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133-605: The Swedes ( Swedish : svear ; Old Norse : svíar ; probably from the PIE reflexive pronominal root * s(w)e , "one's own [tribesmen/kinsmen]"; Old English : Swēon ) were a North Germanic tribe who inhabited Svealand ("land of the Swedes") in central Sweden and one of the progenitor groups of modern Swedes , along with Geats and Gutes . They had their tribal centre in Gamla Uppsala . The first author who wrote about
266-445: A common gender with the definite suffix -en and the definite article den , in contrast with the neuter gender equivalents -et and det . The verb system was also more complex: it included subjunctive and imperative moods and verbs were conjugated according to person as well as number . By the 16th century, the case and gender systems of the colloquial spoken language and the profane literature had been largely reduced to
399-477: A guttural or "French R" pronunciation in the South Swedish dialects ; consequently, these dialects lack retroflex consonants . Swedish is a stress-timed language, where the time intervals between stressed syllables are equal. However, when casually spoken, it tends to be syllable-timed . Any stressed syllable carries one of two tones , which gives Swedish much of its characteristic sound. Prosody
532-537: A change from tauþr into tuþr . Moreover, the øy diphthong changed into a long, close ø , as in the Old Norse word for "island". By the end of the period, these innovations had affected most of the Runic Swedish-speaking area as well, with the exception of the dialects spoken north and east of Mälardalen where the diphthongs still exist in remote areas. Old Swedish (Swedish: fornsvenska )
665-525: A classical ethnographic tradition which includes authors such as Herodotus and Julius Caesar . The book begins (chapters 1–27) with a description of the lands, laws, and customs of the various tribes. Later chapters focus on descriptions of particular tribes, beginning with those who lived closest to the Roman empire, and ending with a description of those who lived on the shores of the Baltic Sea , such as
798-528: A conversation. Due to the close relation between the Scandinavian languages, a considerable proportion of speakers of Danish and especially Norwegian are able to understand Swedish. There is considerable migration between the Nordic countries , but owing to the similarity between the cultures and languages (with the exception of Finnish ), expatriates generally assimilate quickly and do not stand out as
931-513: A few days later that Tacitus had spoken "with all the majesty which characterizes his usual style of oratory". A lengthy absence from politics and law followed while he wrote the Histories and the Annals . In 112 to 113, he held the highest civilian governorship, that of the Roman province of Asia in western Anatolia , recorded in the inscription found at Mylasa mentioned above. A passage in
1064-747: A group. According to the 2000 United States Census , some 67,000 people over the age of five were reported as Swedish speakers, though without any information on the degree of language proficiency. Similarly, there were 16,915 reported Swedish speakers in Canada from the 2001 census. Although there are no certain numbers, some 40,000 Swedes are estimated to live in the London area in the United Kingdom. Outside Sweden and Finland, there are about 40,000 active learners enrolled in Swedish language courses. In
1197-629: A large proportion of the remaining 100,000 in the Scandinavian countries, France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada and Australia. Over three million people speak Swedish as a second language, with about 2,410,000 of those in Finland. According to a survey by the European Commission , 44% of respondents from Finland who did not have Swedish as a native language considered themselves to be proficient enough in Swedish to hold
1330-413: A lawyer and as an orator ; his skill in public speaking ironically counterpoints his cognomen , Tacitus ("silent"). He served in the provinces from c. 89 to c. 93 , either in command of a legion or in a civilian post. He and his property survived Domitian 's reign of terror (81–96), but the experience left him jaded and perhaps ashamed at his own complicity, instilling in him
1463-425: A more abstract sense, such as that set of fish; while fisken means "the fish". In certain cases, the definite form indicates possession, e. g., jag måste tvätta hår et ("I must wash my hair"). Adjectives are inflected in two declensions – indefinite and definite – and they must match the noun they modify in gender and number. The indefinite neuter and plural forms of an adjective are usually created by adding
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#17327731468171596-485: A name for the Swedish people. Although this distinction is convention in modern Norwegian, Danish and Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese do not distinguish between svíar (Icelandic) or sviar (Faroese) and sænskir (Icelandic) or svenskarar (Faroese) as words for modern Swedes. The form Suiones appears in the Roman author Tacitus 's Germania . A closely similar form, Swēon , is found in Old English and in
1729-435: A noun. They can double as demonstrative pronouns or demonstrative determiners when used with adverbs such as här ("here") or där ("there") to form den/det här (can also be "denna/detta") ("this"), de här (can also be "dessa") ("these"), den/det där ("that"), and de där ("those"). For example, den där fisken means "that fish" and refers to a specific fish; den fisken is less definite and means "that fish" in
1862-589: A place called litlæ swethiuthæ , which is probably the islet Sverige (Sweden) in Saltsjön in eastern Stockholm. 500 m west of the Islet Danmark. The earliest instance, however, appears to be Suetidi in Jordanes ' Getica (6th century). The name Swethiuth and its different forms gave rise to the different Latin names for Sweden, Suethia , Suetia and Suecia as well as the modern English name for
1995-493: A slave. After Tacitus' mention of the Suiones, the sources are silent about them until the 6th century as Scandinavia still was in pre-historic times. Some historians have maintained that it is not possible to claim that a continuous Swedish ethnicity reaches back to the Suiones of Tacitus. According to this view the referent of an ethnonym and the ethnic discourse have varied considerably during different phases of history. In
2128-689: A special branch of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland has official status as the regulatory body for Swedish in Finland. Among its highest priorities is to maintain intelligibility with the language spoken in Sweden. It has published Finlandssvensk ordbok , a dictionary about the differences between Swedish in Finland and Sweden. From the 13th to 20th century, there were Swedish-speaking communities in Estonia , particularly on
2261-442: A suffix ( -t or -a ) to the common form of the adjective, e. g., en grön stol (a green chair), ett grönt hus (a green house), and gröna stolar ("green chairs"). The definite form of an adjective is identical to the indefinite plural form, e. g., den gröna stolen ("the green chair"), det gröna huset ("the green house"), and de gröna stolarna ("the green chairs"). Swedish pronouns are similar to those of English. Besides
