Yi script
Encyclopedia
The Yi script, also historically known as Cuan Wen or Wei Shu , is used to write the Yi languages.

Classical Yi

Classical Yi is a syllabic logographic
Logogram
A logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme . This stands in contrast to phonograms, which represent phonemes or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantic categories.Logograms are often commonly known also as "ideograms"...

 system that was reputedly devised during the Tang dynasty
Tang Dynasty
The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...

 (618–907) by someone called Aki . However, the earliest surviving examples of the Yi script only date back to 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. 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.

Modern Yi

The Modern Yi script ( nɔ̄sū bū̠mā 'Nosu script') is a standardized syllabary
Syllabary
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...

 derived from the classic script in 1974 by the local Chinese government
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

. It was made the official script of the Liangshan (Cool Mountain) dialect of the Yi language
Yi language
Nuosu , also known as Northern Yi, Liangshan Yi, and Sichuan Yi, is the prestige language of the Yi people; it has been chosen by the Chinese government as the standard Yi language and, as such, is the only one taught in school, both in its oral and written form...

 in 1980. Other dialects of Yi do not yet have a standardized script. There are 756 basic glyphs based on the Liangshan dialect, plus 63 for syllables only used for words borrowed from Chinese.

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
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...

) that is used to reduplicate a preceding syllable.

Syllabary

The syllabary of standard modern Yi is illustrated in the table below as follows:
  - b p bb nb hm m f v d t dd nd hn n hl l g k gg mg hx ng h w z c zz nz s ss zh ch rr nr sh r j q jj nj ny x y
  [p] [pʰ] [b] [m͡b] [m̥] [m] [f] [v] [t] [tʰ] [d] [n͡d] [n̥] [n] [ɬ] [l] [k] [kʰ] [ɡ] [ŋ͡ɡ] [h] [ŋ] [x] [ɣ] [t͡s] [t͡sʰ] [d͡z] [nd͡z] [s] [z] [t͡ʂ] [t͡ʂʰ] [d͡ʐ] [nd͡ʐ] [ʂ] [ʐ] [t͡ɕ] [t͡ɕʰ] [d͡ʑ] [nd͡ʑ] [nʲ] [ɕ] [ʑ]
it [i̋] ꀀ                  
ix [ǐ]                    
i [ī]                    
ip [î]                      
iet [ɛ̋]                                                      
iex [ɛ̌]                
ie [ɛ̄]                
iep [ɛ̂]                      
at [a̋]                  
ax [ǎ]              
a [ā]              
ap [â]                
uot [ɔ̋]                                                                
uox [ɔ̌]              
uo [ɔ̄]              
uop [ɔ̂]                            
ot [ő]            
ox [ǒ]
o [ō]    
op [ô]
et [ɯ̋]                                                                        
ex [ɯ̌]                      
e [ɯ̄]                        
ep [ɯ̂]                            
ut [ű]                    
ux [ǔ]              
u [ū]              
up [û]              
urx [ǔ̠]                  
ur [ū̠]                  
yt [ɿ̋]                                  
yx [ɿ̌]                                
y [ɿ̄]                                
yp [ɿ̂]                                
yrx [ɿ̠̌]                                        
yr [ɿ̠̄]                                        
    [p] [pʰ] [b] [m͡b] [m̥] [m] [f] [v] [t] [tʰ] [d] [n͡d] [n̥] [n] [ɬ] [l] [k] [kʰ] [ɡ] [ŋ͡ɡ] [h] [ŋ] [x] [ɣ] [t͡s] [t͡sʰ] [d͡z] [nd͡z] [s] [z] [t͡ʂ] [t͡ʂʰ] [d͡ʐ] [nd͡ʐ] [ʂ] [ʐ] [t͡ɕ] [t͡ɕʰ] [d͡ʑ] [nd͡ʑ] [nʲ] [ɕ] [ʑ]
- b p bb nb hm m f v d t dd nd hn n hl l g k gg mg hx ng h w z c zz nz s ss zh ch rr nr sh r j q jj nj ny x y

Consonants

The consonant series are tenuis stop, aspirate, voiced, prenasalized, voiceless nasal, voiced nasal, voiceless fricative, voiced fricative, respectively. In addition, hl, l are laterals, and hx is [h]. V, w, ss, r, y are the voiced fricatives. With stops and affricates, voicing is shown by doubling the letter.

Plosive series

Labial
Labial consonant
Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...

: b [p], p [pʰ], bb [b], nb [m͡b], hm [m̥], m [m], f [f], v [v]
Alveolar
Alveolar consonant
Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...

: d [t], t [tʰ], dd [d], nd [n͡d], hn [n̥], n [n], hl [ɬ], l [l]
Velar
Velar consonant
Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....

: g [k], k [kʰ], gg [ɡ], mg [ŋ͡ɡ], hx [h], ng [ŋ], h [x], w [ɣ]

Affricate series

Alveolar
Alveolar consonant
Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...

: z [t͡s], c [t͡sʰ], zz [d͡z], nz [nd͡z], s [s], ss [z]
Retroflex: zh [t͡ʂ], ch [t͡ʂʰ], rr [d͡ʐ], nr [nd͡ʐ], sh [ʂ], r [ʐ]
Palatal: j [t͡ɕ], q [t͡ɕʰ], jj [d͡ʑ], nj [nd͡ʑ], ny [nʲ], x [ɕ], y [ʑ]

Vowels

Vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

s
Transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...

i ie a uo o e u ur y yr
IPA transcription
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...

i ɛ a ɔ o ɯ u ɿ ɿ̱̠

Tones

An unmarked syllable has mid level tone (33), e.g. ā (or alternatively a˧). Other tones are shown by a final consonant:
t : high level tone (55), e.g. a̋ (or alternatively a˥)
x : high rising tone (34), e.g. ǎ (or alternatively a˧˦)
p : low falling tone (21), e.g. â (or alternatively a˨˩)

Unicode

The Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

 block for Modern Yi is Yi syllables (U+A000 to U+A48C), and comprises 1,164 syllables (syllables with a diacritic mark are encoded separately, and are not decomposable into syllable plus combining diacritical mark) and one syllable iteration mark (U+A015, incorrectly named YI SYLLABLE WU). In addition, a set of 55 radicals
Radical (Chinese character)
A Chinese radical is a component of a Chinese character. The term may variously refer to the original semantic element of a character, or to any semantic element, or, loosely, to any element whatever its origin or purpose...

for use in dictionary classification are encoded at U+A490 to U+A4C6 (Yi Radicals).

Classical Yi has not yet been encoded in Unicode, but a proposal to encode 88,613 Classical Yi characters was made in 2007.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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