# Wop, Italian regionalism and derogatory terms



## Victoria32

Manuel_M said:
			
		

> There's _dago _too.
> Because I am Mediterranean, I was called that a couple of times during my three-year stint in the UK, though it was more a rough sort of joke rather than an attempt to be nasty.
> 
> It's an epithet usually reserved for Mediterraneans, that is to say Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, Maltese and Portuguese (who are sort of, honorary Mediterraneans). It's possibly derived from "Diego". Well...At least I can console myself with the fact that I have a very very slight connection with Maradona....


 
Hola, Manuel,
My father was from the UK, and used to refer to dagos, (but not in a nasty way I hasten to add. He was an old guy, what can I say?)
I named my son after Diego Maradonna, in 1986. (His brother's idea).


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## jimreilly

Wop, dago, guinea!

Well, I see that this thread popped up again, one of the more interesting ones in terms of new info for me!  The origin of "Guinea" was particularly illuminating, as is the loss of strength-of-insult of the words  "wop" and "dago" for many people.

I've earlier shared this story with Moodywop in a private message: I had two grandmothers--one, my dad's stepmother, was German; the other, my mom's mother, was Italian. My German grandmother did not like Italians, and announced that when I was born that just "meant there was another dago in the family." If you have any doubt, this was not meant kindly. When her other stepson also married an Italian-American she refused to go to the wedding. Two out of two!

Of course I was born in 1943 and these words have lost some of their force by now! But my mother stayed alert for anti-Italian prejudice to the end of her days (from her mother-in-law or elsewhere), although that did not keep her from being prejudiced herself against people from farther south in Italy than where her family was from, not to mention against some other ethnic groups. A shame.

Now that one of my friends is a Guinean, from the "real" Guinea (Conakry), it all seems kind of silly! But a whole social history is written in these words....


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## moodywop

jimreilly said:
			
		

> Of course I was born in 1943 and these words have lost some of their force by now!


 
Jim

Of course I'm sure that there are still people who use "wop" derogatorily, as in "greasy wop".
It has only ever been used jocularly and affectionately towards me by friends. Not only didn't it bother me but I became very fond of the word after reading about its history in the Oxford English Dictionary. As you rightly say:



> a whole social history is written in these words....


Just as African Americans sometimes use the N-word between themselves, I have no qualms about my applying it to myself.

If you look at the thread on _vucumpra'_ you will see that, on the other hand, I strongly disagree with the claim made there that many Northern Italians use the word _terroni _to refer to us without any derogatory intent but purely as a neutral description. Neutral my ass!


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## erick

I must have grown up in a vacuum, I had never heard the terms "wop" or "dago" until I found WordReference.  Perhaps growing up in California there just wasn't the occasion for anyone to use these terms (most of our new immigrants come from Latin America).  However when living in Firenze I heard less than flattering things said by my Fiorentine and Milanese friends about southern Italians.  I wouldn't call them "racist," but if not racist, what?  "Regionalist?"  It's common enough that there must be an Italian word for the prejudice often held by northerners for the south.


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## Paulfromitaly

Manuel_M said:


> There's _dago _too.
> Because I am Mediterranean, I was called that a couple of times during my three-year stint in the UK, though it was more a rough sort of joke rather than an attempt to be nasty.
> 
> It's an epithet usually reserved for Mediterraneans, that is to say Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, Maltese and Portuguese (who are sort of, honorary Mediterraneans). It's possibly derived from "Diego". Well...At least I can console myself with the fact that I have a very very slight connection with Maradona....



I myself was once called "wop" in Scotland by a pisshead walking pass the street after a piss up, although I don't look Mediterranean at all, but just because I'm Italian.
I wasn't amused..


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## moodywop

Well, maybe you associate words like these with the connotation they were used with when you first encountered them. I first heard "wop" in England when a dear friend greeted me with "here comes our favourite wop". If anything, I had thought it was mainly used in AE. That was my first and only encounter with the word in real life. Apart from that, I only found it in old novels and movies.

It has always struck me how we don't have (or at least I don't know) any derogatory words for other nationalities, unlike, say,  froggie,  Kraut,  chink,  nip,  Paki in English. It must mean something. Even anti Vietnam War demonstrators in the 60s/70s used to have to make do with "Yankees".

I think the anti-southern prejudice has waned considerably over the past decades. It was probably on its way out when the Lega Nord rekindled it (on one of their forums we are described as a "mongrel race").

