You might have noticed that, in Chinatown, red lanterns are going up, and lion dancers and dragon dancers are coming out, ready to parade the street. Mid-February is usually Chinese New Year, so both the Chinese community in Yangon, and the Chinese diaspora around the world are decked out in red dresses and new outfits, ready to welcome the new year. In this episode, my cohost Su, a Chiang Mai-based Burmese language teacher, and I discuss the new year festivities we can see around us. (Photo by Maritxu, licensed from Shutterstock, Music courtesy of Pixabay)

Vocabulary

ချစ်သူများနေ့ Valentine’s Day

ထုံးတမ်းအစဉ်အလာ tradition

ပြန့်နှန့်တယ် to spread

သည်းခံတယ် to tolerate, to put up with

တရုတ်နှစ်သစ်ကူး Chinese New Year

မြန်မာပြည်ဖွားတရုတ် Chinese born and raised in Burma

တိုးနယား mythical creature with features of lion, dragon, and phoenix 

ဘုံကျောင်း Chinese clan house

အံပေါင်း red envelope with spending money (Burmese loan word from Chinese 红包 Hongbao)

ဒဏ္ဍာရီ legend, myth

တရုတ်တန်း Chinatown 

မီးပုံး lantern

ဗျောက်အိုး firecracker

ဗျောက်အိုးဖေါက်တယ် to set off firecrackers

အမွှေးတိုင် incenses

မျက်စိစပ်တယ် to get itchy eyes 

လမ်းသလားတယ် to stroll around

မီးရှူးမီးပန်း fireworks

ကလန်ကဆန်လုပ်တယ် to act rebelliously, to defy

နှစ်ဆန်းတစ်ရက်နေ့ New Year Day

လူပျိုဟိုင်း old bachelor (slang)

ဝက်သား သုံးထပ်သား pork belly meat

အိတယ် to be soft, tender (in meat texture)

ဘဲကင် roast duck

ခေါက်ဆွဲ noodle

စုတ်ချက် brushstroke 

ဗန်းစကား slang

ရေပန်းစားတယ် to be popular

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If a politician speaks ambiguously without committing to one side or the other on an issue, you might call it political doublespeak in English, and accuse him or her of being wishy-washy. In Burmese, you might say he or she is "straddling the sides of two boats," လှေနံနှစ်ဖက်နင်းတယ် or လှေနံနှစ်ဖက်ခွတယ်. On the other other hand, if you can resolve a conflict by satisfying the two opposing sides, your solution may be praised as ရှဉ့်လည်းလျှောက်သာ ပျားလည်းစွဲသာ , meaning "the chipmunk can tread on the branch; so can the bees build a hive on it"; or မြွေမသေ တုတ်မကျိုး "neither the snake shall die, nor the stick shall break." To learn how to use these phrases correctly, listen to the latest episode of Bite-Size Burmese. (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)

Vocabulary

• လှေနံ the edge of a boat
• လှေနံနှစ်ဖက်နင်းတယ် / ခွတယ် to straddle on the sides of two boats (to play both sides, to be noncommital)
• ဝေ့လည်ကြောင်ပတ် to be wishy-washy
• သောင်မတင် ရေမကျ neither stranded on the beach, nor going back into the water (to be in a stalemate, to be a deadlock)
• ရှဉ့်လည်းလျှောက်သာ ပျားလည်းစွဲသာ The chipmunk can tread on the branch; so can the bees build a hive on it.
• မြွေမသေ တုတ်မကျိုး Neither the snake shall die, nor the stick shall break.
• ပြန်လည်သင့်မြတ်သွားတယ် to reconcile

Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

In the 1980s, when I was growing up in Rangoon under Ne Win's Socialist Government, I remember how foreigners were shocked by, among other things, local people chewing betel quid and spitting out splashes of red betel juice all over the sidewalks. Today, if you come from a place like Japan, where nobody expects you to tip, you’re in for a shock when visiting the U.S., where tipping is expected everywhere, from coffee shops to fine-dining restaurants (15-20% of your bill is the norm, in case you’re wondering). In both Thailand and Burma, travelers are expected to remove their footwear when entering temples and shrines, but there’s a notable difference between the two countries. In Japan, you can generally enter temple grounds with your shoes on, but must remember to remove them if you’re entering someone’s home, especially a traditional home with tatami mats. 

