What ꑜ means
It starts with a nasal sound and ends on a falling pitch. In Liangshan Nuosu spelling, nyup begins with a nasal sound made with the tongue raised toward the palate, followed by the vowel “u”; let the pitch fall. Final p marks the low-falling tone, not a final p consonant.
How did Liangshan Yi writing develop?
The modern syllabary grew from older, regional Yi writing. Traditional forms varied by region and were passed down among generations of bimo, Yi ritual specialists. Their manuscripts covered scripture, legend, history, medicine, and astrology.
The Liangshan standard was devised in 1974 and officially promulgated in 1980 to support literacy in Nuosu. It adapted traditional signs into a phonetic syllabary for this language variety, not one system for every Yi language.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1Why does ꑜ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type ꑜ
ꑜ\A45CCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.