Khehek language

Khehek
Levei-Ndrehet
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	West-central Manus Island, Manus Province
Native speakers	(1,600 cited 1991)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Admiralty Islands Eastern Admiralty Islands Manus West Manus Khehek
Dialects	Drehet (Ndrehet) Levei
Language codes
ISO 639-3	tlx
Glottolog	kheh1237

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.

Phonology

The following description is of the Drehet dialect.

Consonants

		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

1. Khehek at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)

Further reading

• Blust, Robert (2005). "Must sound change be linguistically motivated?". Diachronica. 22 (2): 219–269. doi:10.1075/dia.22.2.02blu.

External links

• 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