Yi syllable Nguox

One standardized Liangshan Yi syllable, labeled “nguox” in Yi Pinyin.

The Yi Pinyin spelling nguox labels this syllable; final x marks the secondary-high tone, a distinct pitch pattern in Yi. It also serves as the input sequence.

ꉥ records a syllable, not a full gloss. Read it with neighboring Yi characters to identify the word; alone, it gives no English message.

How did Yi script become standardized?

The Liangshan standard grew from older regional Yi writing.

Older Yi writing had regional forms preserved by village ritual specialists in religious, magical, medical, and genealogical texts, not one shared script. The earliest evidence is disputed: one account dates a Yi-inscribed stone tablet to AD 223–237; the Unicode Standard identifies a bronze-bell inscription dated 1485 as the earliest surviving example.

One tradition credits Aki with devising an older Yi script during the Tang dynasty, a period in Chinese history (618–907). The modern Liangshan form was devised in 1974 and officially promulgated in 1980 to improve literacy, drawing on older Northern Yi forms. Older Yi writing used signs for ideas, made in imitation of Chinese writing but appearing not to derive from Han characters; the standardized syllabary is for Liangshan Yi, not every Yi tradition.