Yi syllable Nbox

It records one syllable in standardized Liangshan Yi writing. NBOX is its Latin-letter spelling, not an English translation; the final x marks secondary-high tone, a pitch category in Liangshan Yi.

Older Yi writing was used for religious, magical, medical, and family-history texts. Village ritual specialists—people who kept ceremony and manuscript traditions—passed them down. A Yi tradition credits Aki with creating the script during the Tang dynasty (618–907). The earliest surviving dated Yi-script inscription is on a bronze bell from 1485; the earliest known paper or sheepskin texts date to around 1500.

The standardized Liangshan form drew on older local Yi writing to support literacy. It was devised in 1974 and officially promulgated in 1980. It standardizes Liangshan Yi, not every Yi variety. Older signs vary in shape and writing direction and appear not to derive from Chinese Han characters, the characters used to write Chinese.