Yi script

The Yi scripts ( ; ) are two scripts used to write the Yi languages; Classical Yi (an ideographic script), and the later Yi syllabary. This is to be distinguished from romanized Yi ( ) which was a system (or systems) invented by missionaries and intermittently used afterwards by some government institutions (and still used outside Sichuan province for non-Nuosu Yi languages, but adapted from the standard Hanyu Pinyin system and used to romanize another syllabary based on a subset of simplified Han ideograms). There was also the alphasyllabary (or abugida) devised by Sam Pollard, the Pollard script for the Miao language spoken in Yunnan province, which he adapted for the Nasu language as well. Present day traditional Yi writing can be sub-divided into five main varieties, namely, Nuosu (the prestige form of the Yi language centred on the Liangshan area), Nasu (including the Wusa), Nisu (Southern Yi), Sani and Azhe.

The Yi scripts ( ; ) are two scripts used to write the Yi languages; Classical Yi (an ideographic script), and the later Yi syllabary. This is to be distinguished from romanized Yi ( ) which was a system (or systems) invented by missionaries and intermittently used afterwards by some government institutions (and still used outside Sichuan province for non-Nuosu Yi languages, but adapted from the standard Hanyu Pinyin system and used to romanize another syllabary based on a subset of simplified Han ideograms). There was also the alphasyllabary (or abugida) devised by Sam Pollard, the Pollard script for the Miao language spoken in Yunnan province, which he adapted for the Nasu language as well. Present day traditional Yi writing can be sub-divided into five main varieties, namely, Nuosu (the prestige form of the Yi language centred on the Liangshan area), Nasu (including the Wusa), Nisu (Southern Yi), Sani and Azhe. ==Classical Yi== Classical Yi or Traditional Yi is a syllabic logographic system that was reputedly devised, according to Nuosu mythology, during the Tang dynasty (618–907) by a Nuosu hero called Aki ( ). However, the earliest surviving examples of the Yi script date back to only the late 15th century and early 16th century, the earliest dated example being an inscription on a bronze bell dated to 1485. There are tens of thousands of manuscripts in the Yi script, dating back several centuries, although most are undated. In recent years a number of Yi manuscript texts written in traditional Yi script have been published. The original script is said to have comprised 1,840 characters, but over the centuries widely divergent glyph forms have developed in different Yi-speaking areas, an extreme example being the character for "stomach" which exists in some forty glyph variants. Due to this regional variation as many as 90,000 different Yi glyphs are known from manuscripts and inscriptions. Factors for regional divergence include usage in manuscripts instead of printed material and isolation of Yi communities. Although similar to Chinese in function, the glyphs are independent in form, with little to suggest that they are directly related. However, there are some borrowings from Chinese, such as the characters for numbers used in some Yi script traditions. Languages written with the classical script included Nuosu, Nisu, Wusa Nasu, and Mantsi. Used by Bimo priests, it is traditionally written on manuscripts from top to bottom, in columns stacking from left to right, then rotated during reading to be read from right to left, in rows from top to bottom. ==Modern Yi== The Modern Yi script ( 'Nuosu script') is a standardized syllabary derived from the classic script in 1974 by the local Ethnic Affairs Commission in Sichuan. In 1980, it was ratified by the State Council as the official script of the Liangshan dialect of the Nuosu Yi language of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, and consequently is known as Liangshan Standard Yi Script ( ). There are 756 basic glyphs based on the Liangshan dialect, plus 63 for syllables used only for words borrowed from Chinese. Yunnan did not officially adopt the Liangshan script, but developed its own Yunnan Standard Yi Script ( ) on different principles, which emphasized cross-dialect intelligibility, as well as retention of shared logographic forms. The Yunnan script has 2,608 glyphs, of which 2,258 are logographic, plus 350 phonetic glyphs. The Yunnan script was ratified by the provincial government in Yunnan in 1987. Guizhou published a dictionary in 1991¹ which identified standard and variant forms of traditional Yi logographs used in Nasu area. The native syllabary represents vowel and consonant-vowel syllables, formed of 43 consonants and 8 vowels that can occur with any of three tones, plus two "buzzing" vowels that can only occur as mid tone. Not all combinations are possible. Although the Liangshan dialect has four tones (and others have more), only three tones (high, mid, low) have separate glyphs. The fourth tone (rising) may sometimes occur as a grammatical inflection of the mid tone, so it is written with the mid-tone glyph plus a diacritic mark (a superscript arc). Counting syllables with this diacritic, the script represents 1,164 syllables. In addition, there is a syllable iteration mark, ꀕ (represented as w in Yi pinyin), that is used to reduplicate a preceding syllable.

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