I have only encountered prejudice once. Ironically, it was prejudice masked as a compliment and more offensive than any single derogatory word.
I had settled in the UK. The parents of a colleague of mine came to visit from Florence. While we were having dinner they said I had done the right thing emigrating from the South. "OK, the accent is there, but you're not like them. You don't look or act  like one of them". They advised me against moving back to finish my degree.
Ironically, I then found out my colleague was actually from Montecatini but told English people he was from Florence because it sounded, I guess, more prestigious.

My niece has been working in Verona for ten years and loves it there. She has picked up a lovely Venetian accent. One of my best friends is from Trieste and she's a better friend than many of my _compaesani._

Prejudice is silly and doesn't see the individual human being behind the label. I'm still convinced it only survives among a few narrow-minded bigots and is on its way out.

PS Erick, why dignify prejudice with subclassifications as if it were a branch of philosophy? The basic motivations (feeling superior to someone who is viewed as inferior, the herd instinct, fear of what one doesn't understand) are the same for all kinds of prejudice, whether aimed at different social/regional/religious/ethnic groups, homosexuals, mentally ill people etc. Sadly, one minority often resents the prejudice aimed at it, while happily stigmatizing other minorities. 
We humans are a flawed bunch. Yes, _we are such stuff as dreams are made on _(_The Tempest_) but even the most beautiful dream can turn into a nightmare.


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## Paulfromitaly

moodywop said:


> It has always struck me how we don't have (or at least I don't know) any derogatory words for other nationalities...



Temo che l'espressione più corretta sia " we didn't have any.."..
Dopo secoli in cui l' Italia è stata sempre terra di conquista e noi Italiani siamo stati fondamentalmente emigranti verso altre nazioni e spesso altri continenti, la situazione sta cambiando...
Ora anche noi sempre più spesso abbiamo a che fare con il fenomeno dell' immigrazione e sospetto che questa presunta ed alquanto illusoria "superiorità" che qualche "bigot" crede di avere nei confronti di chi arriva in Italia, non tanto dovuta a differenze culturali o di educazione, ma solo per una questione razziale o di nazionalità stia favorendo la nascità di nuovi termini usati per lo più in maniera offensiva.


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## lsp

Paulfromitaly said:


> Temo che l'espressione più corretta sia " we didn't have any.."..





moodywop said:


> It has always struck me how we don't have (or at least I don't know) any


The original sounds find to me, and is more accurate, I think, because the intention is to convey that we still don't have any...


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## Paulfromitaly

lsp said:


> The original sounds find to me, and is more accurate, I think, because the intention is to convey that we still don't have any...



I was trying to be witty...It wasn't meant to be a correction of what Moodywop had written (how could I be so cheeky to dare? .
Actually I reckon it's no longer true that we don't have any derogatory words for other nationalities, therefore his assertion should be changed into a past tense form to be more realistic.


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## Outsider

Manuel_M said:


> It's an epithet usually reserved for Mediterraneans, that is to say Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, Maltese and Portuguese (who are sort of, honorary Mediterraneans).


Mi piace questa etichetta! 

I don't think these slurs became disused that long ago, if they ever did get disused. You only have to watch _Fawlty Towers_ or _Black Adder_ to hear them. I have to admit that noticing these words when I rewatched these shows made them a little less enjoyable for me.


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## Victoria32

moodywop said:


> Well, maybe you associate words like these with the connotation they were used with when you first encountered them. I first heard "wop" in England when a dear friend greeted me with "here comes our favourite wop". If anything, I had thought it was mainly used in AE. That was my first and only encounter with the word in real life. Apart from that, I only found it in old novels and movies.
> 
> It has always struck me how we don't have (or at least I don't know) any derogatory words for other nationalities, unlike, say,  froggie,  Kraut,  chink,  nip,  Paki in English. It must mean something. Even anti Vietnam War demonstrators in the 60s/70s used to have to make do with "Yankees".
> 
> I think the anti-southern prejudice has waned considerably over the past decades. It was probably on its way out when the Lega Nord rekindled it (on one of their forums we are described as a "mongrel race").
> 
> I have only encountered prejudice once. Ironically, it was prejudice masked as a compliment and more offensive than any single derogatory word.
> I had settled in the UK. The parents of a colleague of mine came to visit from Florence. While we were having dinner they said I had done the right thing emigrating from the South. "OK, the accent is there, but you're not like them. You don't act like one of them". They advised me against moving back to finish my degree.
> Ironically, I then found out my colleague was actually from Montecatini but told English people he was from Florence because it sounded, I guess, more prestigious.
> 
> My niece has been working in Verona for ten years and loves it there. She has picked up a lovely Venetian accent. One of my best friends is from Trieste and she's a better friend than many of my _compaesani._
> 
> Prejudice is silly and doesn't see the individual human being behind the label. I'm still convinced it only survives among a few narrow-minded bigots and is on its way out.
> 
> PS Erick, why dignify prejudice with subclassifications as if it were a branch of philosophy? The basic motivations (feeling superior to someone who is viewed as inferior, the herd instinct, fear of what one doesn't understand) are the same for all kinds of prejudice, whether aimed at different social/regional/religious/ethnic groups, homosexuals, mentally ill people etc. Sadly, one minority often resents the prejudice aimed at it, while happily stigmatizing other minorities.
> We humans are a flawed bunch. Yes, _we are such stuff as dreams are made on _(_The Tempest_) but even the most beautiful dream can turn into a nightmare.


