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Ske (or Seke) is an endangered language of south-western Pentecost island in Vanuatu. Ske belongs to the East Vanuatu languages, a branch of the Austronesian languages family. The Ske area comprises fourteen small villages centred on Bwaravet in south-western Pentecost, from 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 speak Apma, Sa or Bislama as a first language, and local chiefs fear for the future of Ske. A closely related neighbouring language, Sowa, has already been totally displaced by Apma. The number of Ske speakers was estimated at 600 in the year 2000, although this may be 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 to Sa. There is no local tradition of writing in Ske, and until recently the language was virtually undocumented. However, linguist Kay Johnson of SOAS is currently studying the language. 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. ==Phonology== Following the orthography developed by linguist Kay Johnson in consultation with the Ske community, the consonants of Ske are b, d, g, h, k, l, m, n, ng (as in English "singer"), p, q (prenasalized ''g'', written ''ngg'' or ''g''-macron in some sources), r, s, t, bilabial v, w, z, and labiovelar bw, mw, pw and vw. 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" (compare Sowa ''kakas''). Prenasalization of consonants occurs, so that ''b'' is pronounced ''mb'', and ''d'' is pronounced ''nd''. Unlike neighbouring languages such as Apma, Ske permits a variety of voiced 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. Thus ''iq'' "you", for example, is often pronounced ''iqi''. In addition to the five standard vowels (a, e, i, o and u), Ske has mid-high vowels é (intermediate between ''e'' and ''i'') and ó (intermediate between ''o'' and ''u''), like in Sowa and Sa languages. Vowels do not appear to be distinguished for length. Stress typically occurs on the final syllable of a word. A notable characteristic of Ske is the dropping of unstressed vowels. For example, the word "its eye" is usually realized in Ske as ''mzan'' (although in some phrases it is ''mezn''). Dropping of vowels in Ske has resulted in a language rich in consonants, in contrast to related languages such as Raga. Due to the presence of consonant clusters within syllables and other phonological features not typical of East Vanuatu languages, speakers of neighbouring languages consider Ske difficult to speak and learn. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ske language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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