What ꆠ means
It writes the syllable hla in standardized Nuosu Yi.
Nuosu is the Liangshan variety of Yi. In the standard Latin-based spelling, the syllable is written hla; in Nuosu vocabulary it has a “soul” or “spirit” sense. A single ꆠ is not a picture of a soul, so the surrounding word determines the translation.
How did the Yi script develop?
It grew through many local traditions before a Liangshan standard emerged.
Traditional Yi writing, historically called Cuan or Wei, was an ideographic script with many regional forms. A tradition credits Aki with creating it during the Tang dynasty; the earliest surviving inscription is on a bronze bell dated 1485.
Bimo (Yi ritual specialists) handed manuscripts down through generations for ritual, medical, magical, and family-history work. Paper manuscripts survive from the late Ming.
The standardized Liangshan script selected older local forms in the 1970s and was officially promulgated in 1980. It writes Nuosu, the Liangshan variety of Yi, not every Yi variety; local traditions differ in glyphs and writing direction. In the standardized syllabary, each sign records a syllable, while separate Yi radicals are stroke elements used as lookup aids.
Language-specific: it belongs to Nuosu Yi writing, not a universal ghost symbol.
The soul or spirit gloss belongs to Yi words; ꆠ alone is not a generic ghost icon.
Don't confuse it with
2Combination ideas
1Questions people ask
2Why does ꆠ appear as a square?
That is a font-coverage issue: the active font lacks this Yi glyph. Use a font that supports Yi; the character itself remains ꆠ.
Is ꆠ a Chinese character?
No. ꆠ is a syllabic sign in Yi writing. Traditional Yi writing is not considered derived from Han characters, though the modern standard follows some Han writing conventions.
How to type ꆠ
ꆠ\A1A0Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.