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61-639: Rubene Parish ( Latvian : Rubenes pagasts ) is an administrative territorial entity of Jēkabpils Municipality , Latvia. It was an administrative unit of the Jēkabpils District . The administrative center is Rubeņi. 56°10′17.8″N 26°0′29.3″E  /  56.171611°N 26.008139°E  / 56.171611; 26.008139 This Latvian location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Latvian language Latvian ( endonym : latviešu valoda , pronounced [ˈlatviɛʃu ˈvaluɔda] ), also known as Lettish ,

122-650: A caron , ⟨č, š, ž⟩ , they are pronounced [tʃ] , [ʃ] and [ʒ] respectively. The letters ⟨ģ, ķ, ļ, ņ⟩ , written with a comma placed underneath (or above them for lowercase g ), which indicate palatalized versions of ⟨g, k, l, n⟩ representing the sounds [ɟ] , [c] , [ʎ] and [ɲ] . Latvian orthography also contains nine digraphs, which are written ⟨ai, au, ei, ie, iu, ui, oi, dz, dž⟩ . Non-standard varieties of Latvian add extra letters to this standard set. Latvian spelling has almost one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. Every phoneme corresponds to

183-520: A dead key (usually ', occasionally ~). Some keyboard layouts use the modifier key AltGr (most notably the Windows 2000 and XP built-in layout (Latvian QWERTY), it is also default modifier in X11R6, thus a default in most Linux distributions). In the 1990s, lack of software support of diacritics caused an unofficial style of orthography, often called translits , to emerge for use in situations when

244-757: A broad system of education in Russian existed). The Official Language Law was adopted on 9 December 1999. Several regulatory acts associated with this law have been adopted. Observance of the law is monitored by the Latvian State Language Center run by the Ministry of Justice. To counter the influence of English , government organizations (namely the Terminology Commission of the Latvian Academy of Science and

305-486: A cedilla; and the postalveolars Š , Č and Ž are written with h replacing the háček , as in English. Sometimes the second letter, the one used instead of a diacritic, is changed to one of two other diacritic letters (e.g. š is written as ss or sj, not sh), and since many people may find it difficult to use these unusual methods, they write without any indication of missing diacritic marks, or they use digraphing only if

366-405: A child, Kuldi Medne, born in 2020 is reported to be a native speaker of Livonian. Her parents are Livonian language revival activists Jānis Mednis and Renāte Medne. The Latvian Government continued attempts to preserve the dialect following the restoration of independence in 1990 and currently it is learned by some people as a hobby. The Central dialect spoken in central and Southwestern Latvia

427-933: A classic Indo-European (Baltic) system with well developed inflection and derivation. Word stress, with some exceptions in derivation and inflection, more often is on the first syllable . There are no articles in Latvian; definiteness is expressed by an inflection of adjectives. Basic word order in Latvian is subject–verb–object ; however, word order is relatively free. There are two grammatical genders in Latvian (masculine and feminine) and two numbers , singular and plural. Nouns, adjectives, and declinable participles decline into seven cases: nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , instrumental , locative , and vocative . There are six declensions for nouns. There are three conjugation classes in Latvian. Verbs are conjugated for person, tense, mood and voice. Latvian in Latin script

488-468: A few (Western) Latgalian settlements have been excavated. Large-scale excavations (1960s–1970s) and reconstruction have been done at the Āraiši lake dwelling site (9th century). In Latgale, dating from the 6th and 7th centuries, there were flat cemeteries as well as barrow cemeteries. In the 9th and 10th centuries, the transition started from flat graves to barrows. There are about 15 excavated Eastern Latgalian barrow cemeteries, but in most of them only

549-458: A further eleven characters by modification. The vowel letters ⟨ a ⟩ , ⟨ e ⟩ , ⟨ i ⟩ and ⟨ u ⟩ can take a macron to show length, unmodified letters being short; these letters are not differentiated while sorting (e.g. in dictionaries). The letters ⟨ c ⟩ , ⟨ s ⟩ and ⟨ z ⟩ are pronounced [ts] , [s] and [z] respectively, while when marked with

