What ꆝ means
It writes one syllable in the Liangshan Yi standard. Each sign in this phonetic syllabary represents a spoken syllable. “Hliep” is the romanized label for this one; its final p marks a low-falling tone in that romanization.
Yi writing has older, regionally varied forms: the earliest reliably dated surviving examples are monumental inscriptions from the fifteenth century. Traditional local forms were used especially by ritual specialists for religious, magical, medical, and genealogical texts. The Liangshan standard was devised in 1974 and officially promulgated in 1980 for education and publishing.
Why does ꆝ show as a square?
The display needs a font with Yi syllable coverage. A missing-glyph box means the app cannot find a suitable font; a fallback font can change the glyph's appearance, but not the underlying character. As of 2026, Noto Sans Yi and SIL's Nuosu project document font coverage for Yi syllables.
To type it, use a Yi Syllables input method. As of 2026, SIL's Nuosu project documents a Keyman keyboard for Yi Syllables and says it excludes Yi Radicals, a separate block of Yi writing characters.
Neutral in Liangshan Yi writing; outside a Yi-language context, it reads as an unexplained syllable.
Can I send ꆝ on its own? Only if the recipient reads Yi or expects a character sample; otherwise its intended message is unclear.
What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsDon't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1Why does ꆝ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type ꆝ
ꆝ\A19DCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.