Yi syllable ngop

It is the Nuosu Yi syllable ngop, used for “we/us” or “our.”

In a Nuosu phrase, ꉪ can serve as the first-person-plural pronoun “we/us” or as possessive “our”; grammar decides which. The short ngop pronoun is a reduced form speakers may avoid when clarity matters. The longer form ꉪꊇ makes “we/us” explicit.

How did Yi writing develop?

The Liangshan standard grew from older Yi writing traditions.

Nuosu tradition credits the figure Aki with creating Yi writing during the Tang period. The earliest securely dated surviving example is a bronze-bell inscription from 1485; paper and sheepskin manuscripts survive from around 1500. Those older forms need not look like ꉪ.

Yi ritual specialists called bimo used traditional Yi writing for religious, magical, medical and genealogical texts. The Liangshan standard for Nuosu was devised in 1974 and officially promulgated in 1980; it appeared in textbooks and newspapers. Other Yi regions kept distinct writing traditions.

Why can ꉪ be hard to type or display?

A Yi-capable font or input method may be missing.

Microsoft's Windows Yi IME instructions, updated 2024-06-20, describe phonetic entry followed by a candidate choice. As of 2026-09-12, Noto Sans Yi and Nuosu SIL provide Yi coverage; without it, ꉪ may appear as a box.