Yi syllable ssyrx

It writes one syllable in the standardized Liangshan Yi script.

Yi Pinyin spells it ssyrx using Latin letters. The final x marks a secondary-high tone, a pitch pattern in spoken Yi, rather than an extra consonant. The syllable's word meaning comes from the surrounding Yi text, so ꍄ alone does not translate as a complete English word.

An earlier Latin-letter scheme for Liangshan Yi appeared in 1956. The modern syllabary, a system with one sign per syllable, was devised in 1974 and officially promulgated in 1980 to improve literacy. Earlier Yi writing had many regional signs for words or ideas, used especially in manuscripts that village priests passed down for religious, magical, medical, and family-history texts. The modern Liangshan syllabary grew from that tradition but standardizes one dialect; it is not interchangeable with every local Yi writing system. A bronze-bell inscription dated 1485 is the earliest reliably dated surviving Yi example; that dates the artifact, not ꍄ or the beginning of the tradition.

Why does ꍄ show as a square?

A square or blank usually means missing Yi font support.

An app may show an empty box or fallback shape when its font cannot display Yi. The encoded character is still the same. Fonts can draw it with different outlines; a change in shape alone does not make it another character.

How can I type ꍄ in Yi?

Use ssyrx with a Yi input method.

As of 2026, Microsoft's Windows Yi input method accepts Yi Pinyin spellings such as ssyrx and converts them into Yi characters.