Where and when appeared Celtic?

Hi everybody, I read an article on this forum titled 'Serbian - Celtic parallels' where I found an old Celtic dictionary. I cross-referenced it and would like to share my findings with you. Thanks, and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!



Serbian - Slavic
spirit *dusjo - Duša
ant *morwi - Mrav
anger *lūto - Ljuto
me, my *moi - moj
mine, my *mewe << PIE *mene - Moje
my *men(e) - Mene
mother *mātīr - Matera
mother-in-law, father-in-law *swekru- - Svekrva
mountain *brig - Breg
rest *sāmo - samo
rough (*karr-)- karati kazniti
seat *sedlo - Sedlo
two (f.) *dwei (?)- Dve
two (m.) *dwā(w) - Dva
way *bīti- Biti
(night)mare *moro - Mora
(sea-)harbour *kaφno - Kopno
(who/what)soever *kʷinnako- (??) - Ionako
all, every *kʷākʷo - Svako
anus *tuknā-, *tūkno - Prkno
army *slougo - Sluga
bag *bolgo - Blago
be *bewa-, bū - Budi
be dark (*teme-)- Tama
bed *leg-jo - Leglo
being *buti - Biti
bitter *gorsti- gorko
blackness *dubjā - dubnja
blood *kruwos- (?)- krv
bloody (*krewa-) - krvav
bright *belo-, beleno- (?) bjelo
brother *brātīr - Brat
air *weto - Vetar
nest *nisdo - Gnesdo
now *nu - nu (Montenegro :)) )
one *oino - Jedno
one *oiwo - ovo or iovo
personal name *Dārjo - Darijo (Moustly in Croatia and Iran)
raven *branā - Vrana
yes *to (?)- to

Latin - Italian
meat *karnajo- Carne
mistake *bag-jo- (?) Sbaglio
nail *angʷīnā - Unghia
near *akust - Accostato
night *nokʷ-, *noxto- Nocturno
old *seno - Senilo
old *struti- (?) Sfruti
opinion *mantjon- (?) Mentione
pain *anxto - Ansioso
part *skʷerto-, *kʷarto- Quarto
plain *stratu - Strato
plain *φlā-no - Plano
plough *aratro - Aratro
seat *sedo - Sedere
single grain *grān-injo - granaio
sleep *suφno - sogno
small *menw(o) - Meno
smooth, shining *l(e)nt-ro - lanterna
song *kantlo ---cantare
standing (*-sto-)- Stare
true *wīro - Vero
unique *dī-samalo dissimile
unknown *an-gnāto -Unnoto
water *akʷā - Aqua
wheel *roto - Roto
when *kʷan - Quando
white *leuko - leuco
yellow, brown *gello - giallo
you *tū - Tu
young *jowanko - Giovane
your *towo - Tuoi
youth *jowantūt - Giovantu
(hind)quarter (?) *kʷetr-anī(-) (?) quarto
against *ande - anti
agriculture *aro - aro
arm *aramo - armo
army *korjo - corpo
axis *aksiaxle *aksilā - asse
back *kūlo - culo
baker *kʷokʷ-er- cuoco
ban *banno- (LW??)- bano
bank *oro - oro
bath *lowatro - lavare
battle *kom-bī-to - combato
sacred *noibo - nobile
wind *winto- (?)- Vento



Ambiguous meaning, not so clear;
power *brīgā-, *brīgo - Briga
number *rīmā - Rima
turn (*swel-) - sveglio
place *leg-ā- / -o - Loga



German
naked *nokʷto - Nakt
narrow (*ango-) eng
ox *uxsen - Ochsen
personal name *Isaro - Isar -River
pledge *geldo - Geld
pull *trāg-je/o - tragen
saying *laudo - laut
sweat *switso - schwitzen
tower *turi(t) - Turm
travel (*weg- 1) - Weg
widow *widwā - Witwe
wild *wiltV- (??)- wilde

Ambiguous meaning, not so clear;
people *teutā- > *toutā -deut


French
of equal length *kom-sitVof
the same age *kom-aiwestu
as far as *kom-sit-ouno- (?)
It has something to do with French - "comme si"

Russian
pig *sukku- Suka (means ***** not Pig) сука - :))



I think we only need an Old Slavonic (Church) dictionary to solve this multilingual mixture. I mean, the whole thing will be much clearer.
 