As far as the word _Kraut_ goes, a story -  but first some background. My father  was born in 1919, and  "fought all through't'second world war" to  misquote an early _Coronation Street _character. 
He used to refer to _Kraut b*******_ with real venom (he'd lost friends and a brother in WW2)  and I had absorbed the word, as children do. Years after his death, I had (and still have) German friends. One of them was a mechanic born in 1940, and one day we were disucssing a VW car, which I referrred to as a 'Krautmobile'. Well Georg (understandably) went right off at me! I couldn't apologise enough (I felt terrible) and it took a while to make him understand that I hadn't meant prejudice and loathing, but had just been careless.
Months later, talking to a much younger German, I put my tongue out and tripped over it again. Hans' reaction was to say in puzzled tones "Why did you call me a cabbage?" 
I would no more refer to a German as a Kraut, a Dutchman as 'kasekopf' or an Italian as Dago or wop _for real, _than I would refer to one of the disabled  people I have worked with, as 'cripple, retard or moron'. 
Is the North vs South thing in Italy really as strong as I hear?


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## swyves

As a European white man living in Peru, I get shouts of "gringo" in the street every now and then. When I shout back "pendejo" (perhaps "asshole" or "dickhead"), it always gets a big friendly laugh.


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## Jeswan

Paulfromitaly said:


> Temo che l'espressione più corretta sia " we didn't have any.."..
> Dopo secoli in cui l' Italia è stata sempre terra di conquista e noi Italiani siamo stati fondamentalmente emigranti verso altre nazioni e spesso altri continenti, la situazione sta cambiando...
> Ora anche noi sempre più spesso abbiamo a che fare con il fenomeno dell' immigrazione e sospetto che questa presunta ed alquanto illusoria "superiorità" che qualche "bigot" crede di avere nei confronti di chi arriva in Italia, non tanto dovuta a differenze culturali o di educazione, ma solo per una questione razziale o di nazionalità stia favorendo la nascità di nuovi termini usati per lo più in maniera offensiva.



I agree and it's already well under way..."Vu' compra" is pretty derogatory...(for those that don't know it's a mimicked version of an African accented Italian for "You wanna buy...". It refers to migrants who sell things on the streets or on beaches. Like lighters etc...)...and there's "crucco" for the Germans which is a little old I guess...


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## Setwale_Charm

swyves said:


> As a European white man living in Peru, I get shouts of "gringo" in the street every now and then. When I shout back "pendejo" (perhaps "asshole" or "dickhead"), it always gets a big friendly laugh.


 
MY! Are people there really so ill-mannered?!!!


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## swyves

Setwale_Charm said:


> MY! Are people there really so ill-mannered?!!!


 
It's something that happens in tourist regions; and the way the majority of the first-world tourists who come to Peru behave makes me feel ashamed simply to share my foreignness with them. My understanding of the "¡Gringo!" "¡Pendejo!" exchange is:

"¡Gringo!"
_You bloody foreigners, you come here and flash your cash, blame us for not speaking your language, disrespect our culture, etc., etc., etc._

"¡Pendejo!" _(in an OK Peruvian accent, with a smile on my face)_
_Hang on -- I understand your language culture well enough to know that you've insulted me, to know that as I am a man insulting you back is the thing to do, to pick the right insult and then to say it in a good accent_

Laugh
_OK, sorry to have said that, I didn't mean it, I can see that you're an OK guy despite being white as the driven snow, and I have nothing against you because of your race per se_


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## moodywop

Victoria32 said:


> Is the North vs South thing in Italy really as strong as I hear?


 
It is a thing of the past for me and the wide majority of Italians (it reached its height during the mass migration of Southern Italians to industrial cities [e.g. the Fiat factory in Turin] in the 40s and 50s.

