Mehek language
| Mehek | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Papua New Guinea |
| Region | Sandaun Province |
|
Native speakers
|
6,300 (1994) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | mehe1243 |
Mehek is a Tama language spoken by about 6300 people in a somewhat mountainous area along the southern base of the Torricelli Mountains in northwestern Papua New Guinea. Mehek is spoken in six villages of Sandaun Province: Nuku, Yiminum, Mansuku, Yifkindu, Wilwil, and Kafle. Mehek is most closely related to Pahi, with 51% lexical similarity, and spoken approximately 20 kilometers to the southwest. Mehek is a fairly typical Papuan language, being verb-final, having a relatively simple phonology, and agglutinative morphology. There is very little published information about Mehek. The literacy rate in Tok Pisin, spoken by nearly everyone, is 50-75%. Mehek is not written, so there is no literacy in Mehek. Tok Pisin is primarily used in the schools, with 50% children attending.
Mehek is also known as Nuku, Me’ek, Driafleisuma, and Indinogosima The speakers themselves refer to the language as Mehek, which is the word meaning “no.” The alternate names derive from the primary village where it is spoken (Nuku), a phonological variant: epenthetic /h/ occurs word-initially before vowels or between identical vowels (Me’ek), and a phrase meaning “our language” (indinumgo suma).
The phonology of Mehek is relatively simple. It has a five-vowel system, much like many of the non-Austronesian languages of Papua New Guinea, in addition to two diphthongs. The consonant system is also fairly simple, containing 15 phonemes. Voiced stops are almost always prenasalized, though this effect is much weaker word-initially. The tables below list the consonant and vowel phonemes. In the list of vowels, the phones in parentheses are allophones.
Mehek is an agglutinating language with both prefixes and suffixes.
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