Khehek is an Oceanic language spoken by approximately 1600 people on west-central Manus Island, Manus Province of Papua New Guinea. It has two dialects, Drehet and Levei, which are sometimes considered separate languages.
| Khehek | |
|---|---|
| Levei-Ndrehet | |
| Native to | Papua New Guinea |
| Region | West-central Manus Island, Manus Province |
Native speakers | (1,600 cited 1991)[1] |
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | tlx |
| Glottolog | kheh1237 |
Phonology
editThe following description is of the Drehet dialect.
Consonants
edit| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Labialized | |||||
| Stop | Unaspirated | p | pʷ | t | c | k |
| Aspirated | kʰ | |||||
| Fricative | s | h | ||||
| Nasal | m | mʷ | n | ŋ | ||
| Prenasalized trill | nᵈr | |||||
| Lateral | l | |||||
| Trill | r | |||||
| Semivowel | w | j | ||||
References
edit- ^ Khehek at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
Further reading
edit- Blust, Robert (2005). "Must sound change be linguistically motivated?". Diachronica. 22 (2): 219–269. doi:10.1075/dia.22.2.02blu.
External links
edit- Kaipuleohone's Robert Blust collections include written and audio materials on the Levei dialect as well as written and audio materials on the Drehet dialect