2394-512: A tribe named the Hillevionum gente ( Nominative : Hillevionum gens ), in 500 villages, and they considered their country to be a world of its own. What strikes the commentators of this text is that this large tribe is unknown to posterity, unless it was a simple misspelling or misreading of Illa S vionum gente . This would make sense, since a large Scandinavian tribe named the Suiones
2527-413: A village, Gammalsvenskby ("Old Swedish Village"). A few elderly people in the village still speak a Swedish dialect and observe the holidays of the Swedish calendar, although their dialect is most likely facing extinction. From 1918 to 1940, when Estonia was independent, the small Swedish community was well treated. Municipalities with a Swedish majority, mainly found along the coast, used Swedish as
2660-722: Is co- official language . Swedish was long spoken in parts of Estonia , although the current status of the Estonian Swedish speakers is almost extinct. It is also used in the Swedish diaspora , most notably in Oslo , Norway, with more than 50,000 Swedish residents. Swedish is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages . In the established classification, it belongs to
2793-441: Is dedicated to Fabius Iustus, a consul in 102 AD. Tacitus's writings are known for their dense prose that seldom glosses the facts, in contrast to the style of some of his contemporaries, such as Plutarch . When he writes about a near defeat of the Roman army in Annals I,63, he does so with brevity of description rather than embellishment. In most of his writings, he keeps to a chronological narrative order, only seldom outlining
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#17327731468172926-543: Is found in the ethnonym of the Germanic tribe Suebi , preserved to this day in the name Schwaben ( Swabia ). The details of the phonetic development vary between different proposals. Noréen (1920) proposed that Suiones is a Latin rendering of Proto-Germanic * Swihoniz , derived from the PIE root * swih- "one's own". The form * Swihoniz would in Ulfilas ' Gothic become * Swaíhans , which later would result in
3059-481: Is generally seen as adding specific Central Swedish features to the new Bible. Though it might seem as if the Bible translation set a very powerful precedent for orthographic standards, spelling actually became more inconsistent during the remainder of the century. It was not until the 17th century that spelling began to be discussed, around the time when the first grammars were written. Capitalization during this time
3192-538: Is marked primarily through suffixes (endings), complemented with separate definite and indefinite articles . The prosody features both stress and in most dialects tonal qualities. The language has a comparatively large vowel inventory. Swedish is also notable for the voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative , a highly variable consonant phoneme . Swedish nouns and adjectives are declined in genders as well as number . Nouns are of common gender ( en form) or neuter gender ( ett form). The gender determines
3325-568: Is often one of the most noticeable differences between dialects. The standard word order is, as in most Germanic languages , V2 , which means that the finite verb (V) appears in the second position (2) of a declarative main clause . Swedish morphology is similar to English; that is, words have comparatively few inflections . Swedish has two genders and is generally seen to have two grammatical cases – nominative and genitive (except for pronouns that, as in English, also are inflected in
3458-638: Is one of the official languages of the European Union , and one of the working languages of the Nordic Council . Under the Nordic Language Convention , citizens of the Nordic countries speaking Swedish have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable for interpretation or translation costs. The Swedish Language Council ( Språkrådet )
3591-548: Is possible that this refers to a brother—if Cornelius was indeed his father. The friendship between the younger Pliny and Tacitus leads some scholars to conclude that they were both the offspring of wealthy provincial families. The province of his birth remains unknown, though various conjectures suggest Gallia Belgica , Gallia Narbonensis , or Northern Italy . His marriage to the daughter of Narbonensian senator Gnaeus Julius Agricola implies that he came from Gallia Narbonensis. Tacitus's dedication to Lucius Fabius Justus in
3724-692: Is probably the one who has contributed the most (see for instance the Heimskringla ). His descriptions sometimes concur with, sometimes contradict the previous sources. For a continuation, see History of Sweden (800–1521) . Swedish language Swedish ( endonym : svenska [ˈsvɛ̂nːska] ) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family , spoken predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland . It has at least 10 million native speakers, making it
3857-475: Is termed nusvenska (lit., "Now-Swedish") in linguistics, and started in the last decades of the 19th century. It saw a democratization of the language with a less formal written form that approached the spoken one. The growth of a public school system also led to the evolution of so-called boksvenska (literally, "book Swedish"), especially among the working classes, where spelling to some extent influenced pronunciation, particularly in official contexts. With
3990-587: Is the later historian whose work most closely approaches him in style. Tacitus makes use of the official sources of the Roman state: the Acta Senatus (the minutes of the sessions of the Senate) and the Acta Diurna (a collection of the acts of the government and news of the court and capital). He also read collections of emperors' speeches, such as those of Tiberius and Claudius. He is generally seen as
4123-527: Is the predominant language; in 19 municipalities , 16 of which are located in Åland , Swedish is the sole official language. Åland county is an autonomous region of Finland. According to a rough estimation, as of 2010 there were up to 300,000 Swedish-speakers living outside Sweden and Finland. The largest populations were in the United States (up to 100,000), the UK, Spain and Germany (c. 30,000 each) and
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4256-455: Is the regulator of Swedish in Sweden but does not attempt to enforce control of the language, as for instance the Académie française does for French . However, many organizations and agencies require the use of the council's publication Svenska skrivregler in official contexts, with it otherwise being regarded as a de facto orthographic standard. Among the many organizations that make up
4389-407: Is the sole official language of Åland (an autonomous province under the sovereignty of Finland), where the vast majority of the 26,000 inhabitants speak Swedish as a first language. In Finland as a whole, Swedish is one of the two "national" languages, with the same official status as Finnish (spoken by the majority) at the state level and an official language in some municipalities . Swedish