In this episode of Learn Burmese from Natural Talk, my guest Su, a Chiang Mai-based Burmese teacher, and I discuss the culture shocks we have experienced at home and abroad. (Photo by Jirawatfoto, licensed from Shutterstock. Music courtesy of Pixabay)

Vocabulary

မျက်နှာချင်းဆိုင် face to face (adverb)
ခြေချတယ် to settle
မြေအောက်ရထား underground train, subway
မိုးပျံတံတား / မိုးပျံလမ်း overhead bridge or walkway (lit. flying bridge or walkway)
ညဈေး night market
ကျတ်ရွာ village of the lost souls / ghost village
သရဲတ‌စ္ဆေ ghosts
အလာကျဲတယ် to come infrequently (used with trains and buses)
အလာစိပ်တယ် to come frequently (used with trains and buses)
ဖိုမဆက်ဆံရေး intimate relationships (lit. male-female interaction)
ပွင့်လင်းတယ် open, progressive, liberal (socially)
ပရဝဏ် pagoda precinct 
အများသုံးအိမ်သာ public bathroom
ကွမ်း betel quid 
ကွမ်းတံတွေး  betel juice (liquid from chewing betel quid)
ထွေးတယ် to spit
ပက်ခနဲ in a splash
လူ့ကျင့်ဝတ် social protocol, proper manner 
လိုင်းကား bus 
၃၁ ဘုံ 31 planes of existence
ဖေါ်ရွေတယ် to be hospitable
နှိုးဆော်တယ် to urge, to rally
ချေလျင် on foot (adverb)
တစ်ပြ a distance equal to one furlong or 220 yards, but Burmese people also use it to refer to ill-defined distances

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Some homegrown businesses and neighborhood restaurants flourish in Burma, thanks for the power of viral posts and social media. But fake news of levitating monks and strange omens also spread online, like wildfire. While not exactly fake news, inaccurate news and old news also tend to resurface from time to time, stirring up racial tension or raising false hopes. In this episode of Learn Burmese from Natural Talk, my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY (Burmese Language Academy of Yangon) and I discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of social media. (Photo by Lanlao, licensed from Shutterstock. Music courtesy of Pixabay)

Vocabulary

ကောင်းကျိုး benefits
ဆိုးကျိုး negative impact
မီးပုံးပျံ aerial balloon 
ရင်တထိတ်ထိတ် anxiously (adverb, literally, with the heart beating fast)
လူမှုရေးကွန်ရက် social network
လူမှုရေး social
ကွန်ရက် / ပိုက်ကွန် network
သတင်းမှား fake news
ကောလာဟလ rumors
ပွဲဆူအောင် to stir up things
ပဋိပက္ခ riot, conflict
ဆဲလဖီ ဆွဲတယ် to take selfie
ဆဲလဖီ တင်တယ် to post selfie
ဆဲလီ celebrity
ဝေခွဲလို့မရဘူး cannot determine
ဈာန်ကြွတယ် to levitate, to float by spiritual means
Google ခေါက်တယ် to search in Google
Google လိုက် go ahead and use Google
နှလုံးရောဂါ heart disease 
သုံးသပ်တယ် to analyze
ချဉ်းကပ်တယ် to approach
စကားချိုသွေးတယ် to sweet-talk 
ဂျင်းမိတယ် to be deceived, to be taken advantage of (slang)
ဂျင်းထည့်တယ် to deceive, to take advantage of (slang)
ပေါက်သွားတယ် to become popular, to go viral online (slang)
ကျမ်းကိုးကျမ်းကား cited sources
ငွေသား cash, money
ပိတ်ပင်တားဆီး to forbid 

Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

Given a choice, would you rather drink the Kool-Aid, or the bitter rainwater (မိုးခါးရေ)? The phrase “to drink the Kool-Aid,” meaning to embrace an irrational, foolish, or dangerous popular ideology, is associated with the tragic episode involving the American cult leader Jim Jones. The Burmese equivelent is "to drink the bitter rainwater" (မိုးခါးရေသောက်တယ်), stemming from the folktale about a kingdrom where everyone, save but a few wise citizens, drank the toxic rainwater and became insane.

