Mangani

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Mangani is the name of a fictional species of great apes in the Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, as well as the invented language used by these apes. In the invented language, "Mangani" is the word by which the apes refer to their own kind. The Mangani are represented as the apes who foster and raise Tarzan.

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[edit] As a species of ape

The Mangani are described by Burroughs as approximately man-sized, and appear to be a species intermediate between chimpanzees and gorillas. Attempts to portray them outside the medium of their origin have varied.

The Tarzan comic strip and comic books generally have no difficulty in visualizing them according to Burroughs' vision. In the 1984 film Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, which also adheres closely to Burrough's description, adult Mangani are portrayed by human actors in ape costumes, while the roles of immature Mangani are taken by chimps.

In earlier live-action Tarzan films they are generally represented by a token individual, Cheeta, also a chimpanzee.

Walt Disney Pictures' 1999 animated feature film Tarzan, its sequels, and the television series The Legend of Tarzan based on it, portray the apes who raised Tarzan as gorillas, an identification demonstrably incorrect; in the books gorillas, called Bolgani by the Mangani, are explicitly identified as a separate species. The only use of the term Mangani in the television series is as the proper name of an individual white ape who glows and posesses mystical powers.

Another notable attempt to identify Mangani with an actual primate species is that of science fiction author Philip José Farmer in his pseudo-biography Tarzan Alive, in which it is speculated that they are actually a variety of Australopithecus.

It has also been suggested that the Mangani be retroactively identified with the recently discovered Bili Ape, a type of giant chimpanzee sharing some of the traits of the fictional species, including size and habitat.

[edit] Aa language

The Mangani language is described by Burroughs as made up largely of grunts and growls representing nouns and various basic concepts. The bestial quality of the speech, however, does not come through in the rather large lexicon of Mangani words Burroughs actually provides. The depicted language can be thought of as bearing a relationship to the described language similar to that of the movies' euphonious "Tarzan yodel" to the books' terrifying "victory cry of the bull ape" from which it supposedly derives; the example in each instance falls short of embodying the description.

Some examples (with translation) of Burroughs' Mangani words follow.

  • Tarzan = White-skin
  • Mangani = Great Ape (also refers to humans)
  • tarmangani = "Great White Apes", i.e., white-skinned people, such as Tarzan himself
  • gomangani = "Great Black Apes", i.e., dark-skinned people,
  • bolgani = gorillas.
  • nala = up
  • tand-nala = down
  • Kreegah bundolo = "Beware; (I) kill!"

[edit] Other uses

  • The Mangani environmentalist movement is a grassroots environmental organization in the United States, most notably in Florida.
  • Mangani is the name of a Reggaeton artist from Loiza, Puerto Rico currently living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, signed to Wu Tang Latino Records and running Mangani Entertainment, an artist management company.
  • Mangani is an abandoned gold mine located in West Sumatra, Indonesia, that operated prior to World War II.

[edit] External links