Yi Syllable Kut

It writes one Nuosu Yi syllable inside a word.

kut is the romanized label used by the Liangshan standard: a Latin-letter spelling of the syllable. The final t marks a high-level tone; it is not a final consonant.

Older Yi writing was not one uniform script: local traditions differed in character sets, shapes, and reading direction, and many signs represented words or ideas. One origin tradition credits a Yi figure named Aki during China’s Tang dynasty (618–907), but the oldest securely dated surviving inscription is on the bronze Chenghua Bell of 1485. Village ritual priests, called bimo, passed down manuscripts on religion, magic, medicine, history, and genealogy. The Liangshan standard, devised in 1974 and officially promulgated in 1980, selected forms from traditional Liangshan writing and assigned them fixed syllabic values for education and print.

How do I type ꈎ?

Enter kut with a Yi input method, then select the character.

Yi input methods accept phonemes typed with Latin keys and offer Yi-character candidates. Microsoft’s Windows Yi IME guide, updated 2024-06-20, describes entering the syllable’s phonemes and selecting a candidate; Enter or Space accepts the first suggestion.

Why does ꈎ appear as a box?

The font may lack Yi coverage; the text can still be intact.

If an app shows an empty space or a box, the character may still be present in the message. A font or app with Yi glyph support can display it.