610-478: A language of its size, whereby many non-native speakers speak it compared to native speakers. The immigrant and minority population in Latvia is 700,000 people: Russians , Belarusians , Ukrainians , Poles , and others. The majority of immigrants settled in Latvia between 1940 and 1991; supplementing pre-existing ethnic minority communities ( Latvian Germans , Latvian Jews , Latvian Russians ). The trends show that

671-603: A letter so that the reader can almost always pronounce words by putting the letters together. There are only two exceptions to this consistency in the orthography: the letters ⟨e, ē⟩ represent two different sounds: /ɛ æ/ and /ɛː æː/ . The second mismatch is that letter ⟨o⟩ indicates both the short and long [ɔ] , and the diphthong [uɔ] . These three sounds are written as ⟨o⟩ , ⟨ō⟩ and ⟨uo⟩ in Standard Latgalian , and some Latvians campaign for

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732-646: A more rapid development. In addition, there is some disagreement whether Standard Latgalian and Kursenieki , which are mutually intelligible with Latvian, should be considered varieties or separate languages . However, in Latvian linguistics, such hypotheses have been rejected as non-scientific. Latvian first appeared in print in the mid-16th century with the reproduction of the Lord's Prayer in Latvian in Sebastian Münster 's Cosmographia universalis (1544), in Latin script . Latvian belongs to

793-461: A radical vowel, a short vowel in the suffix, and vowel with a diacritic mark in the ending indicating two accents. Consonants were written using multiple letters following the example of German. The old orthography was used until the 20th century when modern orthography slowly replaced it. In late 1992, the official Latvian computing standard LVS 8-92 took effect. It was followed by LVS 24-93 (Latvian language support for computers) that also specified

854-541: A small number of barrows were investigated. Archaeologically-identified dwelling sites in Latgale include hill forts , settlements and lake dwellings . Among hillforts, the most well-researched one is Jersika Hillfort (excavated in 1939 and from 1990 onwards), forming a complex together with Dignāja Hillfort, on the opposite bank of the Daugava river. Jersika was occupied from the 10th to 14th centuries, probably after

915-605: A unified political, economic, and religious space in Medieval Livonia . The oldest known examples of written Latvian are from a 1530 translation of a hymn made by Nikolaus Ramm  [ lv ] , a German pastor in Riga . The oldest preserved book in Latvian is a 1585 Catholic catechism of Petrus Canisius currently located at the Uppsala University Library . The first person to translate

976-728: Is a standard language , i.e., the Standard Latgalian, another historic variety of Latvian, which is based on deep non-Selonic varieties spoken in the south of Latgale . The term "Latgalic" is sometimes also applied to all non-Selonic varieties or even the whole dialect. However, it is unclear if using the term for any varieties besides the standard language is accurate. While the term may refer to varieties spoken in Latgale or by Latgalians , not all speakers identify as speaking Latgalic, for example, speakers of deep Non-Selonic varieties in Vidzeme explicitly deny speaking Latgalic. It

1037-495: Is also used. There are several contests held annually to promote the correct use of Latvian. One of them is "Word of the year" ( Gada vārds ) organized by the Riga Latvian Society since 2003. It features categories such as the "Best word", "Worst word", "Best saying" and " Word salad ". In 2018 the word zibmaksājums ( instant payment ) won the category of "Best word" and influenceris ( influencer ) won

1098-594: Is an East Baltic language belonging to the Indo-European language family and it is spoken in the Baltic region . It is the language of Latvians and the official language of Latvia as well as one of the official languages of the European Union . There are about 1.5 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and 100,000 abroad. Altogether, 2 million, or 80% of the population of Latvia, spoke Latvian in

1159-479: Is pronounced as /sː/ , šs and žs as /ʃː/ . Latvian has six vowels, with length as distinctive feature: /ɔ ɔː/ , and the diphthongs involving it other than /uɔ/ , are confined to loanwords. Latvian also has 10 diphthongs , four of which are only found in loanwords ( /ai ui ɛi au iɛ uɔ iu (ɔi) ɛu (ɔu)/ ), although some diphthongs are mostly limited to proper names and interjections. Standard Latvian and, with some exceptions in derivation and inflection, all of

