Yi
From Conservapedia
The Yi Syllabary is a "siniform" syllabary, used by many non-Chinese ethnic groups in south-west China. The term "siniform" refers to the fact that they are broadly based on Chinese characters. The earliest known examples of Yi dates from the 16th century. It is used to write the Yi, or Lolo, language - a member of the Tibeto-Burman language family, which is spoken by between several million people in the Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan.
At one point, what is know as "Classic Yi" contained some 8,000 characters, although this was simplified in 1975, resulting in "Modern Yi", a standardised syllabary of 819 characters. Of these, 756 are for Yi syllables, with the remaining 63 being used for loan words.
What makes it such a large syllabary - possibly the largest ever to be standardised - is the fact that besides having 43 consonants and 10 vowels, it also has 4 tones, which can be applied to various syllabic combinations. The tones are indicated in the table below, by a two-digit number following the vowel.
Imagine a pentatonic musical scale with five pitch levels (1 to 5, with 5 being the highest). The tone starts with the pitch of the first digit and shifts to the pitch of the second digit. Thus a (55) syllable would be a high tone, (33) a mid tone, (34) would be a rising tone, and (21) a falling tone, in a low register.
The Yi Syllabary
