Western Dani, orLani, is aNuclear-Trans-New Guinea language. It is thePapuan language with the most speakers inIndonesianNew Guinea. It is spoken by theLani people in theprovince of Highland Papua.

TheBaliem Valley tribes are calledOeringoep andTimorini in literature from the 1920s, but those names are no longer used.

The consonantphoneme inventory of Western Dani has been described as follows:^[2]

At the beginning of words, oral stops have aspiratedallophones [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ, kʷʰ]; intervocalically, voiceless /p t k / have voiced allophones [β d ~ ɾ ɣ ~ ʁ], for instance following the prefixno-/na- meaning "my".

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

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

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

• Dani languages
• Languages of Western New Guinea
• Papuan language stubs

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