Let's Learn Japanese

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takenoko
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Let's Learn Japanese

Post by takenoko »

Just thought I'd introduce a katakana (the alphabet for foreign words and sounds) and a few kanji per day. Just take it real slow

So some of you might remember that I tried this before:
http://tvnihon.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=148&t=2386

Image
The katakana for "a". Not too complicated. Just two lines.

Examples:
アキハバラ@DEEP A-ki-ha-ba-ra @deep
アギト A-gi-to
アニメ A-ni-me
アストロスイッチ A-su-to-ro Su-i-(small tsu)-chi Astro Switch
アイム A-i-mu Ahim

Note the pattern here? With the exception of Akihabara, all the words here are foreign words or made up words. That's what katakana is used for, and why it's a handy way of getting into Japanese

Another interesting thing is that with the exception of vowels and "n", most of the basic phones in Japanese follow a consonant-vowel construction. In other words, you'll never see "s" by itself. It's always going to be "s" plus "a e i o u". That's why you'll hear an extra sound when you hear Japanese say an English word that ends in "s"

Kanji for this time
Image
Can you guess what this is? Yup, it's the number system. 1 to 5

一 Ichi One
二 Ni Two
三 San three
四 Yon Four
五 Go Five

Not much to say about the first three, they're pretty self explanatory. Four is just something you have to memorize. Maybe try remembering it has four sides? Or that four has five strokes while five has four strokes?

Five is important for Sentai fans because it's pronunciation "go" is punned with everything in that series. I mean, GoRanger literally means "5 rangers".

Example of kanji that use this:
一号 Ichigou Number one
二号 Nigou Number two
三角 Sankaku Triangle (literally three angles)
四天王 Shitennou The four heavenly kings, or "the four best". The shitennou are the name of Beryl's generals in Sailor Moon and other groups of four guys that are really cool
五星 Gosei Five stars

You might notice that for Shitennou, the kanji has a different pronunciation. That's just something that happens with kanji that one will have to memorize. Sometimes 四 is yon, yotsu, shi. Sometimes people use the alternate pronunciation of four or say it's an unlucky number because shi means death in Japanese.

Anyway, if you have any questions or have suggestions, post 'em.

And remember if you don't know a word, you can always look it up with a dictionary:
http://jisho.org/
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Re: Let's Learn Japanese

Post by LanEvoXRacer »

Awesome!! I am going to subscribe to this thread from now on. Thanks again.

Yeah... 4 always gets me... Like I have always wondered why there are like friggin' three sayings to it. And they don't even sound alike.
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Update 2

Post by takenoko »

Image
Today's katakana is "i". Again, just two strokes, pretty simple right? It even sorta looks like an "i". Let's see what words use "i" in them:

イエロー i-e-ro-u Yellow. Note that the last vowel is replaced by a dash to show that it's a long vowel. Since Japanese is a phonetic language, things are often spelled the way they sound. Plus there's not exactly a native "ye" sound in Japanese

ゴカイジャー Go-ka-i-ja-a It's pretty hard to find words that begin with i that's related to our stuff, so this time i shows up in the middle.

スイッチ Su-i-(small tsu)-chi Starting to see how i is added at the end of consonants?

インサーン I-n-sa-a-n I'm just filling in the dashes with the most logical vowel.

イカリ・ガイ I-ka-ri Ga-i So if we spelled Gai's name katakana, he'd have i in it twice.

Today's kanji:
Image
6 to 10

六 Roku Six Kind of looks like eight with a hat on it. Make sure it's a straight line though, since adding lines to the hat turns it into the kanji for hole: 穴

六人目 Roku-nin-me Six-person-eye or basically "the sixth member". Yup, this is how they call the 6th ranger in Sentai. In this example, the kanji for eye is being used as a counter for number of people.

七 Shichi Seven. Don't forget the hook, or it'll look a lot like ten. Note that seven is also pronounced as "nana". Both of these are used in the anime name Shichinin no Nana 七人のナナ or "Seven Nanas". Might as well learn the kanji for hito/nin/person since it's a simple one.

