# German-Danish dialect continuum



## avok

Hallo!!!!!

We know that there is a dialect continuum betwen Dutch and German. People on both sides of the borders can understand each other without any difficulty. But what about "German-Danish" border? Is there a German-Danish dialect continuum? Or Danish is totally "strange" to the people just behind the border?

Cheers


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## magnus

I will try to answer this question, although I am not Danish.

There are Danish and German minorities on either side of the German-Danish border.

Danish and German as languages are not mutually intelligible, meaning that people from Germany will (in most cases) not understand a Danish sentence (at least not to a full extent) without any knowledge of that language - and vice versa.

The vocabulary is strikingly similar, but the grammar is different - for example the German case system and its word order.


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## avok

Yes, and I just find it strange that where Germany ends, starts a totally different language. Danish! It is not the case with Dutch, as I know.


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## magnus

I would not say it is a *totally *different language - in fact, they are close cousins - a high percentage of the Danish vocabulary (I do not have the exact number) is of same origin as the German one. They are both Germanic languages.

Talking about a dialect continuum, I would expect dialects of the very same standard language - for example the Dutch spoken in the Netherlands and the Dutch spoken in Belgium, a language stretching across borders, but I may misunderstand. It is new to me that people on either side of the border between Germany and the Netherlands (or Belgium for that matter) could understand each other "without any difficulty". I did not know that the languages were mutually intelligible.


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## avok

Hei,

About mutual intelligibility between Dutch and German, I quote (from Wikipedia of course )


> Although Dutch and standard German are not mutually intelligible, there are *transitional dialects* that are, for example Limburgish, spoken in parts of the Netherlands and Belgium, and the Low Franconian dialects across the border in Germany (although Limburgish is nowadays sometimes considered a language in its own right).


 
I guess between Danish and German, there is no "transitional dialects". That's what I meant when I said Danish and German are totally different languages.


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## Ayazid

There is obviously no mutual intelligibility between standard Danish and High (Standard) German which is based mostly on Central and Southern German dialects but it's open for debate if there ever was any intelligibility between local Southern Jutlandic dialect (_Sønderjysk) _on one hand and Low German (_Plattdüütsch_) and North Frisian (_Noardfrysk_) on the other hand. If not it would be higly unusual since in other Indo-European subgroups there is almost always a smooth transition between various closely related languages and dialects. For example Catalan is a "bridge" between Ibero-Romance and Gallo-Romance languages, just as there is a transition between eastern dialects of the West Slavic Polish and Slovak and western dialects of the East Slavic Ukrainian and Belarussian languages. Lack of such dialect continuum between the North and West Germanic speakers would be suggesting that in some period of time the speakers of Old Norse and West Germanic (Saxons etc.) were living isolated from each other. It is interesting that for example the events of the Old English and therefore West Germanic epos _Beowulf _take mostly place among the North Germanic Danes and Geats, suggesting that there was still no great lingustic and cultural difference between the North and West Germanic speakers before the Migration Period, but this topic belongs rather to the subforum *Etymology and History of Languages* where some people more familiar with Germanic linguistics could offer a more profound insight into this problematic (perhaps the entire thread could be removed there)


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## sokol

avok said:


> Hei,
> 
> About mutual intelligibility between Dutch and German, I quote (from Wikipedia of course )


Well, in some cases Wiki simply is wrong.

In this case, as far as the quote goes, there isn't strictly anything wrong with Wiki but rather your interpretation goes too far - but in any case this isn't too relevant.
We already had a discussion here in the German forum about mutual intelligibility (sorry, I don't know where exactly) where we came to the conclusion that mutual intelligibility *no longer* is the case on the Dutch-German border.
Once there was a dialect continuum, and mutual intelligibility of dialect speakers on both sides of the border was possible to quite some degree, but dialects on both sides of the border were too long under the influence of the standard languages of their respective nations, therefore the dialect continuum nowadays is "broken", so to say.

With Danish and Low German this is different: both are different Germanic languages, closely related but with no "old" dialect continuum. If there are similarities going further than their Germanic relationship then this should be due to contact phenomena over hundreds of years.
Danish belongs to the Northern Germanic group while Dutch and German (both Low and High German) belong to the Western Germanic group (the latter splitted into three groups according to German Wiki - but it doesn't matter if this split were necessary or not, because there's no doubt that Danish belongs to Northern Germanic).

Therefore, no, there never was a dialect continuum between Danish and Low German like there was between Dutch and Low German.


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## Sepia

You are obviously disregarding one very important factor. You imagine with some right that languages of two neighbouring cultures would have very much in common which to a certain extent is also often true. 

