Yi syllable hnep

By itself, ꅻ names a syllable; its word meaning depends on context.

Standard Liangshan Yi romanization writes the syllable hnep; its final p marks the low-falling tone. A Nuosu word list records ꅻ as the literary word for “ear.” That is a particular dictionary entry, not a translation for every message containing the character.

How did Yi writing develop?

Today’s Liangshan Yi standard grew from older local writing traditions.

Traditional Yi writing, historically called Cuan or Wei, had many local forms rather than one standard. Its older signs represented meanings; they were distinct from this modern syllabary. One widespread origin tradition credits a figure named Aki with creating the script during the Tang dynasty (618–907). The earliest surviving dated example is a 1485 inscription on a bronze bell. Village priests preserved manuscripts used for religious, magical, medical, and family-history texts.

A Latin-letter spelling scheme for Liangshan Yi was introduced in 1956 to improve literacy. The modern Yi-script standard was devised in 1974 and officially promulgated in 1980 for the same effort. It writes Liangshan Yi, not every Yi language or local writing tradition. Yi signs were not derived from Han characters, although Yi dictionaries later used radicals modeled on Han radicals as lookup aids.