4522-631: Is the term used for the medieval Swedish language. The start date is usually set to 1225 since this is the year that Västgötalagen ("the Västgöta Law") is believed to have been compiled for the first time. It is among the most important documents of the period written in Latin script and the oldest Swedish law codes . Old Swedish is divided into äldre fornsvenska (1225–1375) and yngre fornsvenska (1375–1526), "older" and "younger" Old Swedish. Important outside influences during this time came with
4655-450: Is uncertainty about when Tacitus wrote Dialogus de oratoribus . Many characteristics set it apart from the other works of Tacitus, so that its authenticity has at various times been questioned. It is likely to be early work, indebted to the author's rhetorical training, since its style imitates that of the foremost Roman orator Cicero . It lacks (for example) the incongruities that are typical of his mature historical works. The Dialogus
4788-467: Is well known: inde consilium mihi ... tradere ... sine ira et studio, quorum causas procul habeo. my purpose is ... to relate ... without either anger or zeal, motives from which I am far removed. There has been much scholarly discussion about Tacitus's "neutrality". Throughout his writing, he is preoccupied with the balance of power between the Senate and the emperors , and the increasing corruption of
4921-452: The Dialogus may indicate a connection with Spain, and his friendship with Pliny suggests origins in northern Italy. No evidence exists, however, that Pliny's friends from northern Italy knew Tacitus, nor do Pliny's letters hint that the two men had a common background. Pliny Book 9, Letter 23, reports that when asked whether he was Italian or provincial, he gave an unclear answer and so
5054-664: The Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum of Adam of Bremen about the Hamburg-Bremen archbishops who are denoted Sueones . Most scholars agree that Suiones and the attested Germanic forms of the name derive from the same Proto-Indo-European reflexive pronominal root, *s(w)e , as the Latin suus . The word must have meant "one's own (tribesmen)". In modern Scandinavian, the same root appears in words such as svåger (brother-in-law) and svägerska (sister-in-law). The same root and original meaning
5187-465: The Gustav Vasa Bible , a translation deemed so successful and influential that, with revisions incorporated in successive editions, it remained the most common Bible translation until 1917. The main translators were Laurentius Andreæ and the brothers Laurentius and Olaus Petri . The Vasa Bible is often considered to be a reasonable compromise between old and new; while not adhering to
5320-818: The Histories (Latin: Historiae )—examine the reigns of the emperors Tiberius , Claudius , Nero , and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors (69 AD). These two works span the history of the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus (14 AD) to the death of Domitian (96 AD), although there are substantial lacunae in the surviving texts. Tacitus's other writings discuss oratory (in dialogue format, see Dialogus de oratoribus ), Germania (in De origine et situ Germanorum ), and
5453-523: The Agricola , Tacitus asserts that he wishes to speak about the years of Domitian, Nerva and Trajan. In the Histories the scope has changed; Tacitus says that he will deal with the age of Nerva and Trajan at a later time. Instead, he will cover the period from the civil wars of the Year of the Four Emperors and end with the despotism of the Flavians . Only the first four books and twenty-six chapters of
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5586-464: The Annals fixes 116 as the terminus post quem of his death, which may have been as late as 125 or even 130. It seems that he survived both Pliny (died c. 113 ) and Trajan (died 117). It remains unknown whether Tacitus had any children. The Augustan History reports that Emperor Marcus Claudius Tacitus (r. 275–276) claimed him for an ancestor and provided for the preservation of his works, but this story may be fraudulent, like much of
5719-485: The Augustan History . Five works ascribed to Tacitus have survived (albeit with gaps), the most substantial of which are the Annals and the Histories . This canon (with approximate dates) consists of: The Annals and the Histories , published separately, were meant to form a single edition of thirty books. Although Tacitus wrote the Histories before the Annals , the events in the Annals precede
5852-577: The Byzantine Empire —to stop the emigration, especially as two other European courts simultaneously also recruited Scandinavians: Kievan Rus' c. 980–1060 and London 1018–1066 (the Þingalið ). As the dominions of the Swedish kings grew, the name of the tribe could be applied more generally during the Middle Ages to include also the Geats . Later it again meant only the people inhabiting
5985-465: The Ciceronian period , where sentences were usually the length of a paragraph and artfully constructed with nested pairs of carefully matched sonorous phrases, this is short and to the point. But it is also very individual. Note the three different ways of saying and in the first line ( -que , et , ac ), and especially the matched second and third lines. They are parallel in sense but not in sound;
6118-452: The Dani who were of the same stock. There are three Anglo-Saxon sources that refer to the Swedes. The earliest one is probably the least known, since the mention is found in a long list of names of tribes and clans. It is the poem Widsith from the 6th or the 7th century: On line 32, Ongentheow is mentioned and he reappears in the later epic poem Beowulf , which was composed sometime in
6251-679: The East Scandinavian languages , together with Danish , separating it from the West Scandinavian languages , consisting of Faroese , Icelandic , and Norwegian . However, more recent analyses divide the North Germanic languages into two groups: Insular Scandinavian (Faroese and Icelandic), and Continental Scandinavian (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish), based on mutual intelligibility due to heavy influence of East Scandinavian (particularly Danish) on Norwegian during
6384-520: The Fenni . Tacitus had written a similar, albeit shorter, piece in his Agricola (chapters 10–13). The Agricola (written c. 98 ) recounts the life of Gnaeus Julius Agricola, an eminent Roman general and Tacitus's father-in-law; it also covers, briefly, the geography and ethnography of ancient Britain . As in the Germania , Tacitus favorably contrasts the liberty of the native Britons with
6517-467: The French vous (see T-V distinction ). Ni wound up being used as a slightly less familiar form of du , the singular second person pronoun, used to address people of lower social status. With the liberalization and radicalization of Swedish society in the 1950s and 1960s, these class distinctions became less important, and du became the standard, even in formal and official contexts. Though