七変化 Shichi henge/seven transformations. Some kabuki thing that's referenced a lot. Yup, same kanji for hen as in henshin.

八 Hachi Eight Another two line kanji, pretty easy stuff, right?

八つ当たり 【やつあたり】 Yatsu Atari (n) outburst of anger. Here eight is pronounced as "yatsu". I like this because this phrase literally means "to strike out in the eight directions AKA to strike out blindly" It's used to describe people who are taking out their anger on innocent people.

ハチ公 Hachiko the dog from that Japanese tale. The eight is because he was the eighth dog in the litter.

九 Kyuu Nine. Again, be sure to get that tip there. You don't want to accidentally write chikara/power 力 or katakana ka カ

九生 【きゅうしょう】 Kyuu-shou (n) nine lives (of a cat)

十 Jyuu Ten Hey, it's a cross. Pretty simple right?

十字 Jyuuji In fact, it's literally the kanji for the shape of the cross. If only all kanji were this straight forward

十分 Jyuubun Plenty, sufficient. Literally 10/10 parts. Incidentally 八分目 hachi-bun-me means 8/10 or 80%. In this case fun/pun 分 means portion of.

十分 Juppun/Jippun 10 minutes. Wait what? It's the same kanji. Yup. You'll just have to recognize it from context. In this case fun/pun 分
means minutes. Yeah, fuck you kanji

Bonus kanji:
Image

零 Rei Zero I originally wasn't going to include this, but I figured it'd be an oversight if I didn't. That's the kanji for zero, and it's ridiculously complex. In fact, if you just put down 0 with kanji, I think that's acceptable. It basically consists of the kanji for rain/precipitation over the kanji for orders/decrees (also pronounced rei). And yes, this is where Zero from Garo gets his name from.

Using them is pretty straight forward. If you want to say 18 you'd just write ten and eight 十八 Jyuu-hachi. Or twenty is 二十 ni-jyuu.

Am I going too fast? Everyone keeping up so far? Any questions?

Edit: Oh yeah, if you have trouble reading the words, you can look it up at jisho.org http://jisho.org/
Or if you want to know more about a single kanji, they have a field where you can look up individual kanji to get a lot of information about it.
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Re: Let's Learn Japanese

Post by Ashki »

So far, the progress isn't too fast. When learning a foreign language on a college level, one is slammed with new words and phrases. For example, in French or Spanish, one would be required to learn the numbers 1-50 within a few days... And that's in addition to dozens of other words and phrases.

One thing I should note (because it's always been a bug up my butt and we're already encountering it): When writing out kanji into Romaji (Roman letters), long vowels either have a line over them or are doubled (ex: kyū or kyuu). If you have two different vowels, both are pronounced. But there is one exception. The letter O may be written out as ō, oo, or ou. The latter, if memory serves, had been permitted for a specific reason back when many name-specific kanji were removed from the language. In the majority of translations, you will thus see "ou" (including here). But there are some of us who shall always use ō or "oo".

I just thought I should point that out in case we run into an "au" or other double-vowel. Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to continuing the (refresher, for me) course! ^_^
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Re: Let's Learn Japanese

Post by Nova »

Thank you! This is really nice, I really would like to know the Japanese language better.

About this: 'Or that four has five strokes while five has four strokes'.
To me it seems like four has six strokes and five has five strokes. Or am I seeing it wrong?
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Re: Let's Learn Japanese

Post by takenoko »

Oh yeah, I definitely think I had to learn the whole Japanese alphabet within two weeks. Maybe three tops. But for people like that, they'd probably just make some flash cards and memorize it. So I might as well take this slow for the people who aren't like that.

The long vowel thing is always kind of tricky. I'm basically writing it out the way I would do it if I were writing it if it were sung for a karaoke.