As I said, the prejudice has - despicably - been rekindled by the Northern League Party (part of Mr Berlusconi's coalition - the "Home of Freedom" ). One of its leaders - later to become a cabinet minister - suggested that Southern teachers should be banned from teaching in schools in the North as they would corrupt the language of Northern children[teaching is a very badly paid profession - 1,300 euro a month - so there aren't many people willing to take it up as a career in the North and many Southern teachers move North].

More gems from a forum of Northern League supporters:

_this mongrel race move North and bring crime and the Mafia with them. We should learn from American mistakes: they imported all those  niggers and look what happened over there. _

_OK they are not all dark-skinned but the light-skinned ones are not any better _

From another language forum, run by a Milanese woman (the author of the statement), aimed at foreign learners of Italian:



> I tell you from now, if you think to go to learn Italian in the
> South and enjoy the Mediterraneoum See, forget it, because they do
> not speak proper Italian. I am from Milan, and I do not understand
> what the people from the south say


(the spelling mistakes are in the original post)

PS The original thread in the Italian forum - mostly in English - is here


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## Riccaboni

My Fathers Dad upon his arrival in Philadelphia actually changed his family name from Riccobono to Riccaboni becaused he feared the mostly Neapolitan population in Philadelphia's Italian Market would black ball him and not allow him to operate his Fruit Stand. 

My Mothers Parents had moved to America from Parella and never really had anything nice to say about My Fathers Family. They would make comments that Sicilians were actually africans and they were part "Black" but my Mothers Father had darker skin than my Fathers.

 I always thought that rift was an American thing, I thought maybe it had come from trying to get position in the substandard conditions that many new Immigrants had to live in, For some reason I had never thought it went all the way back to Italy. 

For the Neapolitans on the board does the rivalry between Sicilians and Neapolitans exist in modern Italy?


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## moodywop

Riccaboni said:


> For the Neapolitans on the board does the rivalry between Sicilians and Neapolitans exist in modern Italy?


 
There is no such rivalry in modern Italy. I believe that the rivalry you describe was something that developed among immigrants to the US, not something they brought with them from Italy.

The derogatory word used for Southerners (from whatever region) is _terrone_, from _terra _(soil). Its first recorded use is c. 1950. So, as I mentioned earlier, it is related to the mass migration from the rural South to the industrial North in the late 1940s and in the 1950s.


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## don maico

I think it very much depends on the context of how these words are used. For eg I use to be called "geasy dago" and i always knew it was illmeant because of the adjective and how it was said. Dago on its own would not have caused me to feel offended. The word Pom again is not offensive but add bastard and a derrogatory tone of voice and it takes a different meaning ie an Aussie who doesnt like English people. Ditto Limey. Whats offensive about that?Or Rosbif? These are all nicknames for English people as is Gringo( or anyone who speaks English as a first language).How did these words originate? rosbif - obviously our love of roatsbeef athough I have heard it said its because our backs go the colour of it when we sit out in the sun. Limey - English sailors eating limes to combat scurvey.Pomies i gather comes from "People of mother England" and Gringo maybe from the song "Green grow the rushes o"
now as far as other nationals are concerned:
Krauts - germans love of sauerkraut
Frogs- french love of frogs legs
Yanks -comes from the war. The Eastend Londoners made a rhyming slang term ie septic tanks . sounds derrogatory but its just their humour.
Aussies- obvious
Dago comes from Diego
wogs- western oriental gentleman
Wop - immigrant to the US "without a passport"
spic - hispanic
eyetie - Italian
Chinky-chinese. We often say lets have a chinky meaning lets have some chinese food

Closer to home , Sweaties and Jocks are Sctosmen.
Taffies are welsh
Paddies are Irish
Sassenachs are English
 I dont find any of these words in themselves offensive but add the wrong adjective or the wrong tone of voice then its a different ball game.


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## don maico

moodywop said:


> It is a thing of the past for me and the wide majority of Italians (it reached its height during the mass migration of Southern Italians to industrial cities [e.g. the Fiat factory in Turin] in the 40s and 50s.
> 
> As I said, the prejudice has - despicably - been rekindled by the Northern League Party (part of Mr Berlusconi's coalition - the "Home of Freedom" ). One of its leaders - later to become a cabinet minister - suggested that Southern teachers should be banned from teaching in schools in the North as they would corrupt the language of Northern children[teaching is a very badly paid profession - 1,300 euro a month - so there aren't many people willing to take it up as a career in the North and many Southern teachers move North].
> 
> More gems from a forum of Northern League supporters:
> 
> _this mongrel race move North and bring crime and the Mafia with them. We should learn from American mistakes: they imported all those  niggers and look what happened over there. _
> 
> _OK they are not all dark-skinned but the light-skinned ones are not any better _
> 
> From another language forum, run by a Milanese woman (the author of the statement), aimed at foreign learners of Italian:
> 
> 
> (the spelling mistakes are in the original post)
> 
> PS The original thread in the Italian forum - mostly in English - is here


i use to work for an Italian woman who came for Milan. She was often very derrogatory about southerners believing them to be lazy ,dirty and of Arab extraction. She was a deeply unpleasant and unhappy person and often insulted others as well including Brits.She even blamed God for her problems


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## Outsider

don maico said:


> [...] and Gringo maybe from the song "Green grow the rushes o" [...]