1220-418: Is spoken by approximately 15% of Latvia's population, but almost all of its speakers are also fluent in the standard Latvian language and they promote the dialect in popular culture in order to preserve their distinct culture. The Latvian Government since 1990 has also taken measures to protect the dialect from extinction. The history of the Latvian language (see below) has placed it in a peculiar position for

1281-728: Is the basis of standard Latvian. The dialect is divided into the Vidzeme variety, the Curonic variety and the Semigallic variety. The Vidzeme variety and the Semigallic variety are closer to each other than to the Curonic variety, which is more archaic than the other two. There are three syllable intonations in some parts of Vidzeme variety of the Central dialect, extended, broken and falling. The Curonic and Semigallic varieties have two syllable intonations, extended and broken, but some parts of

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1342-629: The Indo-European language family. It is classified as a part of the Baltic branch of the family. It is one of two living Baltic languages with an official status, the other being Lithuanian . The Latvian and Lithuanian languages have retained many features of the nominal morphology of Proto-Indo-European , though their phonology and verbal morphology show many innovations (in other words, forms that did not exist in Proto-Indo-European), with Latvian being considerably more innovative than Lithuanian. However, Latvian has mutual influences with

1403-580: The Livonian , Curonian , Semigallian and Selonian languages. The Livonic dialect (also called Tamian or tāmnieku ) of Latvian was more affected by the Livonian language substratum than Latvian in other parts of Latvia. It is divided into the Vidzeme variety and the Courland variety (also called tāmnieku ). There are two syllable intonations in the Livonic dialect, extended and broken. In

1464-462: The Livonian language . According to some glottochronological speculations, the East Baltic languages split from West Baltic (or, perhaps, from the hypothetical proto-Baltic language ) between 400 and 600 CE. The differentiation between Lithuanian and Latvian started after 800 CE. At a minimum, transitional dialects existed until the 14th century or 15th century, and perhaps as late as

1525-699: The Windows-1252 coding, it is possible to input those two letters using a numerical keypad . Latvian language code for cmd and .bat files - Windows-1257 For example, the Lord's Prayer in Latvian written in different styles: Consonants in consonant sequences assimilate to the voicing of the subsequent consonant , e.g. a p gabals [ˈa b ɡabals] or la b s [ˈla p s] . Latvian does not feature final-obstruent devoicing . Consonants can be long (written as double consonants) mamma [ˈmamːa] , or short. Plosives and fricatives occurring between two short vowels are lengthened: upe [ˈupːe] . Same with 'zs' that

1586-582: The 11th century onward. In the first two decades of the 13th century, the (Western) Latgalians allied with German (mainly Saxon) crusaders . Their lands (the Eldership of Tālava , the Principality of Jersika and the Principality of Koknese ) were incorporated into Livonia as vassal states. In the 11th century, Eastern Orthodoxy started to spread in Latgalian lands from Polotsk and Pskov . In

1647-550: The 12th century, Latgalian lands and their rulers paid tribute to the dukes of Polotsk. During the Livonian crusade in the 13th century, Latgalian elders switched from Eastern Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism and became vassals of the Livonian Order . Because of the crusade, many regions of Semigallia and Courland were left depopulated. Thus, part of the Latgalians migrated to those regions both during and after

1708-586: The 12th century. Ērgļu Jaunāķēni Cemetery was totally excavated in 1971–1972, with 89 burials found. At Koknese Cemetery, 102 burials from the Late Iron Age were uncovered (1986–1989). In the area of the Gauja river, two Latgalian cemeteries, Drabešu Liepiņas and Priekuļu Ģūģeri, have been excavated too. Archaeological excavations have also been carried out on the hillforts of Ķente, Koknese , Sārumkalns, Tanīskalns, as well as on other Latgalian sites. Only

1769-524: The 17th century. Latvian as a distinct language emerged over several centuries from the language spoken by the ancient Latgalians assimilating the languages of other neighboring Baltic tribes— Curonian , Semigallian , and Selonian —which resulted in these languages gradually losing their most distinct characteristics. This process of consolidation started in the 13th century after the Livonian Crusade and forced christianization , which formed