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@Sinisa Zaric
interesting. I was trying to collect Celtic and Slavic words with close similarities, just for the fun and based on modern languages.
It's better to take ancient forms, evidently, the modern ones give us only the degree of survival of words.
I had not the time to controle/compare every term but I crossread and I found a lot of words which are common in other IE families too. The most interesting would be the ones which were found only among Celtic and Slavic, which, I suppose, are very less numerous. Celtic as Slavic were part of kind a continuum implying Italic and Germanic too (and disappeared languages).
 
Perhaps I misunderstood your list of words. Are Celtic words among it, or only old Slavic forms and Serbian?!?
 
At first sight I recognize a lot of Celtic forms among the *words!
 
Serbian - Slavic
spirit *dusjo - duša
ant *morwi – mravWelsh morgrug(yn) ants Breton merien(enn)/+molion(enn)
anger *lūto - ljuto
me, my *moi – mojin all IE sons languages or almost
mine, my *mewe << PIE *mene – oje« « «
my *men(e) - mene
mother *mātīr – materain all IE sons languages or almost
mother-in-law, father-in-law *swekru- - Svekrvacommon with Germanic languages
mountain *brig – bregWelsh+Bret- bre + bryn, brenn hill - link with bri honour, prestige… ?
rest *sāmo - samo
rough (*karr-)- karati kazniti
seat *sedlo – sedloWelsh+Bret- sedd /seđ /, sez seat + Bret- asezto sit
two (f.) *dwei (?)- Dvein all IE sons languages or almost
two (m.) *dwā(w) – Dvathe gener question left aside
way *bīti- Biti
(night)mare *moro – moraBret- morenniñ to fall in sleep + to mist
(sea-)harbour *kaφno - kopno
(who/what)soever *kʷinnako- (??) - ionakoWelsh+Bret bynnag, bennag < < pynnag, pennag who/whatsoever
all, every *kʷākʷo – svakocommon to Latin, > > Welsh+Bret pob, peb
anus *tuknā-, *tūkno – prkno???
army *slougo – slugaEngl- slogan < < Gael- sluagh-ghairm army (war) cry

Welsh+Bret- llu, lu < < *slu army
bag *bolgo – blagoWelsh+Bret- bol, bola stomach, belly, bolc’h bur, burr + Gael- bolg bellyful, bag, bulge, Old French bouget small bag < < Gaulish > > Engl- budget
be *bewa-, bū – budicommon to a lot of IE sons languages
be dark (*teme-)- tamaWelsh+Bret- tywyll, teñval dark < < *temel(l)/ -ñv = nasalised v or w < *m
bed *leg-jo – leglo*leg-, *lig- common to a lot of IE langages (Latin lectum > > French lit)
being *buti - Biti
bitter *gorsti- gorko
blackness *dubjā – dubnjaGael- dubh /-v/, Welsh+Bret- du black

Is there some semantic link with the meaning of deep ?

Welsh+Bret- dwfn /duv°n/, don deep < > Germanic(s) deep, diep, djup, tief

some IE * d-bn : * d-mn ???
blood *kruwos- (?)- krvWelsh crù, crau blood, Welsh crai raw (+ crude?) = Bret- kri(z) raw

same root in Latin for the meaning of raw and cruel – in fact Engl- raw come from the same IE root (raw < O-E hrēaw < PIE *krewh2

bloody (*krewa-) - krvavsee above
bright *belo-, beleno- (?) bjelovery common and diversified root in IE : *bh-l, *bhl- < > Lat- fl-, Greek Phl-
brother *brātīr – bratin all IE sons langages or almost
air *weto – vetar? cf ? Germanic(s) wind, vind, ? Welsh+Bret- gwynt, gwent wind
nest *nisdo – gnesdo
now *nu - nu (Montenegro )
one *oino – jednoin all IE sons langages or almost
one *oiwo - ovo or iovoin all IE sons langages or almost
personal name *Dārjo - Darijo (Moustly in Croatia and Iran)? < > ? Welsh+Bret- dwr, dour, Irl- dobhar water
raven *branā – vranaalready discussed – maybe no link, maybe non-Celtic spite common there
yes *to (?)- to
 
Hi everybody,

Brajan (Bryan) Rajan (Ryan)

The more we look into the Serbian past, the more we find Celtic roots.

