Yi syllable Surx

It represents a spoken syllable in the standardized Liangshan Yi script. The Latin-letter spelling used to identify it is surx; the final x marks a secondary high tone, a contrast in pitch. A syllable is one beat of spoken language, and its role in a Nuosu word depends on the surrounding text.

Yi script and Chinese Han characters are distinct writing systems: ꌢ belongs to a syllabary, where each sign represents a syllable. It descends from traditional local Yi scripts, whose forms varied widely and whose signs often stood for words or ideas. Traditional Yi script is historically known as Cuan or Wei.

Bimo, Nuosu ritual specialists, traditionally preserved and transmitted these local scripts through texts on religion, healing, divination, history, and family genealogies. The oldest securely dated surviving Yi inscription is on a bronze bell cast in 1485, during China's Ming dynasty. Objects dated to the Western Han (206 BCE–9 CE) and Shu Han (223–237 CE) have been proposed as evidence of earlier Yi writing, but their identification is disputed. The standardized Liangshan syllabary was devised in 1974 and officially promulgated in 1980; it writes the Liangshan dialect, not every Yi variety.