1830-574: The 19th century, the Latvian written language was influenced by German Lutheran pastors and the German language , because Baltic Germans formed the upper class of local society. In the middle of the 19th century the First Latvian National Awakening was started, led by " Young Latvians " who popularized the use of Latvian language. Participants in this movement laid the foundations for standard Latvian and also popularized

1891-510: The 2000s, before the total number of inhabitants of Latvia slipped to 1.8 million in 2022. Of those, around 1.16 million or 62% of Latvia's population used it as their primary language at home, though excluding the Latgale and Riga regions it is spoken as a native language in villages and towns by over 90% of the population. As a Baltic language , Latvian is most closely related to neighboring Lithuanian (as well as Old Prussian , an extinct Baltic language); however, Latvian has followed

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1952-420: The 2011 census Latvian was the language spoken at home by 62% of the country's population. After the re-establishment of independence in 1991, a new policy of language education was introduced. The primary declared goal was the integration of all inhabitants into the environment of the official state language while protecting the languages of Latvia's ethnic minorities. Government-funded bilingual education

2013-698: The Bible into Latvian was the German Lutheran pastor Johann Ernst Glück ( The New Testament in 1685 and The Old Testament in 1691). The Lutheran pastor Gotthard Friedrich Stender was a founder of Latvian secular literature. He wrote the first illustrated Latvian alphabet book (1787), the first encyclopedia " The Book of High Wisdom of the World and Nature  [ lv ] " ( Augstas gudrības grāmata no pasaules un dabas ; 1774), grammar books and Latvian–German and German–Latvian dictionaries. Until

2074-417: The Latvian dialects have fixed initial stress. Long vowels and diphthongs have a tone, regardless of their position in the word. This includes the so-called "mixed diphthongs" composed of a short vowel followed by a sonorant . During the period of Livonia , many Middle Low German words such as amats (profession), dambis (dam), būvēt (to build) and bikses (trousers) were borrowed into Latvian, while

2135-454: The Latvian language phonemically. Initially, it was used to write religious texts for German priests to help them in their work with Latvians. The first writings in Latvian were chaotic: twelve variations of writing Š . In 1631 the German priest Georg Mancelius tried to systematize the writing. He wrote long vowels according to their position in the word – a short vowel followed by h for

2196-472: The Latvian-speaking linguistic majority and for the sake of facilitating academic and professional achievements. Since the mid-1990s, the government may pay a student's tuition in public universities only provided that the instruction is in Latvian. Since 2004, the state mandates Latvian as the language of instruction in public secondary schools (Form 10–12) for at least 60% of class work (previously,

2257-543: The Latvianization of loan words. However, in the 1880s, when Czar Alexander III came into power, Russification started. According to the 1897 Imperial Russian Census , there were 505,994 (75.1%) speakers of Latvian in the Governorate of Courland and 563,829 (43.4%) speakers of Latvian in the Governorate of Livonia , making Latvian-speakers the largest linguistic group in each of the governorates. After

2318-398: The Livonic dialect, short vowels at the end of words are discarded, while long vowels are shortened. In all numbers, only one form of the verb is used. Due to migration and the introduction of a standardised language, this dialect has declined. It arose from assimilated Livonians , who started to speak in Latvian. Although initially its last native speaker, Grizelda Kristiņa , died in 2013,

2379-462: The Soviet Union followed, primarily as a result of Stalin's plan to integrate Latvia and the other Baltic republics into the Soviet Union through colonization . As a result, the proportion of the ethnic Latvian population within the total population was reduced from 80% in 1935 to 52% in 1989. In Soviet Latvia, most of the immigrants who settled in the country did not learn Latvian. According to

2440-601: The State Language Center) popularize the use of Latvian terms. A debate arose over the Latvian term for euro . The Terminology Commission suggested eira or eirs , with their Latvianized and declinable ending, would be a better term for euro than the widely used eiro , while European Central Bank insisted that the original name euro be used in all languages. New terms are Latvian derivatives, calques or new loanwords. For example, Latvian has two words for "telephone"— tālrunis and telefons ,