Census of the Serbian people in the 14th century. Some of the names.

1000013659.jpg
 
@MOESAN

Hi Moesan,

it goes as or is sorted as follows:

English - Celtic - Serbian (Slavic)

Spirit - *dusjo - Duša


... and then as well as:

English - Celtic - Italian (Latin)

Meat - *karnajo - Carne



I will sort the words in a table later when I catch the time.

Have a nice day!
Sinisa
 
Just to lay out some of the hypotheses:
-"Celtic from the East" (Hallstatt) being the most widely accepted though more recently challenged apparently
-"Celtic from the West" (Isles/Atlantic Fringe)
-"Celtic from the Centre" (East France/West Germany)
-Celtic from Northern Italy (Canegrate) proposed by Peter Schrijver
-Celtic from Iberia (Can't remember who the main proponents were/are)

Anything else?
 
Hi everybody,

Brajan (Bryan) Rajan (Ryan)

The more we look into the Serbian past, the more we find Celtic roots.

Census of the Serbian people in the 14th century. Some of the names.
Interesting these names, but rather Slavic at first sight.
Rajan # Ryan < Gael. Rian < Rigan < ? (Celtic rig = "king", IE root; Gaulish rigos = -rix, cf Latin regis = rex)
'ri': no diphtong /ai/ only /i:/ - the same for Bryan, Brian (Celtic root: brig- apparently associated with the meaning of 'high')
 
My maternal line great-great-grandmother was a Ryan, from southwest Ireland. She was 0% Serbian.
 
My maternal line great-great-grandmother was a Ryan, from southwest Ireland. She was 0% Serbian.
Sure. I wrote already Ryan is gaelic surname without diphtong in Gaelic (the /ai/ or /aj/ sound is due to an Anglo-Saxon pronunciation of long /i/). So without link to a possible Slavic (or other kind of) Rajan name - That said, a Serbian origin going back to say the Middle Ages would leave very few visible traces of "Serbian" auDNA if any. Ten generations are enough to erase the must of a foreign origin (< 0,1% as an average).
 
Celtic languages first appeared around the 1st millennium BCE. They were spoken across a broad region, from the British Isles to parts of mainland Europe.
In fact we are sure of nothing, only suppositions not shared by all, and based upon speed of languages evolution, an uncertain matter. Everyone may have his opinion (me too) but without writings it stays guesses.
The Gaelic specificity BI could challenge the late IA first pronostics for Celtic. BA seems a better bet, but BA is spanning a long time so?
 
In fact we are sure of nothing, only suppositions not shared by all, and based upon speed of languages evolution, an uncertain matter. Everyone may have his opinion (me too) but without writings it stays guesses.
The Gaelic specificity BI could challenge the late IA first pronostics for Celtic. BA seems a better bet, but BA is spanning a long time so?
We are sure of nothing, but my semi-educated guess would be that as Steppe-related people migrated up the Danube valley in the 3rd millennium BCE their IE languages began to branch, and one of those branches was proto-Italo-Celtic. This subsequently branched into stem Italic and stem Celtic. Stem Celtic moved down the Rhine valley. On the way it branched into stem Qw-Celtic in the lower Rhine and stem P-Celtic further south. Stem Qw-Celtic reached Britain and Ireland with the BB invasion, associated with R1b-L21.

I'm using terms like stem Qw-Celtic to indicate a language family ancestral to proto-Qw-Celtic but not ancestral to any other extant languages. In the same way, the lineage ancestral to true mammals (between c310mya and c220mya) is now called the stem mammals (formerly called the mammal-like reptiles). Most stem mammals went extinct before true mammals evolved, and the same would be true for most stem family languages.

I don't know whether proto-P-Celtic preceded the Urnfield culture or developed among later IA Celts, but the Urnfield people would have spoken Celtic languages of some kind.

My guesses would put proto-Celtic somewhere in the Rhine valley in the mid-3rd millennium BCE, but a proto-Celtic that was ancestral to much larger and more diverse families of Celtic languages than the few Insular Celtic languages that survive today. I'm assuming that the Breton language came mainly from Cornwall and can therefore be called Insular.

