Yi Syllabary

Origin

The origins of the Yi Syllabary are lost in the mists of time, although it was possibly influenced by the Chinese writing system. The earliest known examples of Yi writing date from the 16th century.

The syllabary was used mainly for religious and secret writing for many centuries. Many writers added new characters of their own invention. At one stage, the syllabary consisted of more than 8,000 characters.

A standardized form of the syllabary containing a total of 819 characters was official adopted in 1975 and has been taught in schools since 1978. 756 of the characters are for Yi syllables, the remaining 63 are used for loan words from Chinese and other languages.

In the 20th century, a romanisation system known as 'black Yi writing' was devised for Yi. This system is used by Yi Christians, but other Yi people still use the Yi Syllabary.

Notable features

The Yi Syllabary is probably the largest syllabary ever to be standardised.
Each character represents one syllable. Many characters have up to three separate forms to represents the three different tones of spoken Yi.

Used to write:

Yi or Lolo, a member of the Loloish branch of the Tibeto-Burman language family. Yi is spoken by between 2 and 5.5 million people in the Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan.

Part of the Yi Syllabary

Yi syllabary

Sample text

Sample of written Yi

Links

Free Yi font
http://www.sil.org/computing/fonts/silyi/

Further information about the Yi script and language
http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Yi/

Information about the Yi people (in Chinese)
http://www.yizuren.com

Other syllabaries

Bamum, Blackfoot, Caroline Island Script, Carrier, Celtiberian, Cherokee, Cree, Cypriot, Hiragana, Iberian, Inuktitut, Katakana, Kpelle, Loma, Mende, Ndjuká, Nüshu, Ojibwe, Vai, Yi

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