Yi Syllable Lit

It writes one high-tone syllable in Nuosu. Nuosu is a Yi language. The Yi script is a syllabary: each character represents one syllable. Its standard romanized spelling is lit; final t marks high tone, not an English gloss. The word meaning comes from the surrounding Nuosu text.

The history of the Yi script includes locally varied writing traditions, not a single uniform syllabary. Traditional Nuosu origin stories credit Aki, a legendary figure, with creating Yi writing during the Tang dynasty; the earliest surviving dated monuments are about 1485. Before standardization, bimo (Yi ritual specialists) used local forms in religious, magical, medical, and genealogical texts. The Liangshan standard was devised in 1974 and officially promulgated in 1980 to improve literacy, then used in schools, official documents, newspapers, literary works, and published ritual texts. Yi writing developed independently of Chinese Han characters and is unrelated to neighboring Tibetan, Burmese, and Tai scripts.

How do you type ꆷ?

Use a Yi input method and choose the lit candidate. A Yi input method converts phonetic romanization into candidate syllables. Microsoft's Windows guide, updated 2024-06-20, says Enter or Space accepts the selected candidate. Here, lit is the romanized input; final t marks high tone, not English slang.