Whole families of Celtic languages may have gone extinct after 2500 BCE, leaving only the Qw-Celtic and P-Celtic families by 500CE. Just a guess, of course, without evidence.
 
La Tene for sure spoke Celtic, Hallstatt may have spoken proto Celtic but that is debatable without more evidence, it is more likely that late Hallstatt was Celtic speaking when the culture drastically changed in Hallstatt C & D probably due to new leadership from the west -

"In the central Hallstatt regions toward the end of the period (Ha D), very rich graves of high-status individuals under large tumuli are found near the remains of fortified hilltop settlements. Tumuli graves had a chamber, rather large in some cases, lined with timber and with the body and grave goods set about the room. There are some chariot or wagon burials, including Býčí Skála and Brno-Holásky in the Czech Republic, Vix, Sainte-Colombe-sur-Seine and Lavau in France, Hochdorf, Hohmichele and Grafenbühl in Germany, and Mitterkirchen in Austria."


We have already seen that Urnfield had nothing to do with Celts genetically as majority of Tollense warriors were far from French, British etc and instead much closer to Slavs. Celts also had far too little WHG ancestry to be related to Urnfield/Tollense who had more than double the amount
 

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La Tene for sure spoke Celtic, Hallstatt may have spoken proto Celtic but that is debatable without more evidence, it is more likely that late Hallstatt was Celtic speaking when the culture drastically changed in Hallstatt C & D probably due to new leadership from the west -

"In the central Hallstatt regions toward the end of the period (Ha D), very rich graves of high-status individuals under large tumuli are found near the remains of fortified hilltop settlements. Tumuli graves had a chamber, rather large in some cases, lined with timber and with the body and grave goods set about the room. There are some chariot or wagon burials, including Býčí Skála and Brno-Holásky in the Czech Republic, Vix, Sainte-Colombe-sur-Seine and Lavau in France, Hochdorf, Hohmichele and Grafenbühl in Germany, and Mitterkirchen in Austria."


We have already seen that Urnfield had nothing to do with Celts genetically as majority of Tollense warriors were far from French, British etc and instead much closer to Slavs. Celts also had far too little WHG ancestry to be related to Urnfield/Tollense who had more than double the amount
The attached piece you posted is based on an average? Surely because at the individual level, the so called Tollense warriors were very heterogenous, even if their average is closer to modern Slavs.
And Tollense warriors (whose ones?) are not the only representant of Urnfield culture which concerned a lot of ethnies and was for a big part a cultural maybe religious phenomenon.
Celtic as a language is - I think - older than Hallstatt or La Tène.
 
The attached piece you posted is based on an average? Surely because at the individual level, the so called Tollense warriors were very heterogenous, even if their average is closer to modern Slavs.
And Tollense warriors (whose ones?) are not the only representant of Urnfield culture which concerned a lot of ethnies and was for a big part a cultural maybe religious phenomenon.
Celtic as a language is - I think - older than Hallstatt or La Tène.

Yes an average of some of the warriors from LBA Tollense. It is surely clear that Urnfield started in east Europe and expanded westward, there is no other reason for these eastern European like people to travel in big numbers to Tollense if it wasn't to conquer or defeat a local army there.

My point was that it is impossible for Celts to be responsible for the Urnfield culture due to the bulk of the ancient DNA being completely different to Celts - Gaul and even La Tene DNA is completely different to what was found in Tollense. Also Celts apparently carried some G2a yet no G2a has been found in Tollense yet. I think Celts formed in iron age France and took over Hallstatt around 800BC as that is when the Hallstatt culture started changing from cremation to burial and also began using chariot burials -
"Chariot burial was an Iron Age Celtic custom; while the wooden chariot has decayed, the horse harness, usually in bronze, survives well, and enough is left of the iron wheel covers and other iron parts to enable well-informed reconstructions. Only the richest were buried in this way, and there are often many other grave-goods. The 4th-century Waldalgesheim chariot burial is one of the best known. A tomb from the 4th century BC was discovered in La Gorge-Meillet, Marne in France;[5] another (450–300) at Somme-Bionne.

