A distinct form of the Yi script was traditionally used, though few can still read it.

The Yi script was originally logosyllabic like Chinese, and dates to at least the 13th century.

In addition, the Yi script is similar to Hanzi, but is not known to be directly related to it.

(This was later replaced by the Yi script.)

The prestige variety is Nuosu, which is written in the Yi script.

However, there are some borrowings from Chinese, such as the characters for numbers used in some Yi script traditions.

Some glyphs resemble the Yi script, and some appear to be adaptations of Chinese characters.

Yi script, the writing of Yi.

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.

There are also ethnically Yi languages of Vietnam which use the Yi script, such as Mantsi.

Some scholars believe this script to be phonetic, pointing to similarities between some of the symbols and symbols of the later Yi script.

Signs are in Chinese characters and the swirls and circles of Yi script, a Tibeto-Burman language (as is Tibetan).

And both cultures also use syllabic writing systems such as Japanese kana and Chinese Yi script, there are also many Chinese alphabets.

The Yi script, for example, contains 756 different symbols (or 1,164, if symbols with a particular tone diacritic are counted as separate syllables, as in Unicode).

Yi Radicals is a Unicode block containing character elements used for organizing Yi dictionaries in the standard Liangshan Yi script.

Yi Syllables is a Unicode block containing the characters of the Liangshan Standard Yi script for writing the Nuosu, or Yi, language.

Other scripts in China that borrowed or adapted some Chinese characters but are otherwise distinct include Geba script, Sui script, Yi script and Lisu syllabary.

The youngest two sons led their tribes eastwards and were defeated by Han, before finally making western Guizhou their home and creating the largest quantity of Yi script documents.

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.

More divergent are Tangut, Khitan large script, and its offspring Jurchen, as well as Yi script and possibly Korean Hangul, which were inspired by Chinese although not directly descended from it.

Bimo, who can read Yi scripts while Sunyi cannot, are the most revered and maybe also important agents in the Nuosu religion, to the point that sometimes the Nuosu religion is also called "bimo religion".

The Yi of Liangshan prefecture in southern Sichuan speak the Yi language, which is more closely related to Burmese; Yi is written using the Yi script, a syllabary standardized in 1974.

A number of works of history, literature, and medicine, as well as genealogies of the ruling families, written in the Old Yi script are still in use, and there are Old Yi stone tablets and steles in the area.

For example, the modern Yi script is used to write a language that has no diphthongs or syllable codas; unusually among syllabaries, there is a separate glyph for every consonant-vowel-tone combination (CVT) in the language (apart from one tone which is indicated with a diacritic).