Yi syllable guop

ꇩ writes one Nuosu Yi syllable, spelled guop in Latin letters.

Nuosu, also called Northern or Liangshan Yi, is a variety of Yi. Its standard spelling uses one character per syllable. In guop, the final p marks a low-falling tone—a pitch pattern—not a p sound at the end.

On its own, ꇩ identifies a syllable, not reliably a whole word or message. If someone sends it alone, ask for the surrounding Nuosu text before translating it.

How did Liangshan Yi writing change?

The modern standard grew from locally varied Yi writing.

Traditional Yi writing varied by region, including in its characters and writing direction. Bimo—ritual specialists—preserved and taught manuscripts used for religious, magical, medical, and family-history texts. A traditional Nuosu origin account credits Aki with creating the script. The earliest surviving securely dated Yi-script example is an inscription on a bronze bell from 1485.

To support wider literacy, a standard Liangshan syllabary was devised in 1974 and officially promulgated in 1980. It selected forms from traditional Liangshan writing and fixed a left-to-right system. As of 2026, the encoded standard is specific to Liangshan Yi, or Nuosu; it is not a shared writing system for every Yi language.

How do I type ꇩ?

Enter guop in Yi input, then select the matching character.

On Windows, the Yi input method takes the syllable’s Latin-letter spelling on a regular keyboard and offers Yi characters as candidates. Microsoft documented this phoneme-entry workflow as of 2024.

Enter guop and choose ꇩ. If it shows as a box, your text may contain the character correctly while the active font lacks Yi Syllables coverage.