6650-509: The Histories . The second half of book 16 is missing, ending with the events of 66. It is not known whether Tacitus completed the work; he died before he could complete his planned histories of Nerva and Trajan, and no record survives of the work on Augustus and the beginnings of the Roman Empire , with which he had planned to finish his work. The Annals is one of the earliest secular historical records to mention Jesus of Nazareth , which Tacitus does in connection with Nero's persecution of
6783-546: The Histories ; together they form a continuous narrative from the death of Augustus (14) to the death of Domitian (96). Though most has been lost, what remains is an invaluable record of the era. The first half of the Annals survived in a single manuscript from Corvey Abbey in Germany, and the second half in a single manuscript from Monte Cassino in Italy; it is remarkable that they survived at all. In an early chapter of
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#17327731468176916-518: The United States , particularly during the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a significant Swedish-speaking immigrant population. This was notably true in states like Minnesota , where many Swedish immigrants settled. By 1940, approximately 6% of Minnesota's population spoke Swedish. Although the use of Swedish has significantly declined, it is not uncommon to find older generations and communities that still retain some use and knowledge of
7049-529: The fourth most spoken Germanic language , and the first among its type in the Nordic countries overall. Swedish, like the other Nordic languages , is a descendant of Old Norse , the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Age . It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish , although the degree of mutual intelligibility is dependent on
7182-581: The nationalist ideas that emerged during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the languages have separate orthographies , dictionaries, grammars, and regulatory bodies. Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are thus from a linguistic perspective more accurately described as a dialect continuum of Scandinavian (North Germanic), and some of the dialects, such as those on the border between Norway and Sweden, especially parts of Bohuslän , Dalsland , western Värmland , western Dalarna , Härjedalen , Jämtland , and Scania , could be described as intermediate dialects of
7315-410: The object form) – although it is debated if the genitive in Swedish should be seen as a genitive case or just the nominative plus the so-called genitive s , then seen as a clitic . Swedish has two grammatical numbers – plural and singular . Adjectives have discrete comparative and superlative forms and are also inflected according to gender, number and definiteness . The definiteness of nouns
7448-603: The persecution of Christians and one of the earliest extra-Biblical references to the crucifixion of Jesus . Details about the personal life of Tacitus are scarce. What little is known comes from scattered hints throughout his work, the letters of his friend and admirer Pliny the Younger , and an inscription found at Mylasa in Caria . Tacitus was born in 56 or 57 to an equestrian family. The place and date of his birth, as well as his praenomen (first name) are not known. In
7581-399: The 1950s, when their use was removed from all official recommendations. A very significant change in Swedish occurred in the late 1960s, with the so-called du-reformen . Previously, the proper way to address people of the same or higher social status had been by title and surname. The use of herr ("Mr." or "Sir"), fru ("Mrs." or "Ma'am") or fröken ("Miss") was considered
7714-626: The 1st century A.D that are quoted as referring to the Suiones. The first one is Pliny the Elder who said that the Romans had rounded the Cimbric peninsula ( Jutland ) where there was the Codanian Gulf ( Kattegat ?). In this gulf there were several large islands among which the most famous was Scatinavia ( Scandinavia ). He said that the size of the island was unknown but in a part of it dwelt
7847-577: The 2002 The Nordic languages: an international handbook of the history of the North Germanic languages edited by Oskar Bandle. * Swe is also the form cited by V. Friesen (1915), who regards the form Sviones as being originally an adjective, Proto-Germanic * Sweoniz , meaning "kindred". Then the Gothic form would have been * Swians and the H in Suehans an epenthesis . The Proto-Norse form would then also have been * Sweoniz , which also would have resulted in
7980-581: The 6th century Jordanes named two tribes he calls the Suehans and the Suetidi who lived in Scandza . They were famous for their fine horses. The Suehans were the suppliers of black fox skins for the Roman market. Then Jordanes names a tribe named Suetidi a name that is considered to refer to the Suiones as well and to be the Latin form of Sweþiuð . The Suetidi are said to be the tallest of men together with
8113-485: The 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse , evolved into Old Norse. This language underwent more changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, which resulted in the appearance of two similar dialects: Old West Norse (Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland) and Old East Norse (Denmark and Sweden). The dialects of Old East Norse spoken in Sweden are called Runic Swedish , while
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#17327731468178246-460: The 8th–11th centuries. The poem describes Swedish-Geatish wars , involving the Swedish kings Ongentheow , Ohthere , Onela and Eadgils who belonged to a royal dynasty called the Scylfings . These kings might have been historical as kings with similar names appear in Scandinavian sources as well (see list of legendary kings of Sweden ). There appears to be a prophecy by Wiglaf in the end of
8379-562: The Christians . Tacitus wrote three works with a more limited scope: Agricola , a biography of his father-in-law, Gnaeus Julius Agricola; the Germania , a monograph on the lands and tribes of barbarian Germania; and the Dialogus , a dialogue on the art of rhetoric. The Germania ( Latin title: De Origine et situ Germanorum ) is an ethnographic work on the Germanic tribes outside the Roman Empire. The Germania fits within
8512-471: The Modern Swedish period were the gradual assimilation of several different consonant clusters into the fricative [ʃ] and later into [ɧ] . There was also the gradual softening of [ɡ] and [k] into [j] and the fricative [ɕ] before front vowels . The velar fricative [ɣ] was also transformed into the corresponding plosive [ɡ] . The period that includes Swedish as it is spoken today
8645-565: The Pagans : Swéoland ), Suithiod – "Swede-people" ( Beowulf : Sweoðeod [hence Sweden]), Svía veldi or Svea rike – "Swede-realm" (Beowulf: Swéorice ). The political unification with the Geats in Götaland , a process that was not complete until the 13th century, is by some contemporary historians regarded as the birth of the Swedish kingdom , although the Swedish kingdom is named after them, Sverige in Swedish , from Svea rike – i.e.