2501-645: The Vidzeme variety has extended and falling intonations. In the Curonic variety, ŗ is still used. The Kursenieki language , a historic variety of Latvian, which used to be spoken along Curonian Spit , is closely related to the varieties of the Central dialect spoken in Courland . High Latvian dialect is spoken in Eastern Latvia. It is set apart from the rest of the Latvian by a number of phonological differences. The dialect has two main varieties – Selonic (two syllable intonations, falling and rising) and Non-Selonic (falling and broken syllable intonations). There

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2562-412: The adoption of this system in standard Latvian. However, Latvian grammarians argue that ⟨o⟩ and ⟨ō⟩ are found only in loanwords, with the /uɔ/ sound being the only native Latvian phoneme. The digraph ⟨uo⟩ was discarded in 1914, and the letters ⟨ō⟩ and ⟨ŗ⟩ have not been used in the official Latvian language since 1946. Likewise,

2623-474: The category of "Worst word". The word pair of straumēt ( stream ) and straumēšana (streaming) were named the best words of 2017, while transporti as an unnecessary plural of the name for transport was chosen as the worst word of 2017. There are three dialects in Latvian: the Livonic dialect, High Latvian and the Central dialect. Latvian dialects and their varieties should not be confused with

2684-449: The country's only official language and other changes in the society after the fall of the Soviet Union that mostly shifted linguistic focus away from Russian . As an example, in 2007, universities and colleges for the first time received applications from prospective students who had a bilingual secondary education in schools for minorities. Fluency in Latvian is expected in a variety of professions and careers. Latvian grammar represents

2745-476: The crusaders. Latgalians later assimilated into the neighbouring tribes, forming the core of modern Latvians . The Latgalians were an Eastern Baltic tribe whose origin is little known. In the 5th and 6th centuries, they lived in the eastern part of present-day Vidzeme (west of the Aiviekste River ), and later on in nearly all the territory of that region. In written sources, they are mentioned from

2806-465: The death of Alexander III at the end of the 19th century, Latvian nationalist movements re-emerged. In 1908, Latvian linguists Kārlis Mīlenbahs and Jānis Endzelīns elaborated the modern Latvian alphabet, which slowly replaced the old orthography used before. Another feature of the language, in common with its sister language Lithuanian, that was developed at that time is that proper names from other countries and languages are altered phonetically to fit

2867-549: The decline of Dignāja, which had been inhabited since the 6th century. It is possible that ancestors of the so-called Eastern Latgalians migrated to the territory of present-day Latgale between the 7th and 11th centuries, pushed from their previously inhabited territory by Slavic migrations ; some archaeologists also believe that the Eastern Latgalians are descended from the more ancient East-Baltic inhabitants of Latvia, who lived in central and eastern Latvia during

2928-448: The diacritic mark in question would make a semantic difference. Sometimes an apostrophe is used before or after the character that would properly need to be diacriticised. Also, digraph diacritics are often used and sometimes even mixed with diacritical letters of standard orthography. Although today there is software support available, diacritic-less writing is still sometimes used for financial and social reasons. As š and ž are part of

2989-423: The digraph ⟨ch⟩ was discarded in 1957, although ⟨ō⟩ , ⟨ŗ⟩ , and ⟨ch⟩ are still used in some varieties and by many Latvians living beyond the borders of Latvia. The letter ⟨y⟩ is used only in Standard Latgalian, where it represents / ɨ / , a sound not present in other dialects. The old orthography was based on German and did not represent

3050-594: The excavations at Pildas Nukši Cemetery (in Latgale, 1947–1948), 218 burials were uncovered, dated to the 9th to 12th centuries. At the Zvirgzdenes Kivti Cemetery (in Latgale: 1948, 1955–1958), 175 burials from the 7th to 12th centuries were excavated. 315 burials were found at Aglonas Kristapiņi Cemetery (in Latgale; 1928, 1938, 1977–1980, 1984–1987, 1999–2000), in use from the late 8th century to

3111-432: The former being a direct translation into Latvian of the latter international term. Still, others are older or more euphonic loanwords rather than Latvian words. For example, "computer" can be either dators or kompjūters . Both are loanwords; the native Latvian word for "computer" is skaitļotājs , which is also an official term. However, now dators has been considered an appropriate translation, skaitļotājs

