What ꈳ means
It writes one spoken syllable, not a whole word. In Yi Pinyin, a Latin-letter system for standardized Liangshan Yi, this syllable is spelled mgax; the final x marks its tone. Read ꈳ inside its Yi word: neighboring syllables supply the word's meaning.
Traditional Yi writing had local forms and predates this standard. The earliest reliably dated surviving evidence is a bronze-bell inscription from 1485. Bimo, Yi ritual specialists, kept texts for religious rites, magic, healing, and family histories. A modern phonetic syllabary based on Liangshan forms was developed in the 1970s and promulgated in 1980 to improve literacy.
Where does this syllabary fit?
The standard follows Liangshan Yi. It groups signs by syllable and reflects that variety; other Yi varieties do not necessarily share the same syllable inventory or readings.
A Unicode proposal from 2024 describes standardized Sichuan Yi in use in schools, newspapers, public signs, and video subtitles.
Ordinary in Yi writing; opaque without enough Yi context.
Do not infer a full word from one isolated syllable.
Part of the collection
Who writes ꈳ
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What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsRead it as the mgax syllable; neighboring syllables carry the word-level meaning.
Don't confuse it with
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Related characters
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Questions people ask
1Why does ꈳ show as a box on some devices?
Not every system ships a font for the Yi Syllables block. Where none is installed, the character shows as an empty box; adding a font such as Noto fixes it. The character itself is still correct and copies correctly.
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How to type or find ꈳ
- Search it as
- mgax · nuosu · liangshan yi · sichuan yi · yi pinyin · yi font · 彝文 · 彝语
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ꈳ\A233Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.