Mengen language

Mengen
Poeng
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	New Britain
Native speakers	(8,400 cited 1982) [1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Western Oceanic Ngero–Vitiaz Mengen languages Mengen
Dialects	Mengen Poeng
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mee
Glottolog	meng1267

Mengen and Poeng are rather divergent dialects of an Austronesian language of New Britain in Papua New Guinea.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Dorsal	Uvular
Nasal		m	n	ŋ
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	( k )	q
	voiced	b	( d )	g
Fricative			s
Rhotic			r
Lateral			l
Glide		( w )		( j )

• Both palatalization and labialization [ʲ,ʷ] is said to occur in all consonants. Palatalized consonants only occur before back vowels, and labialized consonant sounds may occur before all vowels accept /u/.
• /k/ is typically pronounced as uvular [q], but can also be heard as a velar [k] in free variation.
• Gemination or length, may also occur among consonant sounds.
• Sounds /b,ɡ/ are pronounced as voiced stops [b,ɡ], but are also heard as fricatives [β,ɣ] in intervocalic position.
• /r/ may have variation between a trill [r], a tap [ɾ], or a voiced stop [d] within vocabulary.
• Sounds /j,w/ are said to exist as a result of palatalization or labialization, but only in very few root words in word-initial position.

Vowels

	Front	Back
High	i	u
Mid	e	o
Low		a

• Sounds /a,o/ are raised to [ʌ,o̝] within the environment of consonant length. ^[2]

References

1. Mengen at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Rath, Daniel D. (1993). Mengen phonology essentials. John M. Clifton (ed.), Phonologies of Austronesian languages 2: Ukarumpa: Summer Institute of Linguistics. pp. 71–98.

External links

• "Organised Phonology Data" (PDF).{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• "Mengen Dictionary" (PDF).{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)