Western Dani language

Western Dani, or Laani, is the most populous Papuan language in Indonesian New Guinea. It is spoken by the Lani people in the province of Papua. The Swart Valley tribes are called Oeringoep and Timorini in literature from the 1920s, but those names are no longer used.

Western Dani
Laani
RegionHighlands of Papua Province, Indonesia
EthnicityLani
Native speakers
(180,000 cited 1993)[1]
Trans–New Guinea
Language codes
ISO 639-3dnw
Glottologwest2594[2]

Phonology

The phonology of the Western Dani language[3]:

Consonants
Bilabial Alveolar Velar Glottal
plain lab.
Plosive voiceless p, pʰ t, tʰ k, kʰ kʷ, kʷʰ ʔ
prenasal mb nd ŋɡ ŋɡʷ
Fricative β ɣ ɣʷ
Flap ɾ
Nasal m n
Lateral l
Approximant w ɹ

At the beginning of words, stops sound aspirated. An intervocalic /ɣ/ is pronounced as /ʁ/, and a /ɹ/ before a high vowel becomes a fricative /z/.

Vowels
Front Central Back
High i iː u uː
Mid e eː ɒ ɒː
Low ɐ ɐː

Vowels /i, u, ɒ/ have allophones, /ɪ, ʊ, ɔ/.

gollark: It's very bizarre, given that according to random internet stuff I looked at polygraphs do not actually work as intended.
gollark: This is just a really bad license. You *cannot* safely use it.
gollark: I don't know if more imprisonment than usual is going on there, but it is increasingly totalitarian.
gollark: Besides, the stone is bad for wireless signals.
gollark: But they're irregularly shaped, NOT shiny, and difficult to install utilities in.

References

  1. Western Dani at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Western Dani". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. Barclay, Peter (2008). A Grammar of Western Dani.
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