Talk:Dani people

SIL Ethnologue on Papua, Indonesia link
"SIL Ethnologue on Papua, Indonesia" is a broken link or a mistake -- it goes to the SIL Ethnologue but comes up with an error message -- what is it supposed to be linked to?

early question
"The Lani are fairly articulate, the author has found" -- so they are not REALLY articulate? Articulate in chinese

Headline text
? In Indonesian? In their own language? --Menchi 03:33, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Lani vs Dani
My understanding (from a friend who works with Lani) is that the Lani live to the west of the Dani, and that their languages are very closely related. I think this should be mentioned, rather than just saying that people get them confused. And there should probably be a Dani article. (Guess I should find some time and start it) Dougg 07:58, 8 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Unless someone can present evidence that the Lani and the Dani are the same, I'd like to rename this article "Dani". I guess I'll try to do so in a few days (or weeks, or months) if no one cares.


 * I do know that according to anthropologists like Karl Heider and others, the term "Dani" was a term missionaries and colonial administrators bestowed on a number of people who live in a particular part of West Irian. There's quite a bit of anthropological literature that refers to "the Dani": Heider's Grand Valley Dani and Robert Gardner's  film Dead Birds are the most widely known of these.  I am not familiar with the use of the term Lani, and I have no idea whether it's a construct the way "Dani" is or to what degree the two overlap, if at all.
 * --Birdmessenger 13:15, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I also have no idea where the creator of this article got the notion that "Lani" is correct and "Dani" is wrong. This is simply not correct. In the Baliem Valley area, the Lani are referred to as a different ethnic group(or at least a sub-group). For verification, check the Summer Institute of Linguistics Ethnologue page on the ethnic groups of Papua, Indonesia: http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=IDP. Dani is listed (actually four different Dani sub-groups) but no Lani. This article should be changed to "Dani". I have already changed the listing of ethnic groups in the Papua article to reflect this, but I don't know how to change the actual article. Btw, given the glaring fundamental factual error of Lani, I'm suspicious as to the accuracy of the ethnographic information in general as well. I don't have time to check it now, but at the very least the name has to change! Arjuna808 08:18, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

'lani' in other languages
I've removed the line 'Lani is also the Hawaiian word for Heaven.' because it's got nothing to do with the Lani people (of highlands of Indonesian Papua, formerly known as Irian Jaya), which is what this article is about.

General Description
I made a start on cleaning this article up, but there is still a long way to go to make it accurate and comprehensive. I also changed some of the more tendentious political elements to make it more neutral and objective. The political aspects of this are highly charged and should be toned down a notch. I recognize the complexity of the issue, but a more objective approach is more appropriate.

The ethnographic description as originally written is weak and needs a lot of work. Don't have time at the moment.

I've never heard of the whole Dani color perception thing, but this isn't my area. It seems dubious to me, and a Google search returned nothing. I think it should be removed but this should wait for responses from others. Arjuna808 20:56, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
 * There are languages whose color terms formally distinguish only white and black, though of course their speakers are fully capable of seeing and distinguishing other colors. Some languages distinguish black, white and red (I was taught in intro to sociolinguistics that if a language has three color terms that it's always those three).  Some distinguish white, black, red and either green or blue, and so on.  I don't know how many color terms Dani language has, but it's not crazy to suppose they might have just those two.  The color terms study by Berlin and Kay might be useful, though I don't have it handy.  Personally, I vote for removing the info until it's verified (and apologies if this above is old news to you).


 * In Grand Valley Dani, Karl Heider says that circa 1970 the "Dani have only four number words: magiat (one), pete (two, or pair), henaken (three), and modok (many)" (1997:33). They also did not use comparative/superlative adjectives or adverbs (there was no easy way to say "this pig is bigger," according to Heider).  Perhaps this is something worth noting in the article.  --Birdmessenger 22:04, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Interesting... And no, I hadn't had a chance to look at Heider's book in awhile, so that's new to me. Some other New Guineans have rather more complex numbering systems. My guess is the Dani are already quite well adjusted to the base-10 system at least in terms of dealing with the market there, but how this has influenced their native tongue would be interesting to know. I agree this information (i.e. from Heider) would be worth adding, perhaps if only to spur someone to add updated (accurate) information. Arjuna 02:26, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Colour vision and language
I have read about research into the relationship between language and perception, specifically investigating a people who had no words for colour in my reading. Eleanor Rosch did indeed study the Dani tribe, and apparently discovered that while they had no words for different colours, they were quite capable of distinguishing between them. Here's a link to the Colombia Encyclopedia article about her and her research: [|Eleanor Rosch] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yvain (talk • contribs)


