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僳 is a phono-semantic compound: the left-side radical 亻 (a variant of 人, 'person') suggests a human or ethnic category, while the right-side component 粟 (millet, unhusked grain) provides the pronunciation sù. It functions almost solely as a phonetic transcription tool, having been adopted to render the name of the Lisu people, an ethnic group inhabiting the mountainous regions of southwestern China and Southeast Asia. Thus, 僳 has no independent meaning outside the compound 傈僳 (Lìsù), serving as a direct orthographic adaptation for recording this ethnolinguistic group within standard Chinese writing.
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