But High German (which is probably what you are talking about) and Danish are not the languages of neighbouring cultures when you look at it historically. The natural neighbours of Danish are various dialects of Low German. High German originates in regions further south and today not that many people still speak their regional language in everyday life. The other way around, Standard Danish is a far cry from the original dialect spoken in the South which actually has/had a lot in common with High as well as Low German. So we actually have a few missing links here to recognize a bridge or anything close to it between Standard Danish and High German.

However:

"When does the train leave"

in South Jutland dialect: Wenn geh ae toch
in High German: Wann geht der Zug
Low German - not sure, but at least the word for "train" woud have much similarity with "toch".


But, I couldn't imagine anyone who grew up in the South of Denmark who would not at least have learned to understand High German. The electronic media are an important factor here. Only few Germans care to learn Danish - except when they live very close to the border, depend on Danish consumers in their businesses, have Danish relatives or something.


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## Athaulf

sokol said:


> With Danish and Low German this is different: both are different Germanic languages, closely related but with no "old" dialect continuum. If there are similarities going further than their Germanic relationship then this should be due to contact phenomena over hundreds of years.
> Danish belongs to the Northern Germanic group while Dutch and German (both Low and High German) belong to the Western Germanic group (the latter splitted into three groups according to German Wiki - but it doesn't matter if this split were necessary or not, because there's no doubt that Danish belongs to Northern Germanic).
> 
> Therefore, no, there never was a dialect continuum between Danish and Low German like there was between Dutch and Low German.



For some reason, I missed this thread in the past, even though I've been curious about this for quite a while. Like some previous posters in this thread, I'm struck by the fact that the border between Low German and Danish dialects is so sharp in comparison with other places in Europe where neighboring languages belong to the same IE subfamilies. 

Do you know what exactly caused such a situation? In other words, what caused such a sharp border between North and West Germanic languages despite the lack of geographic separation? Is it possible that Old Low German speakers migrated to the southern parts of the Jutland Peninsula only in relatively recent times, long after the West and North Germanic languages became mutually unintelligible, and displaced or assimilated the speakers of some hypothetical dialects that maybe once constituted a bridge between North and West Germanic languages? Or did perhaps something similar happen when Old Norse speakers moved to the territory of present-day Denmark?


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## berndf

I would assume because Old Norse was a fresh import into the area during the Viking period. The Norse spoken in Hedeby (one of the biggest Viking towns) which was on the Anglo-Saxon/Old Norse language boundary did not differ much from the one spoken in Roskilde and other major Viking towns. Hedeby also had a sizable Anglo-Saxon population yet the languages did not mix.


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## Ayazid

Athaulf said:


> Do you know what exactly caused such a situation? In other words, what caused such a sharp border between North and West Germanic languages despite the lack of geographic separation? Is it possible that Old Low German speakers migrated to the southern parts of the Jutland Peninsula only in relatively recent times, long after the West and North Germanic languages became mutually unintelligible, and displaced or assimilated the speakers of some hypothetical dialects that maybe once constituted a bridge between North and West Germanic languages? Or did perhaps something similar happen when Old Norse speakers moved to the territory of present-day Denmark?



Possible explanation might be the fact that during the Migration period (5th and 6th century) a considerable portion of the original inhabitants of Jutland and modern Schleswig, namely Jutes and Angles, left their homeland and settled in Great Britain. This left the remaining dwellers of the territory vulnerable to northward expansion of Saxons and westward expansion of Danes who were until that time living in the islands and Southern Sweden. On the other hand, the dialects of Angles, and in smaller degree also those of Jutes, gave (together with Old Saxon) birth to Old English which was not particularly closer to Old Norse than Old Saxon or Old Frisian were (but I might be wrong). But what do we really know about the character of the languages of Jutes and Angles in the time when they were still living in their continental homeland?


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## berndf

The Expansion of Danes into Jutland and Schleswig happened more than two centuries later at the beginning of the Viking period. The merger of Anglian and Saxon to Anglo-Saxon north of the Elbe River had already been completed at that time.

This was considerably later than the migration period and fell into a time where for both Saxons and Danes the first political super-structures emerged. Saxony has become a duchy of the Carolingian Empire and Denmark became a kingdom. Under these conditions the formation of a new continuum was much less likely than during the preceding period of tribal autonomy.


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## sokol

The answer for the sharp language border between Low German and Danish certainly lies in the migration period; but I haven't studied the history of this region closely, so I can't (and won't) add anything to what the posters above already have said.

