Yi syllable njiex

It writes one syllable; the word meaning comes from context. ꐶ writes one syllable in standardized Liangshan Yi. Nuosu is the self-name of people who speak this dialect. That syllable alone does not provide a dependable word-level translation: surrounding Yi text identifies how it is used. In the standard Liangshan romanization—a way of spelling the language with Latin letters—the final x in njiex marks secondary-high tone, a pitch pattern that distinguishes syllables; it is not a cue to pronounce the English letter x.

Traditional Yi writing, historically called Cuan or Wei, was ideographic: its signs represented words or ideas rather than syllables. It had many local forms, and its signs appear to have developed independently of Han (Chinese) characters. The oldest surviving dated example is an inscription on a bronze bell from 1485; many other manuscripts are undated. Before the modern standard, village priests passed local Yi writing traditions across generations in religious, magical, medical and genealogical texts.

A Latin-letter spelling system for Liangshan Yi was introduced in 1956. A standardized form of its traditional script was devised in 1974 and officially promulgated in 1980 to support literacy; it later appeared in Nuosu textbooks, edited classics and newspapers. The encoded syllabary covers Liangshan Nuosu, not every Yi variety. Standardized writing generally runs left to right and uses punctuation shared with modern Chinese.

How do I type ꐶ?

In the SIL Yi keyboard, enter njiex and press Space. On desktop, the SIL Yi keyboard converts the standard Liangshan spelling njiex followed by Space to ꐶ. On its mobile layout, choose nj as the initial, then iex as the vowel-and-tone option. These steps apply to that keyboard.