Ah, I guess I should talk about brushstroke a bit. I think that normally you guy left to right and top to down? Or maybe it's top to down and left to right. But anyway, when you do a left stroke and a down stroke, it's done as a single stroke, you don't lift up the brush. If you look up the kanji on jisho.org you can see the stroke order:
http://jisho.org/kanji/details/%E5%9B%9B

Honestly, I don't really stringently pay attention to the stroke orders since I don't write much kanji, plus stroke order is necessary for good calligraphy with a brush, which I honestly don't think will affect most of us. As long as we can read it that's the most important thing.

That said, there's nothing like taking a kanji and writing it out a dozen times to practice it to help memorize it. If you have some free time when you're not doing anything, maybe practice the kanji that you encounter here and that pique your interest?
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Update 3

Post by takenoko »

Image
Today's katakana: e

Heh, it does look like an I beam doesn't it? Don't get it confused with the kanji for 工 which means "construction". I mean, you never would since most katakana would be with other katakana spelling a word or a sound that you'd be familiar with.

Examples:
エレキステイツ E-re-ki-su-te-i-tsu Elec States There's "i" from yesterday. Still remember it right?
エア E-a Air. Yup, still a phonetic language. And there's "a" from lesson 1
エラー E-ra-a Error.

エンジン戦隊ゴーオンジャー E-n-ji-n Sen-tai Go-u-o-n-ji-(small ya)-a
This is complicated, not only because it's long, but because En-jin has kanji: 炎神. Let's ignore the kanji for now and talk about the title. It uses a mix of katakana and kanji seemlessly. You've probably seen this logo a bunch of times if you watched Go-Onger. You see a lot of "n" in the phrase and two long vowels. Learning Japanese begins with learning to read the Japanese you encounter in your daily life

Today's kanji:
Image
Why not use the Sentai that's all about teaching kanji? Plus, elements are important in these shows. (Remember you can always click the pictures to make them bigger)

火 Hi/ka Fire. Looks like a doodle of fire. Pretty simple, right? Just 4 strokes. Try writing all of these kanji at least once

炎 Honoo Flame. Oh, you can use two fire to create a slightly new word. Neat!

In fact, a common way of looking up kanji is by looking up the components that are used in them. Try to find the kanji for honoo here:
http://jisho.org/kanji/radicals/
First you find the radical for hi, remember 4 strokes. On my computer it's in row 3, fourth from the end. That produces 103 results, organized by number of strokes. And no, you can't find the sealing kanji here. It's made up.

火曜日 Ka-you-bi. Well, you is the kanji for weekday. And hi/bi means day. So what's ka in this sentence? All together it means Tuesday.

水 Mizu/Sui Water. I believe the stroke order for this has the middle line first, the left line next, then the two on the right. Yup.
http://jisho.org/kanji/details/%E6%B0%B4 Don't forget the little hook on the middle line to make it look nice!

氷 Koori Ice. Nope, it's not the same kanji twice. Note the dot on the left side.

永 Ei/naga Eternity/lengthy. This time the dash is over the middle line.

冰 I saw this in my lookup for kanji with the water radical, but couldn't find any words that use it. Well, thank goodness for jisho.org. I looked up the kanji, then clicked on the link "Show words that contain this kanji"
http://jisho.org/words?jap=*%E5%86%B0*& ... =relevance
It didn't really have any results. Just that this was an archaic kanji that most people probably didn't use anymore. Lesson learned.

水曜日 Sui-you-bi Can you guess what word this is? It's Wednesday

木 Ki/Moku Tree/wood. Hey, it even looks like a tree.

林 Hayashi Grove/woods. Yup, two trees makes a forest.

森 Mori Forest. No wait, three trees makes a forest. I guess hayashi isn't as thick as a mori.

風林火山 Fuu-rin-ka-zan Wind, woods, fire, mountain. As fast as the wind, as quiet as the forest, as vicious as the fire, and as unmovable as the mountain. Might want to pick up on wind and mountain. By the way, kazan = volcano.