The Burmese moviemaker Ko Pauk, who left the country after the military coup of 2021 and joined the resistance, made a documentary honoring the activists in the civil disobedience movement. Though it was released under the English title "The Road Not Taken," the original Burmese title was မသောက်မိသောမိုးခါးရေ ("The Bitter Rainwater I Refused to Drink"). The songwriter and singer ဆောင်းဦးလှိုင် (Hsaung Oo Hlaing) recently released a song titled မိုးခါးရေ ("Bitter Rainwater").

To learn more about the folktale behind the phrase and how to use the expression to talk about taking a stand or caving to pressure, listen to this episode of Bite-Size Burmese.  (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)

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Why are the robes woven on full-moon night of တန်ဆောင်မုန်း , the 8th month in the Burmese lunar calendar, called, မသိုးသင်္ကန်း , literally, unspoiled robes? What is the legend of the origin of the practice called ပံ့သကူ to leave out items that others can take away? And what kind of mischiefs or troubles are you allowed to cause on the night called ကျီးမနိုးပွဲ , the carnival of the sleeping crows, or သူခိုးကြီးည , the night of the thieves? These phrases are associated with တန်ဆောင်တိုင် Tazaungdaing Festival, which marks the end of the rainy season, and ကထိန် Kathina, which marks the end of Lent in many Buddhist countries in Southeast Asia. In this episode, my guest Su, a Burmese teacher in Chiang Mai, and I discuss the history, legends, and stories behind these phrases. (Photo: a girl lighting candles in a temple in Bagan, by f11photo, licensed from Shutterstock; music clips from Uppbeat.io)

Vocabulary

ဝရုန်းသုန်းကား in a messy, chaotic fashion (adverb)
တန်ဆောင်တိုင် Tazaungdaing festival, marks the end of rain
ကထိန် Kathina festival, marks the end of Buddhist Lent
ပဒေသာပင် a frame for attaching donated objects
သင်္ကန်း a monk’s robe
စုပေါင်းမဟာဘုံကထိန် communal donation 
မသိုးသင်္ကန်း robes woven in a single day 
သင်္ကန်းရက်တယ် to weave robe
သင်္ကန်းကပ်တယ် to offer robe
ပုဂ္ဂိုလ် person (respectful usage)
ကျီးမနိုးပွဲ carnival of the sleeping crows (night for harmless mischief) 
သူခိုးကြီးည night of thieves (night of mischief) 
အအိပ်ဆတ်တယ် to be easily awakened
ထိုးကွင်းထိုးတယ် to get tattooed 
ဆေးအောင်တယ် the tattoo proves magical 
ထိပ်တုံးခတ်တယ် to lock up in a pillory 
ဆေးမင်ကြောင် tattoo
အင်းကွက် magical diagrams 
တုတ်ပြီး ဓားပြီး staff-proof, sword-proof 
ပံ့သကူပစ်တယ် / ပံ့သကူစွန့်တယ် to cast away something as a donation 
ပံ့သကူကောက်တယ် to pick up cast away items
ဖန်ရည် liquid from boiled tree barks
ဖန်ရည်ဆိုးတယ် to dye with liquid from boiled tree barks
အပေါက်ဆိုးတယ် to be bad-tempered
လူကုံထံ the wealthy, the rich
သင်္ကန်းရုံတယ် to drape a robe
ဒလိန့်ခေါက်ကွေး (to fall) in a roll
နိဗ္ဗာန်ဈေး a general giveaway by raffle (figuratively called Nirvana market)
စတုဒိသာ a feast, an event that serves meals to the general public
အယုတ်အလတ်အမြတ်မရွေး regardless of class or virtue
မီးခိုးတိတ် smokeless (unnecessary to cook)
ထမင်းရည် juice left from cooking rice in a pot
ထမင်းရည်ချောင်းစီး rice juice flows like a river
အဟာရ nutritious 
ထန်းလျက် jaggery

Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

Do you know the legend of မဖဲဝါ Ma Phe Wah, the graveyard guardian spirit in disheveled hair, dressed in a yellow outfit? And do you know the origin of the Burmese word စုန်း for witches? How about the two different branches of sorcery, အထက်လမ်း and အောက်လမ်း, quite literally the high path and the low path? If you don’t, grab your wicked candies, your pumpkin spiced latte, and join me and my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY, or Burmese Language Academy of Yangon. In this Halloween special episode, we are talking about Burmese witches, sorcerers, bewitching curses, and some ways to undo them. (Illustration generated by AI in Microsoft Designer. Music clips from Uppbeat.io)

Vocabulary

စုန်း / ကဝေ witches
မျက်လှည့် sleight of hand
မှော်ဆရာ wizard, sorcerer 
တစ်ဆင့်စကားတစ်ဆင့်နား hearsay, word of mouth
ကိုယ်တွေ့ အတွေ့အကြုံ personal experience
အသွင်အပြင် appearance
ပင်လယ်စုန်း sea witch, unexplainable fire or light at sea, similar to St. Elmo’s Fire
အထက်လမ်း white magic, noble sorcery
အောက်လမ်း black magic, wicked sorcery
ဗေဒင်ဟောတယ် to predict the future
ယတြာချေတယ် to counter an ill omen
ကျိန်စာတိုက်တယ် to put a curse on someone
လူဝင်စား reincarnation
သရဲ တစ္ဆေ ghosts
သင်္ချိုင်းစောင့် guardian of the cemetery 
ဆံပင်ဖားဖား long, unkept hair
တွေ့လိုတွေ့ငြား hoping to meet (the ghost) by chance
သိုက် site of hidden treasure, often protected by supernatural means
ဥစ္စာစောင့် treasure-guarding spirit 
သိုက်ကလာတယ် slang, he/she is a snob; he/she won’t mingle with ordinary folks
ခနဲ့တယ် to mock
ပြုစားတယ် to possess, to bewitch 
အပနှင်တယ် to exorcise, to drive away an evil spirit
အာနိသင် potency
ပရိတ်ကြိုး blessed string amulet 
ပရိတ်ရေ blessed water
စွပ်စွဲတယ် to accuse
ရေပန်းစားတယ် to be popular

Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

In Myanmar or Burma, October is the month of Thadingyut, the festival of light. For the children, it's a rare excuse to play with fireworks, sparkles, and even firecrackers. For young people and couples, it’s a chance to take a stroll along the bright-lit streets and the festival market, to sample the crispy fritters and grilled meat in the food stalls, and to buy handmade crafts and toys, like fish-shaped paper lanterns and demon figurines with movable limbs. In this episode, my friend Su, a Thailand-based Burmese languge teacher, and I share our favorite things to do during Thadingyut, and explain the words, phrases, and expressions related to the festival. So grab your sparkles and celebrate the festival of light from our childhood. Music clips from Uppbeat.io)

Vocabulary

သီတင်းကျွတ် Thadingyut, the festival of light

ဖယောင်းတိုင်ထွန်းတယ် to light candles

နည်းနည်းနောနောမဟုတ်ဘူး not trivial, not insignificant

ကျင်းပတယ် to celebrate, to hold (an event or festival) 