In addition to the Etruscan tomb in Italy, there are two chariot burials at Sesto Calende, south of Lake Maggiore, of the Golasecca culture dating to the 7th and 6th century BC accompanied by weapons, ornaments and a large situla[6] while an earlier burial of the same culture, at Ca' Morta – Como (c. 700 BC), included a four-wheeled wagon in the tomb.

In England, chariot burials are characteristic of, and almost confined to, the Iron Age Arras culture associated with the Parisii tribe. Finds of such burials are rare, and the persons interred were presumably chieftains or other wealthy notables. The Wetwang Slack chariot burial of c. 300 BC is unusual in that a woman was interred with the chariot.[7] In 2017 another chariot burial was unearthed in Pocklington, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, dated to BC 320 to 174. This was the first chariot burial in the UK to have been found with horses also interred. In addition to pony skeletons, the remains of the presumed driver were found, along with iron fragments from the chariot's body. A bronze shield in the grave was exceptionally well preserved.[8][9][10] "The discoveries are set to widen our understanding of the Arras (Middle Iron Age) culture and the dating of artefacts to secure contexts is exceptional," said Paula Ware, managing director at MAP Archaeological Practice Ltd."
 
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TetaEglantina wrote:
["Yes an average of some of the warriors from LBA Tollense. It is surely clear that Urnfield started in east Europe and expanded westward, there is no other reason for these eastern European like people to travel in big numbers to Tollense if it wasn't to conquer or defeat a local army there. My point was that it is impossible for Celts to be responsible for the Urnfield culture due to the bulk of the ancient DNA being completely different to Celts - Gaul and even La Tene DNA is completely different to what was found in Tollense. Also Celts apparently carried some G2a yet no G2a has been found in Tollense yet. I think Celts formed in iron age France and took over Hallstatt around 800BC as that is when the Hallstatt culture started changing from cremation to burial and also began using chariot burials -"]

"some of the warriors": big nuance !!! -
Urnfields didn't start in East, but in Central or South-Central Europe - Lusacian C. is only ONE of the subsequent cultures - Urnfields expanded more westwards than eastwards but expanded onward all directions, with diverse adaptations, and have surely had influence upon later Hallstatt culture - some of the Urnfields groups put in march were surely Celtic speaking, BUT it's true, not all of them -I even think that the more centrallike, sometimes more southern-like DNA warriors were the supporters of the Urnfields descendants, fighting against more slavic- or baltic-like DNA warriors!
Celts as seen by some ancient mainstream scholars were surely come from France (in this concept language+material culture), rather from eastern France and also from south Germany) but their common language was already formed, maybe in another region but not so far -
I think the introgretion of new Y-haplos absent of the first Celtic node begun around the Urnfields times and came along more southern auDNA. It's only a supposition of mine but the sedetisation of the Celts led them to a less "steppic" aspect of their culture, less "nomadic", less clannic, so to the acceptation of new male elements (surely with technical advantages, nothing is for nothing...). The Y-G2 and other Y-... are the mark of that IMO.
 
TetaEglantina wrote:
["Yes an average of some of the warriors from LBA Tollense. It is surely clear that Urnfield started in east Europe and expanded westward, there is no other reason for these eastern European like people to travel in big numbers to Tollense if it wasn't to conquer or defeat a local army there. My point was that it is impossible for Celts to be responsible for the Urnfield culture due to the bulk of the ancient DNA being completely different to Celts - Gaul and even La Tene DNA is completely different to what was found in Tollense. Also Celts apparently carried some G2a yet no G2a has been found in Tollense yet. I think Celts formed in iron age France and took over Hallstatt around 800BC as that is when the Hallstatt culture started changing from cremation to burial and also began using chariot burials -"]

"some of the warriors": big nuance !!! -
Urnfields didn't start in East, but in Central or South-Central Europe - Lusacian C. is only ONE of the subsequent cultures - Urnfields expanded more westwards than eastwards but expanded onward all directions, with diverse adaptations, and have surely had influence upon later Hallstatt culture - some of the Urnfields groups put in march were surely Celtic speaking, BUT it's true, not all of them -I even think that the more centrallike, sometimes more southern-like DNA warriors were the supporters of the Urnfields descendants, fighting against more slavic- or baltic-like DNA warriors!
Celts as seen by some ancient mainstream scholars were surely come from France (in this concept language+material culture), rather from eastern France and also from south Germany) but their common language was already formed, maybe in another region but not so far -
I think the introgretion of new Y-haplos absent of the first Celtic node begun around the Urnfields times and came along more southern auDNA. It's only a supposition of mine but the sedetisation of the Celts led them to a less "steppic" aspect of their culture, less "nomadic", less clannic, so to the acceptation of new male elements (surely with technical advantages, nothing is for nothing...). The Y-G2 and other Y-... are the mark of that IMO.

