liangshan syllabary, derived from older Yi signs, was devised in 1974 to aid literacy and officially promulgated in 1980 for the Liangshan dialect alone.