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3172-686: The period of Swedish Livonia brought loanwords like skurstenis (chimney) from Swedish . It also has loanwords from the Finnic languages , mainly from Livonian and Estonian . There are about 500 to 600 borrowings from Finnic languages in Latvian, for example: māja ‘house’ (Liv. mōj ), puika ‘boy’ (Liv. pūoga ), pīlādzis ‘mountain ash’ (Liv. pī’lõg ), sēne ‘mushroom’ (Liv. sēņ ). Loanwords from other Baltic language include ķermenis (body) from Old Prussian , as well as veikals (store) and paģiras (hangover) from Lithuanian . The first Latvian dictionary Lettus compiled by Georg Mancelius

3233-562: The phonological system of Latvian, even if the original language also uses the Latin alphabet. Moreover, the names are modified to ensure that they have noun declension endings, declining like all other nouns. For example, a place such as Lecropt (a Scottish parish) is likely to become Lekropta; the Scottish village of Tillicoultry becomes Tilikutrija. After the Soviet occupation of Latvia ,

3294-706: The policy of Russification greatly affected the Latvian language. At the same time, the use of Latvian among the Latvians in Russia had already dwindled after the so-called 1937–1938 Latvian Operation of the NKVD , during which at least 16,573 ethnic Latvians and Latvian nationals were executed. In the 1941 June deportation and the 1949 Operation Priboi , tens of thousands of Latvians and other ethnicities were deported from Latvia. Massive immigration from Russian SFSR , Ukrainian SSR , Byelorussian SSR , and other republics of

3355-480: The proficiency of Latvian among its non-native speakers is gradually increasing. In a 2009 survey by the Latvian Language Agency 56% percent of respondents with Russian as their native language described having a good knowledge of Latvian, whereas for the younger generation (from 17 to 25 years) the number was 64%. The increased adoption of Latvian by minorities was brought about by its status as

3416-477: The user is unable to access Latvian diacritic marks (e-mail, newsgroups, web user forums, chat, SMS etc.). It uses the basic Modern Latin alphabet only, and letters that are not used in standard orthography are usually omitted. In this style, diacritics are replaced by digraphs – a doubled letter indicates a long vowel (as in Finnish and Estonian); a following j indicates palatalisation of consonants, i.e.,

3477-813: The war. Subsequently, between the 13th and 16th centuries, they gradually assimilated into the other Baltic tribes: the Selonians , the Semigallians and the Curonians . These formed the core of present-day ethnic Latvians . In the lands inhabited by Western and the Eastern Latgalians, about 80 flat cemeteries of Western Latgalian origin have been excavated, with more than two thousand burials uncovered. The first large scale excavations took place in Ludza Odukalns Cemetery in Latgale (1890–1891), where 339 Late Iron Age burials were uncovered. In

3538-452: The way Latvian language (alphabet, numbers, currency, punctuation marks, date and time) should be represented on computers. A Latvian ergonomic keyboard standard LVS 23-93 was also announced several months later, but it did not gain popularity due to its need for a custom-built keyboard. Nowadays standard QWERTY or the US keyboards are used for writing in Latvian; diacritics are entered by using

3599-429: Was available in primary schools for ethnic minorities until 2019 when Parliament decided on educating only in Latvian. Minority schools are available for Russian , Yiddish , Polish , Lithuanian , Ukrainian , Belarusian , Estonian and Roma schools. Latvian is taught as a second language in the initial stages too, as is officially declared, to encourage proficiency in that language, aiming at avoiding alienation from

3660-497: Was first based upon the German orthography , while the alphabet of the Standard Latgalian variety was based on the Polish orthography . At the beginning of the 20th century, it was replaced by a more phonologically consistent orthography. Today, the Latvian standard orthography employs 33 characters: The modern standard Latvian alphabet uses 22 unmodified letters of the Latin alphabet (all except ⟨q, w, x, y⟩ ). It adds

3721-555: Was published in 1638. The first grammar of the Latvian language is a short “Manual on the Latvian language” ( Latin : Manuductio ad linguam lettonicam ) by Johans Georgs Rehehūzens  [ lv ] , published in 1644 in Riga. Latgalians They likely spoke a variant of Latvian language , which probably became the lingua franca in present-day Latvia during the Northern Crusades due to their alliance with

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