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tê chî7 [Lahu]

In Lahu-speaking Southeast Asia, ? – 20ᵗʰ century, a unit of length, the distance from “the point of the elbow to the tip of the closed fist.”¹. Synonym, tê jâ7-chî7*.The tê chî7 is twice the size of the tê kû.

“chî7” is a classifier and carries the unit’s meaning; “tê” simply means “one” or “a”, but is grammatically essential.

*Because hardly anyone has a font on their web browser that includes the International Phonetic Alphabet character for a glottal stop ʔ, we have used the numeral 7 to represent this character.

1. James A. Matisoff.
English-Lahu Lexicon.
UC Publications in Linguistics No. 139.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

Page 468.