ꐘ Yi Syllable Jjit

What ꐘ means

It marks a Yi syllable; the surrounding word gives its meaning.

The standard writes it “jjit” in Latin letters; the final t marks a steady high pitch. The spelling identifies a syllable rather than translating it.

How did ꐘ enter the modern Yi syllabary?

It belongs to the standardized Liangshan Yi syllabary.

The oldest securely dated surviving Yi inscription is on a bronze bell from 1485. Earlier writing on stone, bronze, pottery, and bone is also reported, leaving the script’s origin and age debated. Bimo, Yi ritual specialists, used older local scripts for religious, magical, medical, and family-lineage texts.

The Liangshan standard was devised in 1974 and officially promulgated in 1980 to support literacy; it spread through textbooks, newspapers, official documents, and literature. Older Yi characters appear to have developed independently of Han characters, although the modern standard uses a Han-style layout and Chinese punctuation. ꐘ belongs to this phonetic standard, not every historical Yi form.

How do I type ꐘ?

Use Unicode input or a Yi-aware keyboard.

Enter A418 through an editor’s code-point method; exact keystrokes depend on the app. For Yi words, select the syllable through an input method that supports Yi and its word context.

If it appears as an empty square, the active font lacks this Yi glyph; switch to a font with Yi coverage.

At home in Yi writing; outside that context, its syllable reading is hard to infer.

Alone, it gives the recipient no Yi word from which to infer a translation.