Yi syllable ku

ꈐ writes the Nuosu syllable ku. Nuosu is the Liangshan variety of Yi. In its standard Latin-letter spelling, ku is pronounced with a brief puff of air after k, then the oo sound in “food”; keep the pitch level in the middle range.

Nuosu words are built from syllables, and the same syllable can appear in different words. Read the whole word or phrase to translate it; ꈐ alone has no single fixed English gloss.

Yi writing grew through local traditions.

The earliest securely dated surviving example is a 1485 inscription on a bronze bell. Claims for older writing on stone, pottery, bronze, and bone exist, but their readings or dates remain disputed.

In traditional Yi communities, bimo—ritual specialists—copied texts used for religious, magical, medical, and family-history writing. Local teaching traditions developed different glyph shapes, pronunciations, and writing directions, so older Yi materials can vary by region.

Older classical Yi writing included many word- or idea-based characters, sometimes with alternate forms. The Liangshan standard, devised in 1974 and officially promulgated in 1980, instead records the Northern Yi dialect syllable by syllable; it does not cover every Yi variety.