But one addition from German Wiki I may add: obviously there are linguistic contact phenomena on the Danish/German border which indeed had weekend the linguistic barrier there.
Search the article for Petuh (it says there this might be German as used by Danes, therefore probably a 'Danish' German) and Angeln (Schleswig dialect of Angeln, it says, were influenced by Danish, so in this case speakers of a Low German dialect seem to have adopted some Danish specifics, under - then - Danish rule).

Such contact phenomena however never did lead to a "new" dialect continuum; the language border still seems to be rather sharp, from what I gather from the Wiki article. (And what is said already about no existing old dialect continuum still stands of course.)


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## Joannes

sokol said:


> We already had a discussion here in the German forum about mutual intelligibility (sorry, I don't know where exactly) where we came to the conclusion that mutual intelligibility *no longer* is the case on the Dutch-German border.
> Once there was a dialect continuum, and mutual intelligibility of dialect speakers on both sides of the border was possible to quite some degree, but dialects on both sides of the border were too long under the influence of the standard languages of their respective nations, therefore the dialect continuum nowadays is "broken", so to say.


You're right, this is it:
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=631528


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## Sepia

berndf said:


> I would assume because Old Norse was a fresh import into the area during the Viking period. The Norse spoken in Hedeby (one of the biggest Viking towns) which was on the Anglo-Saxon/Old Norse language boundary did not differ much from the one spoken in Roskilde and other major Viking towns. Hedeby also had a sizable Anglo-Saxon population yet the languages did not mix.


 
Exactly which languages do you mean would have been candidates for mixing (and didn't) and how far did they differ.

Talking about Old Norse - it is a very complex language even having more flexions than High German. Not much of that is left in modern Standard Danish and also not in the Danish dialects spoken in Schleswig.


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## Athaulf

Ayazid said:


> Possible explanation might be the fact that during the Migration period (5th and 6th century) a considerable portion of the original inhabitants of Jutland and modern Schleswig, namely Jutes and Angles, left their homeland and settled in Great Britain. This left the remaining dwellers of the territory vulnerable to northward expansion of Saxons and eastward expansion of Danes who until that time were living in the islands and Southern Sweden. On the other hand, the dialects of Angles, and in smaller degree also those of Jutes, gave (together with Old Saxon) birth to Old English which was not particularly closer to Old Norse than Old Saxon or Old Frisian were (but I might be wrong). But what do we really know about the character of the languages of Jutes and Angles in the time when they were still living in their continental homeland?



Yes, unfortunately, we know very little. It's an extremely obscure and poorly documented historical period. As far as I know, it's impossible to reliably connect the peoples named as "Saxons", "Angles", and "Jutes" in Bede's chronicles with peoples about which we know from the contemporary continental sources. 

Having done some googling, it seems like there are theories along the lines you're describing. For example, this author describes a theory that apparently has some serious following, according to which the ancestors of Goths (i.e. future East Germanic speakers) departed from Scandinavia while Proto-Germanic was still spoken there, and "the remaining Nordic-West Germanic area stayed linguistically uniform till the mid-fifth century A.D., after which a split between North Germanic and West Germanic occurred as a consequence of the departure of the Anglo-Saxons from their continental homelands and the sixth-century penetration by the Danes into Slesvig (Jutland)." Still, I don't understand how this could have resulted in such a sharp linguistic border if the North/West Germanic split wasn't yet firmly established at the time.



berndf said:


> The Expansion of Danes into Jutland and Schleswig happened more than two centuries later at the beginning of the Viking period.



Are there actually any reliable historical sources confirming this? The information I could find on the Web is scarce, but suggests that Danes migrated to Jutland from Sweden earlier, around the same time that Anglo-Saxons were invading England (even though they didn't become significant players in European warfare and politics until the Viking age). 



> The merger of Anglian and Saxon to Anglo-Saxon north of the Elbe River had already been completed at that time.


Could you clarify what exactly you mean by "Anglo-Saxon" in the context of this geographical area? 




> This was considerably later than the migration period and fell into a time where for both Saxons and Danes the first political super-structures emerged. Saxony has become a duchy of the Carolingian Empire and Denmark became a kingdom. Under these conditions the formation of a new continuum was much less likely than during the preceding period of tribal autonomy.


I don't really think that early medieval political structures had much influence on language anywhere. The fact that a local lord swore allegiance to one or other king, duke, or emperor meant very little for the everyday business of the people he ruled. Of course, large-scale migrations had dramatic linguistic effects, but I don't think that the establishment of political structures throughout Europe during and after Charlemagne had much effect by itself. These structures merely grew out from the _de facto_ situation established by the migrations.


