Kele or Gele’ is a language spoken in the easterly section of inland

Manus Island Manus Island is part of Manus Province in northern Papua New Guinea and is the largest of the Admiralty Islands. It is the fifth-largest island in Papua New Guinea, with an area of , measuring around . Manus Island is covered in rugged jungles ...

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...

. Its name comes from the Kele word for "there".Crowley, Terry; Lynch, John; Ross, Malcolm (2002). ''The Oceanic Languages''. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 123-25

Phonology

The syllable structure of Kele is (C)V(C). are often trilled sup>b ^d Additionally, are

prenasalized Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant such as ) that behave phonologically like single consonants. The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rather ...

when not occurring before another consonant. Kele has five vowels: , , , and . Vowels can also be elongated. Ross (2002) describes this vowel length as non-phonemic, and instead as part of one of four different disyllabic patterns in words. He also notes that no word contains more than one long vowel.

Grammar

Kele has eleven pronouns, distinguishing first person inclusive and exclusive pronouns as well as dual and plural number. Different versions of each pronoun can be prefixed to show the subject and suffixed to show possession. Nearly all verbs require a preceding subject prefix; however, a few verbs instead require a possessor suffix to indicate the subject.

Sample vocabulary

Nouns

Verbs

References

External links

Kaipuleohone Kaipuleohone is a digital ethnographic archive that houses audio and visual files, photographs, as well as hundreds of textual material such as notes, dictionaries, and transcriptions relating to small and endangered languages. The archive is stored ...

Robert Blust Robert A. Blust (; ; May 9, 1940 – January 5, 2022) was an American linguist who worked in several areas, including historical linguistics, lexicography and ethnology. He was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Bl ...

collection includes notes on Kele Manus languages Languages of Manus Province {{admiralty-lang-stub