This is not based on ancient DNA, if Tollense war is Urnfield related it tells us that Celts had nothing to do with it as the DNA is nothing like Celts who probably formed later anyway.

The majority of the Tollense warriors matched closest to Slavs (Polish/Ukrainians/Slovaks) in terms of modern people and had high WHG ancestry (30-45%). There is no reason for these ancient eastern european-like people to travel to Tollense if it wasn't to conquer the region. Soon after this battle the Nordic bronze age people started cremating in urns -

"During the Early to Late Nordic Bronze Age transition (c. 1100 BC), funeral practices in Southern Scandinavia exhibited a gradual but very marked changeover. Rather than continuing the extant tradition of inhuming their dead, Nordic Bronze Age peoples began to near exclusively cremate them instead [1]. In fact, cremation was so strongly associated with Late Bronze Age contexts in Europe, that one of the dominant cultures of the time (the Urnfield Culture) takes its name from the fields of urns in which the cremated dead were placed [2]. While scholars have recorded various examples of cremation in Scandinavia from the Mesolithic and continuing through to the 10th c. AD [3], the depositional practices which characterize those first scattered instances of more intensified cremation present a fascinating variety of compositions, especially when juxtaposed with the more uniform urn burials which characterize later periods. Very broadly, cremations in the Early Nordic Bronze Age (a period of time equivalent to the Central European Middle Bronze Age) included single individuals and multiple individuals buried in single or multiple contexts, which sometimes exclusively contained cremated material or, on occasion, combinations of both inhumed and cremated remains within the same deposition [410]. By contrast, Late Bronze Age cremations were generally deposited inside specific cremation urns."
 
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This is not based on ancient DNA, if Tollense war is Urnfield related it tells us that Celts had nothing to do with it as the DNA is nothing like Celts who probably formed later anyway.

The majority of the Tollense warriors matched closest to Slavs (Polish/Ukrainians/Slovaks) in terms of modern people and had high WHG ancestry (30-45%). There is no reason for these ancient eastern european-like people to travel to Tollense if it wasn't to conquer the region. Soon after this battle the Nordic bronze age people started cremating in urns -

"During the Early to Late Nordic Bronze Age transition (c. 1100 BC), funeral practices in Southern Scandinavia exhibited a gradual but very marked changeover. Rather than continuing the extant tradition of inhuming their dead, Nordic Bronze Age peoples began to near exclusively cremate them instead [1]. In fact, cremation was so strongly associated with Late Bronze Age contexts in Europe, that one of the dominant cultures of the time (the Urnfield Culture) takes its name from the fields of urns in which the cremated dead were placed [2]. While scholars have recorded various examples of cremation in Scandinavia from the Mesolithic and continuing through to the 10th c. AD [3], the depositional practices which characterize those first scattered instances of more intensified cremation present a fascinating variety of compositions, especially when juxtaposed with the more uniform urn burials which characterize later periods. Very broadly, cremations in the Early Nordic Bronze Age (a period of time equivalent to the Central European Middle Bronze Age) included single individuals and multiple individuals buried in single or multiple contexts, which sometimes exclusively contained cremated material or, on occasion, combinations of both inhumed and cremated remains within the same deposition [410]. By contrast, Late Bronze Age cremations were generally deposited inside specific cremation urns."
Can you understand what you read. Where did I say that all Celts were equivalent of all Urnfields???
Urnfields were not a lone ethny, and Lusacian culture is a subsequent culture influenced by some Urnfields. Don't mix everything. And Tollense people analysed were rather heterogenous, and we don't know with evidence on what side of the opponants were the supposed Lusacians (?!?).
The "laïus" about the Early Nordic Bronze Age doesn't enlight the question.
 
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