8778-424: The Pious , Emperor of Francia , somewhere near Mainz . They informed the emperor that their leader was known as chacanus (the Latin for " khagan ") and that they lived in the north of Russia, but that they were Sueones . Dealing with Scandinavian affairs, Adam of Bremen relates in the 11th century Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum that the Sueones had many wives and were severe on crime. Hospitality
8911-451: The Roman invasion were famous for their skill in oratory and had been subjugated by Rome. As a young man, Tacitus studied rhetoric in Rome to prepare for a career in law and politics; like Pliny, he may have studied under Quintilian ( c. 35 AD – c. 100 ). In 77 or 78, he married Julia Agricola, daughter of the famous general Agricola . Little is known of their domestic life, save that Tacitus loved hunting and
9044-460: The Swedish Language Council, the Swedish Academy (established 1786) is arguably the most influential. Its primary instruments are the spelling dictionary Svenska Akademiens ordlista ( SAOL , currently in its 14th edition) and the dictionary Svenska Akademiens Ordbok , in addition to various books on grammar, spelling and manuals of style. Although the dictionaries have a prescriptive element, they mainly describe current usage. In Finland,
9177-449: The administrative language and Swedish-Estonian culture saw an upswing. However, most Swedish-speaking people fled to Sweden before the end of World War II , that is, before the invasion of Estonia by the Soviet army in 1944. Only a handful of speakers remain. Swedish dialects have either 17 or 18 vowel phonemes , 9 long and 9 short. As in the other Germanic languages, including English, most long vowels are phonetically paired with one of
9310-456: The atrocities which he ordered; with Domitian it was the chief part of our miseries to see and to be seen, to know that our sighs were being recorded... From his seat in the Senate , he became suffect consul in 97 during the reign of Nerva , being the first of his family to do so. During his tenure, he reached the height of his fame as an orator when he delivered the funeral oration for the famous veteran soldier Lucius Verginius Rufus . In
9443-604: The bigger picture, leaving the readers to construct that picture for themselves. Nonetheless, where he does use broad strokes, for example, in the opening paragraphs of the Annals , he uses a few condensed phrases which take the reader to the heart of the story. Tacitus's historical style owes some debt to Sallust . His historiography offers penetrating—often pessimistic—insights into the psychology of power politics, blending straightforward descriptions of events, moral lessons, and tightly focused dramatic accounts. Tacitus's own declaration regarding his approach to history ( Annals I,1)
9576-504: The colloquial spoken language of its day, it was not overly conservative in its use of archaic forms. It was a major step towards a more consistent Swedish orthography . It established the use of the vowels "å", "ä", and "ö", and the spelling "ck" in place of "kk", distinguishing it clearly from the Danish Bible, perhaps intentionally, given the ongoing rivalry between the countries. All three translators came from central Sweden, which
9709-746: The country. A second compound was Svíariki , or Sweorice in Old English, which meant "the realm of the Suiones". Their primary dwellings were in eastern Svealand . Their territories also very early included the provinces of Västmanland , Södermanland and Närke in the Mälaren Valley which constituted a bay with a multitude of islands. The region is still one of the most fertile and densely populated regions of Scandinavia. Their territories were called Svealand – "Swede-land" ("The Voyage of Ohthere " in Seven Books of History Against
9842-403: The declension of the adjectives . For example, the word fisk ("fish") is a noun of common gender ( en fisk ) and can have the following forms: The definite singular form of a noun is created by adding a suffix ( -en , -n , -et or -t ), depending on its gender and if the noun ends in a vowel or not. The definite articles den , det , and de are used for variations to the definitiveness of
9975-508: The dialect and accent of the speaker. Standard Swedish , spoken by most Swedes , is the national language that evolved from the Central Swedish dialects in the 19th century, and was well established by the beginning of the 20th century. While distinct regional varieties and rural dialects still exist, the written language is uniform and standardized . Swedish is the most widely spoken second language in Finland where its status
10108-541: The dialects of Denmark are referred to as Runic Danish . The dialects are described as "runic" because the main body of text appears in the runic alphabet . Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with the Younger Futhark alphabet, which had only 16 letters. Because the number of runes was limited, some runes were used for a range of phonemes , such as
10241-399: The empire. Nonetheless, the image he builds of Tiberius throughout the first six books of the Annals is neither exclusively bleak nor approving: most scholars view the image of Tiberius as predominantly positive in the first books, and predominantly negative after the intrigues of Sejanus . The entrance of Tiberius in the first chapters of the first book is dominated by the hypocrisy of
10374-615: The epic of new wars with the Swedes: When more reliable historic sources appear the Geats are a subgroup of the Swedes. The third Anglo-Saxon source is Alfred the Great 's translation of Orosius ' Histories , with appended tales of the voyages of Ohthere of Hålogaland and Wulfstan of Hedeby , who in the 9th century described the Sweon and Sweoland . Ohthere's account is limited to
10507-491: The fifth book survive, covering the year 69 and the first part of 70. The work is believed to have continued up to the death of Domitian on September 18, 96. The fifth book contains—as a prelude to the account of Titus's suppression of the First Jewish–Roman War —a short ethnographic survey of the ancient Jews , and it is an invaluable record of Roman attitudes towards them. The Annals , Tacitus's final work, covers
10640-545: The firm establishment of the Christian church and various monastic orders, introducing many Greek and Latin loanwords. With the rise of Hanseatic power in the late 13th and early 14th century, Middle Low German became very influential. The Hanseatic league provided Swedish commerce and administration with a large number of Low German -speaking immigrants. Many became quite influential members of Swedish medieval society, and brought terms from their native languages into
10773-607: The following statement about Swēoland: Wulfstan only mentions a few regions as being subject to the Sweons (in translation): The Annales Bertiniani relate that a group of Norsemen , who called themselves Rhos visited Constantinople around the year 838. Fearful of returning home via the steppes, which would leave them vulnerable to attacks by the Hungarians , the Rhos travelled through Germany. They were questioned by Louis
10906-440: The following year, he wrote and published the Agricola and Germania , foreshadowing the literary endeavors that would occupy him until his death. Afterward, he absented himself from public life, but returned during Trajan 's reign (98–117). In 100, he and his friend Pliny the Younger prosecuted Marius Priscus [ la ] ( proconsul of Africa) for corruption. Priscus was found guilty and sent into exile; Pliny wrote