木曜日 Moku-you-bi What's this? It's Thursday, of course!

土 Tsuchi/to/do Earth/land/soil. Earth as in the ground, not the planet.

土星 Do-sei OK Saturn! Yeah, sei/hoshi means star OR planet. Oh shit, I didn't bother to do the planets for the other elements. Oh well, here it is in brief: 火星 Kasei Mars, 水星 Suisei Mercury, 木星 Mokusei Jupiter.

土曜日 Do-you-bi. And this? Nope, it's not Friday. It's Saturday. Why are there some days and planets missing? That's because there's a lot of potential elemental kanji and the Shinkengers only use a subset of that. I'll cover those tomorrow, actually

天 Ten/Ama heaven. Maybe sky too, but it's more a celestial sky.

天ノ川 Ama-no-gawa Milky Way. You might remember this from my Fourze notes. It's literally the "river of heaven". The "no" in this phrase is actually a katakana "no" in case you want to memorize that (It's one line!)

天地 Ten-chi Heaven and Earth. 天地無用 Tenchi muyou (yeah, like the anime name) means "no need for heaven and earth (because life is already so great"). My dictionary says the definition of tenchi muyou is "this side up". Ummm, let me look this up. Huh. Okay, another meaning of tenchi is "up and down". In that context, they write "tenchi muyou" on packages that can be damaged if the box is turned the wrong back. So don't flip heaven and earth around, or the package contents will get damaged. So maybe the meaning I heard was only referencing the anime (since Tenchi had a lot of girls in it) or maybe the person's interpretation of the kanji was totally wrong.

天下 Ten-ka Under heaven, the world. Basically a fruity way of saying the world. If we combine this with a kanji we learned from lesson 1:
天下一 【てんかいち】 Ten-ka-ichi (n) unique thing, best on earth
天下御免 【てんかごめん】 Ten-ka-go-men (n) licensed, chartered, officially allowed. Yup, the Shinkenger phrase. Also, the gomen kanji here is the same as "gomen/sorry"

天装戦隊ゴセイジャー Ten-sou Sen-tai Go-se-i-ja-a Well, sou means equip (souchaku?) dress, or load. So Tensou sorta means to "load with heaven"?
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Re: Update 3

Post by Go-On Macaroni »

takenoko wrote:E-n-ji-n Sen-tai Go-u-o-n-ji-(small ya)-a
So, it's "Go-u-o-n-ji-ya-a", or am I reading that completely wrong? :?
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Re: Let's Learn Japanese

Post by takenoko »

When the ya is small it's more of a single sound. Jya/ja. Like ninja
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Re: Let's Learn Japanese

Post by Go-On Macaroni »

Ah, gotcha.
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Update 4

Post by takenoko »

Image
雷鳴オ Katakana O

Kind of a weird, shape, but still 3 lines at most. Speaking of which, you can practice the katakana you learn (and pick up new ones) at this site, which presents it as a kind of game:
http://www.realkana.com/katakana/

オーレンジャー O-u-re-n-ji-(small ya)-a OhRanger!

オーズ O-o-zu OOO! Remember, pronounced like cheeri-o's. Phonetic language. Even though you'll see the OOO more often than the katakana, there are some sites that write it out with Kamen Rider OOO using just kanji and katakana

オール o-u-ru All. No natural l, so Japanese uses r to represent those sounds

オーケー O-u-ke-i OK
オッケー O-(small tsu)-ke-i OK

Kanji
Image
日 Hi/nichi Sun. Also the kanji for day.

日本 Ni-hon Japan. The second kanji is hon/book. Note how similar the kanji is to tree. It's just one more line. Note that this kanji can also be pronounced Nippon, since the h can take on a p sound. The nature of linguistic evolution is to bring sounds in the mouth closer together.