Probably not. There have been several threads about that word here -- which, by the way, is not derogatory in many countries. Do a forum search.


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## sound shift

I've got a book in which a bloke from Verona arrives in Bari and exclaims, "Africa!" Other Veronese in the book, which is non-fiction, regularly refer to Southern Italians as "terroni".


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## don maico

Outsider said:


> Probably not. There have been several threads about that word here -- which, by the way, is not derogatory in many countries. Do a forum search.


There is no reasion for it to be derogatory nad as said I dont terat any of them as derogatory.It depends how they are said .  A few words like the N word have obviously acquired that status because of their association with racism and slavery.

Actually just found this which might clarify:

_The origin of the word Gringo was in 1836 when the troops of the US started to invade Mexico in the north and people tells that an emissary was sent from Arizona to Chihuahua in a message to a general "Green goes to Chihuahua", that a commander Green (last name) was going to attack Chihuahua, when the troops saw that they approached said "ahi vienen los Gringos (Green goes)" (here comes the Gringos) because the troops thought that Gringos was the name of the nationality of the people that came from the north._


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## Outsider

don maico said:


> There is no reasion for it to be derogatory nad as said I dont terat any of them as derogatory.It depends how they are said .  A few words like the N word have obviously acquired that status because of their association with racism and slavery.


O.K., but some foreigners do think it's derogatory. A few of them replied to this thread.



don maico said:


> Actually just found this which might clarify:
> 
> _The origin of the word Gringo was in 1836 when the troops of the US started to invade Mexico in the north and people tells that an emissary was sent from Arizona to Chihuahua in a message to a general "Green goes to Chihuahua", that a commander Green (last name) was going to attack Chihuahua, when the troops saw that they approached said "ahi vienen los Gringos (Green goes)" (here comes the Gringos) because the troops thought that Gringos was the name of the nationality of the people that came from the north._


That seems to be an erroneous folk etymology, though.



> A recurring fake etymology for the derivation of gringo states that it originated during the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. It has been claimed that Gringo comes from "green coat" and was used in reference to the American soldiers and the green color of their uniforms. Yet another story, from Mexico, holds that Mexicans with knowledge of the English language used to write "greens go home" on street walls referring to the color of the uniforms of the invading army; subsequently, it became a common habitual action for the rest of the population to yell "green go" whenever U.S. soldiers passed by. This is an example of an invented explanation, because gringo was used in Spanish long before the war and during the Mexican-American War. Additionally, the U.S. Army did not use green uniforms at the time, but blue ones.
> 
> 'Gringo' at Wikipedia


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## don maico

Outsider said:


> O.K., but some foreigners do think it's derogatory. A few of them replied to this thread.
> 
> That seems to be an erroneous folk etymology, though.



guess we'll never know
as to your first paragraph. there is always going to be someone who takes umbrage at something someone said.For me its always the intent that matter after all someone could feel offended if called a goofy nutball if its said in a nasty manner.WE should try and bear in mind that sticks and stones break bones but not words


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## Outsider

However, some words are regularly employed as insults, while others are not.


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## jimreilly

don maico said:


> ...WE should try and bear in mind that sticks and stones break bones but not words



Ah, yes, but broken hearts and spirits can be caused by words, especially when the words are often repeated with malicious intent, carry the weight of stereotypes and bigotry, and accompany acts which may be harmful....

And sometimes the hearts and spirits are not so much broken as hardened into a defensive selfishness, and less likely to be open to the needs of others.


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## don maico

jimreilly said:


> Ah, yes, but broken hearts and spirits can be caused by words, especially when the words are often repeated with malicious intent, carry the weight of stereotypes and bigotry, and accompany acts which may be harmful....
> 
> And sometimes the hearts and spirits are not so much broken as hardened into a defensive selfishness, and less likely to be open to the needs of others.


i agree which is why I reiterate that its the intent that matters not so much the words themselves .I know that when Aussies call us Poms its meant harmlessly and even sometimes with some affection.As long as they can beat us at cricket they are happy.


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