Yi script

Yi
Type	Syllabary in modern form; Logographic in archaic variations
Languages	various Yi languages
Time period	Since at least 15th century (earliest attestation) to present, syllabic version established in 1974
Direction	Left-to-right
ISO 15924	Yiii, 460
Unicode alias	Yi
Unicode range	U+A000–U+A48F Yi Syllables, U+A490–U+A4CF Yi Radicals

The Yi script (Yi: ꆈꌠꁱꂷ nuosu bburma [nɔ̄sū bū̠mā]; Chinese: 彝文; pinyin: Yí wén) is an umbrella term for two scripts used to write the Yi language; Classical Yi (an ideogram script), and the later Yi Syllabary. The script is also historically known in Chinese as Cuan Wen (Chinese: 爨文; pinyin: Cuàn wén) or Wei Shu (simplified Chinese: 韪书; traditional Chinese: 韙書; pinyin: Wéi shū) and various other names (夷字、倮語、倮倮文、毕摩文), among them "tadpole writing" (蝌蚪文).

This is to be distinguished from romanized Yi (彝文罗马拼音 Yíwén Luómǎ pīnyīn) which was a system (or systems) invented by missionaries and intermittently used afterwards by some government institutions. There was also a Yi abugida or alphasyllabary devised by Sam Pollard, the Pollard script for the Miao language, which he adapted into "Nasu" as well. Present day traditional Yi writing can be sub-divided into five main varieties (Huáng Jiànmíng 1993); Nuosu (the prestige form of the Yi language centred on the Liangshan area), Nasu (including the Wusa), Nisu (Southern Yi), Sani (撒尼) and Azhe (阿哲).

Classical Yi is a syllabic logographic system that was reputedly devised during the Tang dynasty (618–907) by someone called Aki (Chinese: 阿畸; pinyin: Āqí). 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.