That reminds me, I missed a pretty good kanji yesterday:
天道 Ten-dou Celestial path; the sun. Dou means road. So yeah, you can talk about the sun even with the kanji for it

日曜日 Nichi-you-bi Remember yesterday's lesson? Best part, it's the same word in English. SUNday. Also note that the kanji's pronunciation changes depending on where it is in the position.

土日 Do-nichi Saturday and Sunday. AKA the weekend

Image
月 Getsu Moon. Also, it means month (Get it? Sun is day, moon is month? It's the length it takes these celestial bodies to orbit or be orbited for Earth.)

月 It's also worth noting that the kanji for moon, when used as a radical, means flesh. You'll see it a lot in kanji that's used to talk about body parts.

明日 Ashita Tomorrow. The first kanji is asu/mei/bright. Sun, moon, then sun again, tomorrow. Easy right?

月中 Getsu-chuu The whole month. The second kanji means "medium,center,middle" but in this case it means "throughout". It's worth learning it since it's such a logical kanji.

月曜日 Getsuyoubi Monday.

Image
金 Kane/kin Gold/Metal. Just remember Den-O's yellow form. KINtaros.

As a radical, this kanji almost always means metal. And you'll see it in a ton of kanji. Even bell has it in there 鈴/suzu/rin. Remember the right side of that kanji? It's rei/order. Same as the bottom of the kanji for zero 零. Sometimes knowing the radical will give a clue for how it's pronounced.

鎧 Yoroi armor. Also Gai. Ikari Gai

錬金術 ren-kin-jutsu Alchemy. There's so much metal in it, the kanji shows up twice. Jutsu means technique and the kanji ren means "to forge/polish"

鋼 Hagane steel. Note that kanji that have three+ syllables are rarish

鋼の錬金術師 Hagane no ren-kin-jutsu-shi Alchemist of steel AKA Fullmetal Alchemist. The shi at the end means master/specialist. It turns "alchemy" into "alchemist" or "one who practices alchemy" basically.

銀 Shirogane/gin silver. Note how similiar kin (gold) and gin (silver) are

銅 Dou/copper

黄金 Ougon Golden. So Ougon Kishi means the Golden Knight, which is Garo's title

金星 Kinsei Venus

Basically there's a million kanji that use this one

金曜日 Kinyoubi Last one in the set. And of course it's Friday. So you remember which elements are affiliated with which days of the week now?

Basically the weekday is Sailor Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus. Saturday is earth. Sunday is the sun. Now you can read the kanji in the promos for which day an episode airs or when a movie comes out.
Sun to Sat: 日Nichi 月Getsu 火Ka 水Sui 木Moku 金Kin 土Do

Flip that around, what planetary bodies do we now?
日 Hi Sun. Note that you'll frequently hear this as Ohi-sama. When talking about things respectfully sometimes there's an O/Go in front
月 Tsuki Moon
水星 Suisei Mercury
火星 Kasei Mars
木星 Mokusei Jupiter
土星 Dosei Saturn
天王星 Ten-nou-sei Uranus We sort of know this one. The kanji for king is pretty easy to remember
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Re: Let's Learn Japanese

Post by shadowneko003 »

I'm just learning the kanji for the days in class right now. Interesting on how you relate the Sailor Moon stuff. =D
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Update 5

Post by takenoko »

Well, the whole thing about learning is connecting those synapses in your brain. Connecting these concepts to popular things is super helpful in memorizing things. It's just making another path to the same concept.

By the way, the pictures of the kanji/katakana come from the Japanese word processor that I use. It's pretty good and it's freeware:
http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/c_download.html

Image
ウ u Note the two vertical lines, this is a 3 stroke character

ウラヌス u-ra-nu-su Uranus

クウガ Ku-u-ga Note that the long vowel isn't a line the way it sometimes is

ウルトラマン U-ru-to-ra-ma-n

So now you know all the vowels in katakana. Can you write them all out?