မိုးလေကင်းလွတ်တယ် to be free of rain and wind, to have temperate weather

အငြင်းပွားစရာ debatable

ဘီလူးရုပ် demon figure 

ယမင်းရုပ် figure of a dancing maiden

ချားရဟတ် Ferris wheel

ရင်တလှပ်လှပ်ဖြစ်တယ် the heart beats erratically from excitement

အသည်းငယ်တယ် to have a weak heart, to be easily frightened

မအီမသာဖြစ်တယ် to feel uncomfortable, to be queasy 

အူ၊ ကလီစာ intestines and internal organs

အဘိဓမ္မာ Abhidharma

ကျေးဇူးဆပ်တယ် to return a favor, to repay a debt of gratitude 

အထွတ်အမြတ် paragon, pinnacle 

စောင်းတန်း corridor 

ဗြဟ္မာ a type of heavenly spirits

အလေ့အထ tradition

ဒေဝါလီ Diwali, Hindu festival of light

နွယ်တယ် to be intertwined, to be related

မီးရှူးမီးပန်း fireworks

မီးပန်းဆော့တယ် to play with sparkles

ဗျောက်အိုး firecracker

ကာလသား young men, especially unmarried

ငရဲမီး flame from burning acid 

အိမ်စောင့်နတ် guardian spirit of the home

ဆီမီး cup-shaped oil lamp

မျှောတယ် to float something in the water

ကန်တော့တယ် to pay homage

ဝပ်တွား to crouch

ဆွေမျိုးမိတ်သဟာ kinsmen and friends

ဆင်နွှဲတယ် to join the festivities 

ဆွမ်း၊ ဘောစဉ် alms (for monks and nuns)

ပြိုးပြိုးပြက်ပြက် to be sparkling, bright 

Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

Do you have a brother or sister from another belly? Most of you probably do. The Burmese term အကိုတစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ or ညီမတစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ , literally brother or sister from another belly, refers to the son or daughter of your uncle or aunt -- in other words, your first cousin. In English, you wouldn't refer to such relatives as your "brother" or "sister," but many Burmese often call them အကို "brother" or ညီမ "sister," opting to drop the qualifier တစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ for "one belly removed" or "one womb away."

Since your first cousins are တစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ "one belly removed," naturally, your second cousins -- related to you by your grandparents' siblinghood -- are referred to as "နှစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ" or "two bellies removed."

The word ဝမ်း for "belly" is often the root word in emotion-related words, such as ဝမ်းသာတယ် (literally, excessive belly) for "to be happy or delighted," and ဝမ်းနည်းတယ် (literally, reduced belly) for "to be unhappy or sad." Then there's the expression တစ်စိတ်တည်းတစ်ဝမ်းတည်း "of a single mind, a single belly" that means "to see things the same way, to share the same view." So if you and your cousin happen be in agreement on something, you could say ကျွန်တော်နဲ့ ကျွန်တော့်အကိုတစ်ဝမ်းကွဲဟာ တစ်စိတ်တည်းတစ်ဝမ်းတည်းပါ "I and my brother from another belly are of the same mind, the same belly" -- an inadvertent self-contradiction that might prompt chuckles from your audience.

For more on these quirky expressions, listen to the latest episode of Bite-Size Burmese. (Illustration AI-generated: Microsoft Image Creator; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io. With thanks to my Burmese friends Nyunt Wai Moe and Zaw Min Oo for confirming the use of the kinship terms.)

Vocabulary

• အကိုတစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ first cousin, older male (older brother, one belly removed)
• ညီမတစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ first cousin, younger female (younger sister, one belly removed)
• အကိုနှစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ second cousin, older male (older brother, two bellies removed)
• ညီမနှစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ second cousin, younger female (younger sister, two bellies removed)
• တစ်စိတ်တည်းတစ်ဝမ်းတည်း of the same view (to be of the same mind, same belly)
• တစ်သွေးတည်းတစ်သားတည်း of the same view (to be of the same blood, the same flesh)
• စိတ်ဝမ်းကွဲတယ် to be in disagreement, to be divided (to be of a different mind and belly)
• သွေးကွဲတယ် to be in disagreement, to be divided (to be of different blood) 

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In a song about timid lovebirds too shy to confess their feelings for each other, the lyrics says "မျက်လုံးချင်းစကားပြောနေပြီ (Their eyes are speaking to each other)." In the song "ရတနာသူ (Jeweled Lover)," the lyrics compares the girl's bodyparts to precious gemstones, ending with "အသည်းနှလုံးကိုကျောက်စိမ်းနဲ့မွမ်းမံခြယ် (her heart should be adorned with jade)," implying the cold, unfeeling nature of the subject. 
 
