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Ske
Seke
Native to	Vanuatu
Region	Pentecost Island
Native speakers	300 (2011)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Southern Oceanic North-Central Vanuatu Central Vanuatu Ske
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ske
Glottolog	seke1241
ELP	Seke (Vanuatu)
Ske is classified as Severely Endangered by theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger.

Ske (orSeke) is anendangered language of south-westernPentecost island inVanuatu. Ske is anOceanic language (a branch of theAustronesian language family).

The Ske area comprises fourteen small villages centred onBaravet in south-central Pentecost, from Liavzendam (Levizendam) in the north to Hotwata in the south and extending inland to Vanliamit. Historically the language's area extended to parallel areas of the east coast, but this part of the island is now depopulated.

Due to intermarriage between language areas, an increasing number of people in Ske-speaking villages now speakBislama as a first language, and Ske is no longer being actively transmitted to children. A closely related neighbouring language,Sowa, has already been totally displaced byApma.

The number of Ske speakers is estimated at 300. The widely reported figure of 600 is probably an overestimate, since not everybody in the Ske area is fluent in the language.

There is no significant dialectal variation within modern Ske, although there are noticeable differences between the Ske of older and younger speakers.Doltes, the extinct dialect of Hotwata village, is sometimes regarded as a Ske dialect, but appears to have been closer toSa.

There is no local tradition of writing in Ske, and until recently the language was virtually undocumented. However, linguist Kay Johnson has written a PhD thesis on the language, including a sketch grammar. Prior to her arrival, the only records of Ske were short vocabulary lists collected by David Walsh in the 1960s, Catriona Hyslop in 2001 and Andrew Gray in 2007.

Ske notably drops unstressed vowels. This has resulted in a language rich in consonants, in contrast to related languages such asRaga. Due to the presence of consonant clusters within syllables and other phonological features not typical of the area's languages, speakers of neighbouring languages consider Ske difficult to speak and learn.^{[citation needed]}

Geminate consonants occur where two identical consonants have been brought together by the historical loss of an intervening vowel, for example in-kkas'to be sweet' (compareSowakakas). Geminates contrast with single consonants word initially, e.g.,sser'red mat' andser'lantern'.^[2]

Unlike neighbouring languages such asApma, Ske permits a variety ofvoiced consonants to occur at the end of syllables, although when they occur at the end of an utterance they are often followed by an 'echo' of the previous vowel. For example,skor/skɔr/'sago palm thatch' is often pronounced[skɔrɔ].^[3]

Stress typically occurs on the final syllable of a word.^[4]

• Voiced plosives areprenasalized, contrasting with voiceless plosives. For example,/ti/[ti]'2SG.FUT' contrasts with/di/[ndi]'grow.shoot'. Prenasalization also occurs across word boundaries (sandhi) when the previous word ends in a vowel. For example,'I'm going to Bwaravet'/mʷababʷaravɛt/ becomes[mwambambwaravɛt].^[6]
• Verb-initial/β,z/ become[b,d].^[6]
• As of 2014^[update], younger speakers are re-analyzing/pʷ,bʷ,βʷ/ as/pi,bi,βi/. For example, older speakers say/bʷoŋ/ for'night', while younger speakers say/bioŋ/.^[7]
• Bilabial consonants lose theirvelarization before a consonant or at the end of a word.^[7]
• /m/ becomes[mʷ] beforeback vowels.^[8]
• /f/ only occurs in loanwords.^[8]
• Some speakers pronounce/z/ as an affricate.^[8]
• /ɣ/ is pronounced[g] before voiced phonemes.^[9]

• /e/ is phonetically[ʲe] after most consonants (generally not after/r,t,p,b/) in a stressed syllable.^[9]

Kay Johnson worked with the Ske community to develop the following orthography:

Some older sources write/ᵑg/ as⟨ngg⟩ or⟨ḡ⟩.

Basic word order in Ske issubject–verb–object.

Personal pronouns are distinguished byperson andnumber. They are not distinguished bygender. The basic pronouns are:

Nouns in Ske are generally not preceded byarticles.Plurality is indicated by placing the pronounnier'them' or a number after the noun.

Nouns may be eitherfree, ordirectly possessed. Directly possessed nouns are suffixed to indicate whom an item belongs to. For example:

dloq'my voice'

dlom'your voice'

dlon'his/her voice'

dlon subu'the chief's voice'

Possession may also be indicated by the use ofpossessive classifiers, separate words that occur before or after the noun and take possessive suffixes. These classifiers are:

• no- for general possessions (noq tobang'my basket')
• blie- for things that are cared for, such as crops and livestock (blied bó'our pig')
• a- for things to be eaten (am bwet'your taro')
• mwa- for things to be drunk (mwar ri'their water') and for buildings (mwan im'his house')
• bie- for fire (biem ab'your fire')
• die- for fruits that are cut open (dien valnga'his bush nut')
• na- for associations, over which the possessor has no control (vnó naq'my home island')

The possessive suffixes are as follows:

A verb may be transformed into a noun by the addition of anominalising suffix-an:

vwel'to dance' (verb)

vwelan'a dance' (noun)

Modifiers generally come after a noun:

vet'stone'

vet alok'big stone'

vet aviet'four stones'

Verbs are preceded by markers providing information on the subject and thetense,aspect andmood of an action. These markers differ substantially between older and younger speakers; the newer forms are in brackets below.

There is a pattern ofverb-consonant mutation wherebyv at the start of a verb changes tob, andvw tobw. This mutation occurs in imperfective aspect (present tense), and in irrealis mood (future tense):

niva = I went

mwaba = I am going

mwadeba = I will go

(Among a few older speakers there is also mutation ofz tod, but most Ske speakers today use only thed forms.)

Hypothetical phrases are marked withmó:

nimó umné = I should do it

Negative phrases are preceded bykare ("not") or a variant:

kare ni umné = I didn't do it

Transitive andintransitive verb forms are distinguished. Transitive verbs are commonly followed or suffixed with-né:

mwa róh = I move

mwa róhné vet = I move the stone

Ske makes extensive use ofstative verbs for descriptive purposes.

Ske has acopular verb,vé orbé.

Verbs in Ske can be linked together inserial verb constructions.

This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved.(April 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

• Gray, Andrew (2012).The Languages of Pentecost Island. Manples (BFOV).ISBN 978-0-9560985-4-2.
• Johnson, Kay (2014).Static spatial expression in Ske: an Oceanic language of Vanuatu (PhD thesis). SOAS, University of London.doi:10.25501/SOAS.00018443.
• Lynch, John; Crowley, Terry (2001).Languages of Vanuatu: A New Survey and Bibliography. Pacific Linguistics.doi:10.15144/PL-517.
• Tryon, Darrell (1976).New Hebrides Languages: An Internal Classification. Pacific Linguistics.doi:10.15144/PL-C50.

• The Languages of Pentecost Island - further information on Ske
• ELAR archive ofSke (Seke) language documentation materials

• Languages of Vanuatu
• Penama languages
• Endangered Austronesian languages
• Severely endangered languages

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