11039-723: The form Suehans that Jordanes mentioned as the name of the Swedes in Getica . Consequently, the Proto-Norse form would have been * Swehaniz which following the sound-changes in Old Norse resulted in Old West Norse Svíar and Old East Norse Swear . Currently, however, the root for "one's own" is reconstructed as *s(w)e rather than * swih , and that is the root identified for Suiones e.g. in Pokorny's 1959 Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch and in
11172-432: The frivolous prosecutions which resulted ( Annals , 1.72). Elsewhere ( Annals 4.64–66) he compares Tiberius's public distribution of fire relief to his failure to stop the perversions and abuses of justice which he had begun. Although this kind of insight has earned him praise, he has also been criticized for ignoring the larger context. Tacitus owes most, both in language and in method, to Sallust, and Ammianus Marcellinus
11305-561: The god Freyr . During the Viking Age they constituted the basis of the Varangian subset, the Norsemen that travelled eastwards (see Rus' people ). The scholarly consensus is that the Rus' people originated in what is currently coastal eastern Sweden around the 8th century and that their name has the same origin as Roslagen in Sweden (with the older name being Roden ). According to
11438-480: The governing classes of Rome as they adjusted to the ever-growing wealth and power of the empire. In Tacitus's view, senators squandered their cultural inheritance—that of free speech —to placate their (rarely benign) emperor. Tacitus noted the increasing dependence of the emperor on the goodwill of his armies. The Julio-Claudians eventually gave way to generals, who followed Julius Caesar (and Sulla and Pompey ) in recognizing that military might could secure them
11571-653: The hatred of tyranny evident in his works. The Agricola , chs. 44 – 45 , is illustrative: Agricola was spared those later years during which Domitian, leaving now no interval or breathing space of time, but, as it were, with one continuous blow, drained the life-blood of the Commonwealth... It was not long before our hands dragged Helvidius to prison, before we gazed on the dying looks of Mauricus and Rusticus , before we were steeped in Senecio 's innocent blood. Even Nero turned his eyes away, and did not gaze upon
11704-457: The heartland of Uppland , or if the term was used commonly for all tribes within Svealand, in the same way as old Norway's different provinces were collectively referred to as Nortmanni . The history of this tribe is shrouded in the mists of time. Besides Norse mythology and Germanic legend, only a few sources describe them and there is very little information. There are two sources from
11837-483: The historian's mother was a daughter of Aulus Caecina Paetus , suffect consul of 37, and sister of Arria, wife of Thrasea. His father may have been the Cornelius Tacitus who served as procurator of Belgica and Germania ; Pliny the Elder mentions that Cornelius had a son who aged rapidly ( NH 7.76 ), which implies an early death. There is no mention of Tacitus's suffering such a condition, but it
11970-893: The historically attested forms. The name became part of a compound, which in Old West Norse was Svíþjóð ("the Svear people'", in Old East Norse Sweþiuð and in Old English Sweoðeod . This compound appears on runestones in the locatives i suiþiuþu ( Runestones Sö Fv1948;289 , Aspa Löt, and Sö 140 in Södermanland ), a suiþiuþu ( Runestone DR 344 , Simris, Scania ) and o suoþiauþu ( Runestone DR 216 , Tirsted, Lolland ). A 13th century Danish source in Scriptores rerum danicarum mentions
12103-506: The imperial system (see Tacitean studies , Black vs. Red Tacitists). His Latin style is highly praised. His style, although it has a grandeur and eloquence (thanks to Tacitus's education in rhetoric), is extremely concise, even epigrammatic —the sentences are rarely flowing or beautiful, but their point is always clear. The style has been both derided as "harsh, unpleasant, and thorny" and praised as "grave, concise, and pithily eloquent". A passage of Annals 1.1 , where Tacitus laments
12236-430: The industrialization and urbanization of Sweden well under way by the last decades of the 19th century, a new breed of authors made their mark on Swedish literature . Many scholars, politicians and other public figures had a great influence on the emerging national language, among them prolific authors like the poet Gustaf Fröding , Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf and radical writer and playwright August Strindberg . It
12369-614: The islands (e. g., Hiiumaa , Vormsi , Ruhnu ; in Swedish, known as Dagö , Ormsö , Runö , respectively) along the coast of the Baltic , communities that today have all disappeared. The Swedish-speaking minority was represented in parliament , and entitled to use their native language in parliamentary debates. After the loss of Estonia to the Russian Empire in the early 18th century, around 1,000 Estonian Swedish speakers were forced to march to southern Ukraine , where they founded
12502-476: The kingdom of the Suiones. The Æsir -cult centre in Gamla Uppsala , was the religious centre of the Swedes and where the Swedish king served as a priest during the sacrifices ( blóts ). Uppsala was also the centre of the Uppsala öd , the network of royal estates that financed the Swedish king and his court until the 13th century. Some dispute whether the original domains of the Suiones really were in Uppsala ,
12635-484: The language, particularly in rural communities like Lindström and Scandia . Swedish is the official main language of Sweden. Swedish is also one of two official languages of Finland. In Sweden, it has long been used in local and state government, and most of the educational system, but remained only a de facto primary language with no official status in law until 2009. A bill was proposed in 2005 that would have made Swedish an official language, but failed to pass by
12768-490: The last millennium and divergence from both Faroese and Icelandic. By many general criteria of mutual intelligibility, the Continental Scandinavian languages could very well be considered dialects of a common Scandinavian language. However, because of several hundred years of sometimes quite intense rivalry between Denmark and Sweden, including a long series of wars from the 16th to 18th centuries, and
12901-563: The letters of Sidonius Apollinaris his name is Gaius , but in the major surviving manuscript of his work his name is given as Publius . One scholar's suggestion of the name Sextus has been largely rejected. Most of the older aristocratic families failed to survive the proscriptions which took place at the end of the Republic , and Tacitus makes it clear that he owed his rank to the Flavian emperors ( Hist. 1.1 ). The claim that he
13034-528: The life of his father-in-law, Agricola (the general responsible for much of the Roman conquest of Britain ), mainly focusing on his campaign in Britannia ( De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae ). Tacitus's Histories offers insights into Roman attitudes towards Jews , descriptions of Jewish customs, and context for the First Jewish–Roman War . His Annals are of interest for providing an early account of
13167-427: The most reasonable one, whereupon they usually obey. During peacetime, they feel to be the king's equals but during wars they obey him blindly or whoever among them that he considers to be the most skillful. If the fortunes of war are against them they pray to one of their many gods ( Æsir ) and if they win they are grateful to him. The sagas are our foremost source for knowledge, and especially Snorri Sturluson , who