Kanji

Let's try to learn to express numbers greater than 99

Image
百 hyaku 100. Don't mistake this with 白 shiro/white or 日 hi/sun. This may help you memorize it more easily though, I dunno

百獣 Hyaku-juu All kinds of animals, beasts plural, 100 animals. Not always literally 100 animals, because...

百獣の王 Hyaku-juu no ou King of Beasts. Same meaning as in English. King of 100 animals doesn't make so much sense here.

一一九番 Hyaku-jyuu-kyuu-ban 119, the Japanese equivallent of 911. Note that even though it's pronounced as hundred-ninteen, the spell it with the kanji for one one nine. Weird?

百人力 Hyaku-nin-riki Tremendous strength, lit. strength of 100 men.

Image
千 Sen/chi thousand. Just imagine ten with a cap on it

千と千尋の神隠し Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi or "the strange disappearance of Sen and Chihiro". The reason Chihiro's name is changed to Sen is because it's shortened to the alternate pronunciation of that kanji

千千 Chi?ji I've never really seen this one before. It means thousands, great number of, variety.

千葉 Chiba. This is actually a name of a city. You hear it all the time in Kuuga. The second kanji ha/ba means leaf. So 1000 leaves.

千里 Senri. Ri is a measure of distance in Japan. So 1000 ri.

千里眼 Sen-ri-gan clairvoyance. You might hear this sometimes. It literally is "the eye that can see 1000 ri away"

千里も一里 Sen-ri-mo-ichi-ri a journey of a thousand miles feels like only one mile (when going to see the one you love)

Image
万 man/ban 10,000 I hate this kanji, because it makes counting up numbers so hard.
So a million is 百万 hyaku-man 100x10,000. It's just not a system that's easy for me to get used to

万事 Ban-ji all things

万全 Ban-zen perfection, flawless. Second kanji is good

万一 Man-ichi 1: emergency; unlikely event; (Adverb) 2: by some chance; by some possibility. Literally one in 10,000

Image
億 oku 100 million
I don't know when you'd encounter this kanji, but it might be useful to pick up the radicals that compose it. The two lines on the left is the radical for person. The top of the right side is the radical for standing. Sun in the middle. And heart on the bottom.

Numbers, what a pain
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Re: Let's Learn Japanese

Post by shadowneko003 »

The bigger numbers are a pain. >_<
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Update 6 Review time

Post by takenoko »

Well, hopefully you won't have to use them.

So even if you memorize some stuff, unless you continue to review it/use it, you're going to forget it. Besides, Saturday night is translation night. So let's look over what we did this week

Useful links:
Free Japanese word processor http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/c_download.html

Katakana test http://www.realkana.com/katakana/

Online Japanese dictionary is awesome http://jisho.org
Looking up kanji is awesome: http://jisho.org/kanji/radicals/

Katakana:
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La Li Le Lo Lu?! Just kidding. A i e o u. Have you memorized this set yet?

アイアン A-i-a-n Iron

ウオッチング U-a-(small tsu)-chi-n-gu Watching

イエス I-e-su (n) (1) Jesus, (2) yes I don't know why this doesn't use a J sound. Probably something to do with no j in Jehovah or something.

エイズウイルス E-i-zu U-i-ru-su Aids Virus. Note that in Japanese, they don't tend to put spaces between words. Note how the spelling reflects the quirky Japanese pronunciation of the words. Yeah, that's why.

Kanji
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One to ten. Think you can read numbers if you saw them now?

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Zero, 100, 1000, 10,000, and 100 million

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Can you recognize the meaning of these kanji? If you can do that, then also try to remember what their different pronunciations are. From that, try to remember what words they appear in. If you think a kanji is useful, try looking it up at Jisho.org and seeing what words use it. It's a good way to learn words and to memorize the kanji.

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Another good way of memorizing kanji is telling yourself a story about it. Like "There's the guy with the sky over his head, so that's heaven." Or "That's the Ten in Tendou, he walks the path of heaven." Or "That's the kanji on Gouki/Akuma's back from Street Fighter."
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