 * Please don't feel you can only make suggestions or corrections on the talk page. Instead please edit the article directly. This comment would be a valuable addition, and the reference can be added to the list of references or external links. —Pengo 23:49, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

The following is copied from a discussion at wiktionary (etymology of Brown) which discusses the evolution of distinct names for colors. (This is an excerpt of the thread) RJFJR (talk) 17:22, 15 February 2008 (UTC)


 * If I remember correctly 'brown' is one of the later color terms that comes latest to a language, regardless of what color dirt it's spoken on. Berlin and Kay did a study on basic color terms in languages awhile back, and found that languages have a rather strict (but not totally inflexible) hierarchy of color terminology: if the language has two basic color words, their canonical values will be black and white; if it has three, it has those two and red; if four, then those three and either green or yellow; if five, those four and the other of green or yellow; if six, those five and blue; if seven, those six and brown; if eight or more, those seven and some combination of purple, pink, orange, and grey. Germanic is interesting in that it has seemed to have gotten many of these color names early and lent them out (both 'brown' and 'blue' got sent into Romance languages). When B&K analyzed Chinese they only found six, presumably 白色 (white), 黑色 (black), 红色 (red), 绿色 (green), 黄色 (yellow), and 蓝色 (blue) [I don't have the book atm to see]. 咖啡色 (brown, coffee-colored) appears to have become more common than the native (?) term 褐色 (brown), suggesting a lack of 'basic'-ness to 褐色 keeping it from being common. Having 紫色 (purple) appears to be an anomaly in the hierarchy, which may also be duplicated in Japanese. —Muke Tever 19:11, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Odd way of cooking
I'm not convinced cooking with heated rocks in a pit is that odd. (Though if there is a name for the technique it eludes me). RJFJR (talk) 17:22, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Haven't found a technical term for this method but it is used in ohter areas. Rather than calling it unusual (which might beconsidered mildly pejorative) I changed it to 'preferred' method.  RJFJR (talk) 21:18, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * In fact earth oven cooking is very common throughout the Pacific even today as the hangi or Kalua etc. Also, in the form of the New England clam bake, in the continental USA. Snori (talk)

Dani is Lani, it is just a matter of "who" is referring to us
From the beginning, we were calling ourselves Lani, not Dani.

Lani means "You Go!" (You, in this case plural you-s). This term is related to other terms Loma (which foreigners call Moni). There are other terms like Yali, Nduga, Walak, Nggem, all these tribes are Koteka Tribes. I am not allowed to explain the meanings of all these terms (tribes).

In our stories, the Chief of the Koteka Tribes, who were all originated from Kurima Valley ordered his peoples to spread across the valleys and go westward, by saying "you go there, you go here, I will do this, you will do that!" All terms used in this last speech such as "you go there", "I go here", "you do this", "I do that", are then became the names of the Koteka Tribes.

In this story, the term "Dani" never existed and even does not exist in our own daily reference to our tribes here. Only scholars who were educated in modern schools and read modern books begin to refer to themselves as Lani or Dani, by dividing up the regions. The problem of Lani or Dani is not ours, as we know who we are, and we call in the names that we were using before foreigners came. We are all Lani, Loma, Yali, Nggem, Walak, Nduga, Amungme, Kamoro, nobody in our tribes we knew as Dani before foreigners came in and began calling us differently. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Baliemarabica (talk • contribs) 01:19, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

How did you type this? Do you have electricity in your lands? Computers? A library? Inquiring minds want to know! 50.29.10.253 (talk) 20:56, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

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No mention of the finger thing?
it's reported a lot online that the Ndani have a tradition of grieving family members by severing a finger segment. this seems to be the thing they are most known for in the wider world, so, even if it's false, it should be mentioned as a popular misconception Anothracountiges (talk) 02:49, 14 December 2023 (UTC)