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## berndf

Athaulf said:


> Are there actually any reliable historical sources confirming this? The information I could find on the Web is scarce, but suggests that Danes migrated to Jutland from Sweden earlier, around the same time that Anglo-Saxons were invading England (even though they didn't become significant players in European warfare and politics until the Viking age).


I will try to dig out something an come back to you. Just one thing: I did not mean the Danes didn't arrive in Jutland at all before the late 8th century but the extension of the southern border to the river Schlei, the northernmost extend of the Saxon settlement area, happened at that time. What I meant was that before that time there was enough of a "buffer zone" between Saxons and Danes.





> Could you clarify what exactly you mean by "Anglo-Saxon" in the context of this geographical area?


The settlement area of the Angels after the migration period was roughly between the modern cities of Schleswig and Flensburg. There language mixed with that of their Saxon neighbors in the south. This usually referred to as "Anglo-Saxon". Saxon dialects from the other side of the Elbe River (i.e. west of the modern city of Cuxhaven) stayed clear of Anglian and Jutish influence. This difference in dialect can also be traced in OE were you have a marked divide between Anglo-Saxon and West-Saxon (West Saxon here referring to the settlement areas in England, not their historical ones at the coast of the German Bay).


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## Sepia

Hmm, that is a lot of theories at one place. But as far as I understand them all they have one thing in common: All of these dialects and languages used to be a lot more similar at one time - what always makes me wonder is why some changed drastically and some not.

Are there any solid theories around, that the introduction of Christianity combined with the formation of new states has had significant influence on the speed of change in some areas? It seems to me that those areas that experienced a softer step by step introduction of Christianity also maintained more of their original culture and language. An extreme example of this is Iceland.


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## jmx

I've always thought that the absence of transitional varieties between German and Danish must be due to "geometric" reasons, so to speak. The strip of land between Jutland and the continent is relatively long and narrow, so the transitional dialects that might have existed there once surely had few speakers, and were prone to be quickly "attracted" to varieties with more speakers either north or south.

What do you think of this explanation ?


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## sokol

jmartins said:


> I've always thought that the absence of transitional varieties between German and Danish must be due to "geometric" reasons, so to speak. The strip of land between Jutland and the continent is relatively long and narrow, so the transitional dialects that might have existed there once surely had few speakers, and were prone to be quickly "attracted" to varieties with more speakers either north or south.



I don't think that this line of thought may lead us anywhere.
Danish and Low German belong to different branches of Germanic languages, and there surely was no old dialect continuum between both because they weren't neighbouring dialects before the migration period.

During the migration period the ancestors of later Low German speakers basically were already in place (some left in eastern, southern and western directions and left space for new settlers) while from the north there came Danish settlers who spoke a different, not closely related dialect. (Of course there still was the Germanic relationship, but no dialect continuum existed as with Dutch and Low German.)

It is not impossible that during and after the migration period some new contact dialects (= mixed dialects of Danish and Low German) did emerge but I haven't ever heard of such a theory.
So it is a possibility, but rather an unlikely one. And even if this hypothetical scenario ever had been the case (which is very doubtful) then those would have been intermediate dialects (mixed dialects) which didn't lead to a real dialect continuum.
The contact dialects I've mentioned above in my post all are a rather young development (18th/19th century, probably somewhat older).

The whole point is that one thing we know for sure: in the beginning (when both people came into contact with each other) the linguistic barrier between both Danish dialects and Low German dialects was quite sharp despite both languages being Germanic.
And it doesn't seem to have weakened too much since, only in a few cases it seems (though I am no native of the region, so this only refers to the Wiki quote).


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## Sepia

jmartins said:


> I've always thought that the absence of transitional varieties between German and Danish must be due to "geometric" reasons, so to speak. The strip of land between Jutland and the continent is relatively long and narrow, so the transitional dialects that might have existed there once surely had few speakers, and were prone to be quickly "attracted" to varieties with more speakers either north or south.
> 
> What do you think of this explanation ?


 

I don't agree either. When talking about the "logistics" in connection with the spreading of a culture in those days people often have the misconception that land is an avenue and water a barrier. They forget that although the fastest vehicles today go by land (planes exepted), it was different back then. The most advanced and fastest cargo and passenger carriers back then were ships - and remember we are talking about the Danir-people - The People that lives by the Sea. They HAD ships. With good wind you can go from the Islands and reach destinations on the Jutland coast within hours, that would be days apart, travelling on horseback.

Land was more of a barrier. So at least the geometrical theory should be seen in that light.


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## berndf

berndf said:


> I will try to dig out something an come back to you.


So I am back home and browsed through my library. I have found: "Herbert Jankuhn: Haitabu, Ein Handelsplatz der Wikingerzeit, 8th Edition 1986". Jakuhn has a rather problematic vita (cf. e.g. here) but is still considered to have been one of the leading experts for the area and era but if you didn’t except this as a reference, I would understand.

