What ꇳ means
It records one spoken syllable: gux in Liangshan Yi.
In Yi Pinyin, a romanized spelling system for Yi, gux sounds roughly like “coo,” with a secondary-high tone (a pitch level). The final x marks that tone. One syllable alone may not identify the intended word, so read it within the surrounding Yi word or sentence.
Yi writing grew in regional forms. Bimo (Yi ritual specialists) kept ritual, magical, medical and genealogical texts. Among its earliest surviving monumental evidence is a bronze bell dated 1485. The standardized Liangshan form was devised in 1974 and promulgated in 1980; it represents Liangshan Nuosu, while other Yi varieties keep regional traditions. It is not derived from Han characters. Yi Pinyin supports pronunciation, indexing and input. A Dec 2024 study describes digital Nuosu use mainly for literature, art and learning, not personal messaging.
How do I type ꇳ?
Use the Yi Pinyin spelling gux in a Yi input method.
Microsoft's Windows Yi IME guide, updated 2024-06-20, says to add Yi input, type gux, then choose ꇳ from the candidates. Enter or Space accepts the first suggestion. The SIL Yi keyboard enters syllables, not the separate Yi radical characters.
In general chat, ꇳ reads as a Yi text sample; its sound and tone do not reveal the whole word.
A syllable alone does not supply a dependable word-level translation; use the surrounding Yi text.
Don't confuse it with
3Questions people ask
1Why does ꇳ show as a square?
It can. A font without Yi coverage may show a box instead of the character. A font with Yi support, such as Nuosu SIL, can display it.
How to type ꇳ
ꇳ\A1F3Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.