13300-434: The motives of the characters, often with penetrating insight—though it is questionable how much of his insight is correct, and how much is convincing only because of his rhetorical skill. He is at his best when exposing hypocrisy and dissimulation; for example, he follows a narrative recounting Tiberius's refusal of the title pater patriae by recalling the institution of a law forbidding any "treasonous" speech or writings—and
13433-577: The narrowest possible margin (145–147) due to a pairing-off failure. A proposal for a broader language law, designating Swedish as the main language of the country and bolstering the status of the minority languages, was submitted by an expert committee to the Swedish Ministry of Culture in March 2008. It was subsequently enacted by the Riksdag , and entered into effect on 1 July 2009. Swedish
13566-421: The national standard languages. Swedish pronunciations also vary greatly from one region to another, a legacy of the vast geographic distances and historical isolation. Even so, the vocabulary is standardized to a level that make dialects within Sweden virtually fully mutually intelligible. East Germanic languages West Germanic languages Icelandic Faroese Norwegian Danish Swedish In
13699-493: The new emperor and his courtiers. In the later books, some respect is evident for the cleverness of the old emperor in securing his position. In general, Tacitus does not fear to praise and to criticize the same person, often noting what he takes to be their more admirable and less admirable properties. One of Tacitus's hallmarks is refraining from conclusively taking sides for or against persons he describes, which has led some to interpret his works as both supporting and rejecting
13832-424: The north. An early change that separated Runic Danish from the other dialects of Old East Norse was the change of the diphthong æi to the monophthong é , as in stæinn to sténn "stone". This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older read stain and the later stin . There was also a change of au as in dauðr into a long open ø as in døðr "dead". This change is shown in runic inscriptions as
13965-441: The only acceptable way to begin conversation with strangers of unknown occupation, academic title or military rank. The fact that the listener should preferably be referred to in the third person tended to further complicate spoken communication between members of society. In the early 20th century, an unsuccessful attempt was made to replace the insistence on titles with ni —the standard second person plural pronoun)—analogous to
14098-402: The original Germanic three- gender system. Nouns , adjectives , pronouns and certain numerals were inflected in four cases; besides the extant nominative , there were also the genitive (later possessive ), dative and accusative . The gender system resembled that of modern German , having masculine, feminine and neuter genders. The masculine and feminine genders were later merged into
14231-524: The original tribal lands in Svealand , rather than the Geats. In modern North Germanic languages , the adjectival form svensk and its plural svenskar have replaced the name svear and is, today, used to denote all the citizens of Sweden. The distinction between the tribal Swedes ( svear ) and modern Swedes ( svenskar ) appears to have been in effect by the early 20th century, when Nordisk familjebok noted that svenskar had almost replaced svear as
14364-536: The outdoors. He started his career (probably the latus clavus , mark of the senator) under Vespasian (r. 69–79), but entered political life as a quaestor in 81 or 82 under Titus . He advanced steadily through the cursus honorum , becoming praetor in 88 and a quindecimvir , a member of the priestly college in charge of the Sibylline Books and the Secular Games . He gained acclaim as
14497-517: The pairs of words ending " -entibus … -is " are crossed over in a way that deliberately breaks the Ciceronian conventions—which one would, however, need to be acquainted with to see the novelty of Tacitus's style. Some readers, then and now, find this teasing of their expectations merely irritating. Others find the deliberate discord, playing against the evident parallelism of the two lines, stimulating and intriguing. His historical works focus on
14630-515: The period from the death of Augustus in AD ;14. He wrote at least sixteen books, but books 7–10 and parts of books 5, 6, 11, and 16 are missing. Book 6 ends with the death of Tiberius , and books 7–12 presumably covered the reigns of Caligula and Claudius . The remaining books cover the reign of Nero, perhaps until his death in June 68 or until the end of that year to connect with
14763-524: The political power in Rome. ( Hist. 1.4 ) Welcome as the death of Nero had been in the first burst of joy, yet it had not only roused various emotions in Rome, among the Senators, the people, or the soldiery of the capital, it had also excited all the legions and their generals; for now had been divulged that secret of the empire, that emperors could be made elsewhere than at Rome. Tacitus's political career
14896-463: The prevalent theory, the name Rus ' , like the Proto-Finnic name for Sweden ( *roocci ), is derived from an Old Norse term for "the men who row" ( rods- ) as rowing was the main method of navigating the rivers of Eastern Europe, and that it could be linked to the Swedish coastal area of Roslagen ( Rus-law ) or Roden , as it was known in earlier times. The name Rus ' would then have
15029-480: The reform was not an act of any centralized political decree, but rather the result of sweeping change in social attitudes, it was completed in just a few years, from the late 1960s to early 1970s. The use of ni as a polite form of address is sometimes encountered today in both the written and spoken language, particularly among older speakers. Swedish is the sole official national language of Sweden , and one of two in Finland (alongside Finnish ). As of 2006, it
15162-468: The rune for the vowel u , which was also used for the vowels o , ø and y , and the rune for i , also used for e . From 1200 onwards, the dialects in Denmark began to diverge from those of Sweden. The innovations spread unevenly from Denmark, creating a series of minor dialectal boundaries, or isoglosses , ranging from Zealand in the south to Norrland , Österbotten and northwestern Finland in
15295-779: The same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden: Ruotsi and Rootsi . Swedes made up the bulk of the Varangian Guard , this can be seen from the geographical location of the Varangian Runestones , of which almost all are found entirely in modern-day Sweden. Swedish men left to enlist in the Byzantine Varangian Guard in such numbers that a medieval Swedish law, Västgötalagen , from Västergötland declared no one could inherit while staying in "Greece"—the then Scandinavian term for
15428-444: The short /e/ (transcribed ⟨ ɛ ⟩ in the chart below). There are 18 consonant phonemes, two of which, / ɧ / and /r/ , vary considerably in pronunciation depending on the dialect and social status of the speaker. In many dialects, sequences of /r/ (pronounced alveolarly) with a dental consonant result in retroflex consonants ; alveolarity of the pronunciation of /r/ is a precondition for this retroflexion. /r/ has