Now that many young people are fleeing the armed conflicts and the political chaos in Burma, the singer Htoo Ein Thin's poignant song about leaving one’s hometown is seeing a revival. In "လေလွင့်ခြင်းလမ်းမများ (Wind-Blown Paths)," the lyrics says:

အဝေးက လမ်းဟောင်းလေးကို ငါဟာနှုတ်ဆက် (I bid farewell to the familiar road in the distance)
အမေ့ရဲ့မျက်ရည်စက်တွေ ငါနှုတ်ဆက် (I bid farewell to my mother's tears)
အပြာရောင်ကျောပိုးအိတ်တစ်ခုထဲ (Into my blue backpack)
ဒဏ်ရာအဟောင်းလေးကိုထည့် (I stuffed my old wounds)
သွားရတော့မယ် (Cause I must go now)

In this episode of Learn Burmese from Natural Talk, my guest Su, a language teacher based in Thailand, and I dissect the lyrics from our favorite songs, and single out some expressions, phrase turns, and similes you might reuse in your daily conversations -- especially when talking about love. (Illustration generated with AI in Miscosoft Image Creator; Music clips from Uppbeat.io)

Vocabulary

သီချင်းစာသား song lyrics
ပိစိသေးသေးလေး a tiny, small thing
သားချော့တေး lullaby
အာညောင်းတယ် the mouth gets tired from singing / speaking
ကလေးသိပ်တယ် to put a child to sleep
တေးပေါင်းချုပ် collect song lyrics
မျှားတယ် to convince or persuade someone to do something
ပေါက်ကရ nonsense, silly
ဆူညံဝုန်းဒိုင်းကြဲတယ် to be noisy, loud
ကျေးလက်ဒေသ rural area
မဟူရာ jet, black gemstone
ပုလဲ pearl
ကျောက်စိမ်း jade
သူ့ကိုယ်သူနှစ်သိမ့်တယ် she consoles herself
အကြိမ်ကြိမ် repeatedly, time after time
လက်တည့်စမ်းတယ် to test out, to try out, to attempt
စိန်ခေါ်တယ် to challenge
ကြိမ်းဝါးတယ် to declare, assert, to roar
သမင်မျက်လုံး deer’s eyes (sparking, watery eyes)
ဇင်ယော်တောင်မျက်ခုံး seagull-wing eyebrow (curly, elegant eyebrow)
လှိုက်လှိုက်လှဲလှဲ warmly, affectionately, whole-heartedly
(ဒီအပင်အရင်) ညွှတ်မယ် the stem is ready to bend down, to yield the flower (suggesting willingness)
ရေလာမြောင်းပေး to make a canal to direct the water (to give romantic hints) အထာပေးတယ် to give hints
ပျိုတိုင်းကြိုက်တဲ့နှင်းဆီခိုင် a rose branch beloved by all the maids (a popular boy)
အတိုင်းအဆမရှိဘူး limitless, immeasurable
ဘယ်ပန်းချီရေးလို့မမီ no painting can faithfully depict (parental love)
မြင့်မိုရ်တောင် Mount Meru, a mythical mountain
သံစဉ်မြူးတယ် the melody is lively
တစ်ကြော့ပြန် to enjoy a revival
လေလွင့်တယ် to be blowing in the wind, to be aimless, to be lost
ခြေဦးတည့်ရာ wherever one’s feet might take one, in no specific direction, aimless

Songs mentioned
 
ရတနာသူ (ခင်မောင်တိုး)
ဘယ်သူကိုယ့်လောက်ချစ်သလဲ (ဖြူဖြူကျော်သိန်း)
မျက်လုံးချင်းစကားပြောနေပြီ (အောင်ရင်)
ဒိုင်ယာရီလေးသက်သေ (ပန်းရောင်ချယ်)
မျက်ဝန်းစကား (စိမ်းမို့မို့)
ဘယ်ပန်းချီရေးလို့မမီ (တက္ကသိုလ်အေးမောင်)
လေလွင့်ခြင်းလမ်းမများ

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