To Fight
To Battle, To Combat
intransitive verb, godan verb
This is the verb version of the vocab word 戦い, which I'm hoping you learned earlier. The verb version of course means to fight or to battle.
たたかう
The reading comes from 戦い a word you've hopefully seen by now. Associate these words together in your mind and you'll be able to read them so long as you know the other one.
第二次世界大戦で日本とアメリカは戦いました。
Japan and America fought in WWII.
わたしたちは日本語がうまくなるために、毎日このかん字というきょ大な化け物と戦っているんです。
We battle against this gigantic monster called kanji every day so we can get good at Japanese.
剣道は通常、一対一で戦う武道だが、コウイチは五年前、二人の男を同時に相手にしなくてはいけなかった。
Kendo is normally a one-on-one martial art, but 5 years ago Koichi had to fight against two guys at the same time.