15561-428: The short vowels, and the pairs are such that the two vowels are of similar quality , but with the short vowel being slightly lower and slightly centralized. In contrast to e.g. Danish, which has only tense vowels, the short vowels are slightly more lax, but the tense vs. lax contrast is not nearly as pronounced as in English, German or Dutch. In many dialects, the short vowel sound pronounced [ɛ] or [æ] has merged with
15694-747: The state of the historiography regarding the last four emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty , illustrates his style: "The histories of Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius and Nero, while they were in power, were falsified through terror and after their death were written under the irritation of a recent hatred", or in a word-for-word translation: Tiberiī Gāīque et Claudiī ac Nerōnis rēs flōrentibus ipsīs—ob metum—falsae, postquam occiderant—recentibus ōdiīs—compositae sunt. Tiberius's, Gaius's and Claudius's as well as Nero's acts while flourishing themselves—out of fear—counterfeited, after they came to fall—resulting from new-found hate—related are. Compared to
15827-556: The subject in a clause, a trait that is restricted to North Germanic languages: Tacitus Publius Cornelius Tacitus , known simply as Tacitus ( / ˈ t æ s ɪ t ə s / TAS -it-əs , Latin: [ˈtakɪtʊs] ; c. AD 56 – c. 120 ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals (Latin: Annales ) and
15960-488: The tribe is Tacitus , who in his Germania from AD 98 mentions the Suiones . They are possibly first mentioned locally by the Kylver Stone in the 4th century. Jordanes , in the 6th century, mentions Suehans and Suetidi . Beowulf mentions the Swedes around 1000 A.D. According to early sources such as the sagas , especially Heimskringla , the Swedes were a powerful tribe whose kings claimed descendence from
16093-482: The two cases and two genders of modern Swedish. A transitional change of the Latin script in the Nordic countries was to spell the letter combination "ae" as æ – and sometimes as a' – though it varied between persons and regions. The combination "ao" was similarly rendered a , and "oe" became o . These three were later to evolve into the separate letters ä , å and ö . The first time the new letters were used in print
16226-517: The two natural genders han and hon ("he" and "she"), there are also the two grammatical genders den and det , usually termed common and neuter . In recent years, a gender-neutral pronoun hen has been introduced, particularly in literary Swedish. Unlike the nouns, pronouns have an additional object form, derived from the old dative form. Hon , for example, has the following nominative, possessive, and object forms: Swedish also uses third-person possessive reflexive pronouns that refer to
16359-511: The tyranny and corruption of the Empire; the book also contains eloquent polemics against the greed of Rome, one of which, that Tacitus claims is from a speech by Calgacus , ends by asserting, Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. ("To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."—Oxford Revised Translation). There
16492-439: The vocabulary. Besides a great number of loanwords for such areas as warfare, trade and administration, general grammatical suffixes and even conjunctions were imported. The League also brought a certain measure of influence from Danish (at the time Swedish and Danish were much more similar than today). Early Old Swedish was markedly different from the modern language in that it had a more complex case structure and also retained
16625-453: Was an important virtue and refusing a wanderer to stay over the night was considered shameful. The visitor was even taken to see the hosts' friends. Their royal family is of an old dynasty (see House of Munsö ), but the kings are dependent on the will of the people (the Thing ). What has been decided by the people is more important than the will of the king unless the king's opinion seems to be
16758-452: Was asked whether he was Tacitus or Pliny. Since Pliny was from Italy, some infer that Tacitus was from the provinces, probably Gallia Narbonensis. His ancestry, his skill in oratory, and his sympathetic depiction of barbarians who resisted Roman rule (e.g., Ann. 2.9 ) have led some to suggest that he was a Celt . This belief stems from the fact that the Celts who had occupied Gaul prior to
16891-589: Was descended from a freedman is derived from a speech in his writings which asserts that many senators and knights were descended from freedmen ( Ann. 13.27 ), but this is generally disputed. In his article on Tacitus in Pauly-Wissowa , I. Borzsak had conjectured that the historian was related to Thrasea Paetus and Etruscan family of Caecinii , about whom he spoke very highly. Furthermore, some later Caecinii bore cognomen Tacitus, which also could indicate some sort of relationship. It had been suggested that
17024-484: Was during the 20th century that a common, standardized national language became available to all Swedes. The orthography finally stabilized and became almost completely uniform, with some minor deviations, by the time of the spelling reform of 1906. With the exception of plural forms of verbs and a slightly different syntax, particularly in the written language, the language was the same as the Swedish of today. The plural verb forms appeared decreasingly in formal writing into
17157-656: Was in Aff dyäffwlsens frästilse ("By the Devil's temptation") published by Johan Gerson in 1495. Modern Swedish (Swedish: nysvenska ) begins with the advent of the printing press and the European Reformation . After assuming power, the new monarch Gustav Vasa ordered a Swedish translation of the Bible . The New Testament was published in 1526, followed by a full Bible translation in 1541, usually referred to as
17290-472: Was known to the Romans. Tacitus wrote in AD 98 in Germania 44, 45 that the Suiones were a powerful tribe ( distinguished not merely for their arms and men, but for their powerful fleets ) with ships that had a prow in both ends). He further mentions that the Suiones were much impressed by wealth, and the king's thus was absolute. Further, the Suiones did not normally bear arms, and that the weapons were guarded by
17423-412: Was largely lived out under the emperor Domitian. His experience of the tyranny, corruption, and decadence of that era (81–96) may explain the bitterness and irony of his political analysis. He draws our attention to the dangers of power without accountability, love of power untempered by principle, and the apathy and corruption engendered by the concentration of wealth generated through trade and conquest by
17556-470: Was not standardized. It depended on the authors and their background. Those influenced by German capitalized all nouns, while others capitalized more sparsely. It is also not always apparent which letters are capitalized owing to the Gothic or blackletter typeface that was used to print the Bible. This typeface was in use until the mid-18th century, when it was gradually replaced with a Latin typeface (often Antiqua ). Some important changes in sound during
17689-537: Was the sole native language of 83% of Swedish residents. In 2007, around 5.5% (c. 290,000) of the population of Finland were native speakers of Swedish, partially due to a decline following the Russian annexation of Finland after the Finnish War 1808–1809. The Fenno-Swedish - speaking minority is concentrated in the coastal areas and archipelagos of southern and western Finland. In some of these areas, Swedish
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