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Western Dani, or Lani, is a Nuclear-Trans-New Guinea language. It is the Papuan language with the most speakers in Indonesian New Guinea. It is spoken by the Lani people in the province of Highland Papua.

The Baliem Valley tribes are called Oeringoep and Timorini in literature from the 1920s, but those names are no longer used.

Phonology

Consonants

The consonant phoneme inventory of Western Dani has been described as follows:

At the beginning of words, oral stops have aspirated allophones ; intervocalically, voiceless /p t k / have voiced allophones , for instance following the prefix no-/na- meaning "my".

An intervocalic /ɣ/ is pronounced as [ʁ], and a /ɹ/ before a high vowel becomes a fricative [z].

Vowels

Vowels /i, u, ɒ/ have allophones .

Vowel length is contrastive in Western Dani, as illustrated by the minimal and near minimal pairs below:

References

1. Western Dani at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Barclay, Peter (2008). A Grammar of Western Dani.

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