Information on the topic is scattered throughout the book but the most important chapter is "Völker und Stämme in Schleswig-Holstein zur Zeit Haitabus", pp53sq in the 8th edition.

I extracted the following from the text: There is a 700 Anglo-Saxon chronicle which describes Angeln as deserted. This account has long been met with skepticism but modern archeological findings confirm this, and the area was reclaimed by primeval forests. Danish presence in the area was confined to merchants (and later Vikings) using the Schlei-Treene-Eider route (goods and boats had to be carried about 10 miles through the "Schleswiger Landenge" between the rivers Schlei and Treene) connecting the Danish isles and southern Sweden to Western Europe, especially to the Franconian Empire. About 100 years later, at the beginning of the Viking era, trading posts along the route, the most important one being Hedeby (German: Haithabu), became fortified towns an the "Schleswiger Landenge" was secured for the first time by a system of ramparts, the "Danevirke". But the area north of the Danevirke remained largely unsettled (with the exception of Frisians in the West) until about 900.


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## Athaulf

berndf said:


> I extracted the following from the text: There is a 700 Anglo-Saxon chronicle which describes Angeln as deserted.


That's a very interesting reference. I dug out the concrete quotation with some googling:

 http://omacl.org/Anglo/part1.html_From Anglia, which has ever since remained *waste between the Jutes and the Saxons*, came the East Angles, the Middle Angles, the Mercians, and all of those north of the Humber.  _​If this account is correct, I assume this would mean that the mentioned Jutes spoke a North Germanic language, which then evolved into south Danish dialects distinct from the neighboring Low Saxon ones? 



> This account has long been met with skepticism but modern archeological findings confirm this, and the area was reclaimed by primeval forests. Danish presence in the area was confined to merchants (and later Vikings) using the Schlei-Treene-Eider route (goods and boats had to be carried about 10 miles through the "Schleswiger Landenge" between the rivers Schlei and Treene) connecting the Danish isles and southern Sweden to Western Europe, especially to the Franconian Empire. About 100 years later, at the beginning of the Viking era, trading posts along the route, the most important one being Hedeby (German: Haithabu), became fortified towns an the "Schleswiger Landenge" was secured for the first time by a system of ramparts, the "Danevirke". But the area north of the Danevirke remained largely unsettled (with the exception of Frisians in the West) until about 900.


Yes, this makes a lot of sense; it would certainly explain the present situation well. Of course, this is assuming that we really have unambiguous archaeological evidence about this; otherwise, it could be merely a nice just-so story.


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## sokol

Athaulf, I guess there is no 'unambiguous archaeological evidence' at all - except for very recent archaeology.  

Well, I guess I didn't read the above posts carefully enough ... so I did cut down my original post. Nevertheless we should be careful about linking archaeological evidence to facts in history: this might be tricky and many times already has lead to wrong conclusions.


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## berndf

Athaulf said:


> If this account is correct, I assume this would mean that the mentioned Jutes spoke a North Germanic language, which then evolved into south Danish dialects distinct from the neighboring Low Saxon ones?


Jutish did not evolve into Danish; it was replaced by Danish. The original Danish heartland where the isles and what is now southern Sweden. Modern Jutish dialects of Danish certainly contain original Jutish influence.

Not only the Angles left the area but also a sizable Jutish population joined the Angles and Saxons on their way to English which leaves an even bigger largely dis-inhabited region at the northern frontier of the (Anglo-) Saxon language area. The largest and longest surviving Jutish colony in England was Kent. The Kentish dialect of Old English gives us the best idea of how the original southern Jutish border dialects must have been.


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## Athaulf

berndf said:


> Jutish did not evolve into Danish; it was replaced by Danish. The original Danish heartland where the isles and what is now southern Sweden. Modern Jutish dialects of Danish certainly contain original Jutish influence.
> 
> Not only the Angles left the area but also a sizable Jutish population joined the Angles and Saxons on their way to English which leaves an even bigger largely dis-inhabited region at the northern frontier of the (Anglo-) Saxon language area. The largest and longest surviving Jutish colony in England was Kent. The Kentish dialect of Old English gives us the best idea of how the original southern Jutish border dialects must have been.



Oh, I see. It seems like I had a very mistaken idea of who Jutes were.


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## Sepia

Does anybody have qualified estimates of the size of the populations we are talking about:In Angeln, Jutland and in the areas they populated in England?


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## berndf

I think we don't really know that. Genetic evidence might give us more clues but this research is still in a very early stage.


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