What ꀻ means
It is a Liangshan Yi syllable, not a whole word.
The romanization pip gives a rough sound: an aspirated p (a p with a puff of air) followed by an ee-like vowel. Its final p marks low-falling tone, not a closing consonant. The syllable has no fixed English gloss by itself; in a documented Liangshan word, ꑊꋌꀻ is glossed “wash-basin.”
How did Yi writing develop?
The Liangshan standard grew from older regional Yi writing.
Some scholars have proposed Yi-like inscriptions from the Western Han. Surviving paper and sheepskin texts date to around 1500, while a bronze bell carries a 1485 inscription. By the Ming period, Yi writing also appears in formal regional settings.
Yi writing has several regional traditions, with forms and readings that are not all mutually intelligible. Traditional forms recorded religious, medical, magical, and genealogical texts used by village ritual specialists. The Liangshan standard was devised in 1974 and officially issued in 1980 to support literacy; it later appeared in official documents, newspapers, literature, and bilingual books for Nuosu. Historical names associated with Yi writing include Cuan and Wei. The Naxi people's Dongba is a separate neighboring ritual script. Unicode encoding records digital standardization, not the character's origin.
Neutral in Yi writing; outside a Yi-language passage, it reads as a syllable from that script.
The final p in the romanization marks tone, not a closing p sound.
Part of the collection
Who writes ꀻ
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What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsA Liangshan Yi syllable with no fixed English gloss on its own.
Don't confuse it with
3
p in pip marks low-falling tone.
t for high-level tone, not the low-falling tone marked by final p in pip.
x for secondary high tone, not the low-falling tone marked by final p in pip.Combination ideas
1Questions people ask
1Why does ꀻ show as a box?
This is font-dependent: when Yi font coverage is missing, ꀻ may appear as a box or replacement glyph.
More like this
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How to type or find ꀻ
- Search it as
- pip · yi syllable · liangshan yi · nuosu · yi script · yi writing · yi ime · yi font
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ꀻ\A03Bpip and select the matching character from the candidates. Microsoft documented this input method as of 2024.pip in a Yi phonetic input method, then select the matching character; final p marks low-falling tone.Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.