Jump to content

Khehek language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Lebei language)
Khehek
Levei-Ndrehet
Native toPapua New Guinea
RegionWest-central Manus Island, Manus Province
Native speakers
(1,600 cited 1991)[1]
Dialects
  • Drehet (Ndrehet)
  • Levei
Language codes
ISO 639-3tlx
Glottologkheh1237
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

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

[edit]

The following description is of the Drehet dialect.

Consonants

[edit]
Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar
Plain Labialized
Stop Unaspirated p t c k
Aspirated
Fricative s h
Nasal m n ŋ
Prenasalized trill nᵈr
Lateral l
Trill r
Semivowel w j

References

[edit]
  1. ^ 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.
[edit]