Yi Syllable Ni

It is a Yi syllable, not a word with one fixed translation.

A 2022 Nuosu word list gives ꅿ, transcribed ni³³ (the superscript numbers mark pitch), the gloss “give off the scent of…”. That is one listed meaning, not a universal translation: Yi syllables can represent different words by context, and a word may contain several syllables. Nuosu is a Yi language.

How did ꅿ enter Yi writing?

Its place comes from a long Yi writing tradition.

A Yi creation story credits Aki, a culture hero, with creating the script in the Tang era. A bronze bell inscribed in Yi and Chinese is dated 1485; undated manuscripts may be older.

Before the modern standard, Yi writing varied by locality in its glyphs, writing direction, and character set. Bimo, Yi ritual specialists, used older forms for religious, magical, medical, and genealogical texts. The standardized Liangshan form was devised in 1974 and promulgated in 1980. It follows a later branch of Classical Yi, an older writing tradition, and serves Nuosu, not every Yi language.

How do I type ꅿ?

Choose ꅿ from a Yi syllable input method.

On Windows, the Yi input method accepts Latin phoneme input and offers Yi-character candidates; Enter or Space confirms a choice. The SIL Yi keyboard has syllable layouts but not keys for Yi Radicals, separate components used in some Yi writing.

If ꅿ appears as a box, the selected font lacks Yi coverage. A font changes the visible shape, not the character.