Mumeng is a
dialect chain
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated variet ...
of the
Austronesian family in
Morobe Province
Morobe is a province on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea. The provincial capital and largest city is Lae. The province covers 33,705 km2, with a population of 674,810 (2011 census), and since the division of Southern Highlands Province ...
,
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...
. Dambi–Kumalu and Patep–Zenag–Gorakor have a degree of
mutual intelligibility
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intelli ...
.
Kapin may belong as well.
Phonology
The following is of the Patep dialect:
Consonants
* The prenasal affricate /ⁿdz/ may also fluctuate to a prenasal fricative
zin free variation among speech.
* /ᵐb, ⁿd, ᵑɡ̠/ are heard as prenasal voiceless stops
p, ⁿt, ᵑk̠when in word-final positions.
* /k̠/ is mostly heard as a glottal stop
in word-final positions.
* /l/ may be heard as fricativized
̝or more fronted as
̟in word-final position.
Vowels
References
Definitely endangered languages
South Huon Gulf languages
Languages of Morobe Province
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