Ske language
Austronesian language spoken in Vanuatu
title: "Ske language" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["languages-of-vanuatu", "penama-languages", "endangered-austronesian-languages", "severely-endangered-languages"] description: "Austronesian language spoken in Vanuatu" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ske_language" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Austronesian language spoken in Vanuatu ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox language"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Ske |
| altname | Seke |
| states | Vanuatu |
| region | Pentecost Island |
| speakers | 300 |
| date | 2011 |
| ref | e18 |
| familycolor | Austronesian |
| fam2 | Malayo-Polynesian |
| fam3 | Oceanic |
| fam4 | Southern Oceanic |
| fam5 | North-Central Vanuatu |
| fam6 | Central Vanuatu |
| iso3 | ske |
| glotto | seke1241 |
| glottorefname | Seke (Vanuatu) |
| map | Lang Status 40-SE.svg |
| mapcaption | |
| :: |
| name = Ske | altname = Seke | states = Vanuatu | region = Pentecost Island | speakers = 300 | date = 2011 | ref = e18 | familycolor = Austronesian | fam2 = Malayo-Polynesian | fam3 = Oceanic | fam4 = Southern Oceanic | fam5 = North-Central Vanuatu | fam6 = Central Vanuatu | iso3 = ske | glotto = seke1241 | glottorefname = Seke (Vanuatu) | map = Lang Status 40-SE.svg | mapcaption =
Ske (or Seke) is an endangered language of south-western Pentecost island in Vanuatu. Ske is an Oceanic language (a branch of the Austronesian language family).
The Ske area comprises fourteen small villages centred on Baravet 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 speak Bislama 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 by Apma.
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 to Sa.
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.
Phonology
Ske notably drops unstressed vowels. This 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 the area's languages, speakers of neighbouring languages consider Ske difficult to speak and learn.
Geminate consonants occur where two identical consonants have been brought together by the historical loss of an intervening vowel, for example in -kkas (compare Sowa kakas). Geminates contrast with single consonants word initially, e.g., sser and ser .
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. For example, skor is often pronounced .
Stress typically occurs on the final syllable of a word.
Consonants
::data[format=table title="Ske consonants{{sfn|Johnson|2014|p=51}}"]
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Velar | Glottal | Plain | Labio-velarized | Nasal | Plosive | Voiceless | Voiced | Fricative | Voiceless | Voiced | Approximant | Trill |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| () | ||||||||||||||
| :: |
- Voiced plosives are prenasalized, contrasting with voiceless plosives. For example, contrasts with . Prenasalization also occurs across word boundaries (sandhi) when the previous word ends in a vowel. For example, becomes .
- Verb-initial become .
- , younger speakers are re-analyzing as . For example, older speakers say for , while younger speakers say .
- Bilabial consonants lose their velarization before a consonant or at the end of a word.
- becomes before back vowels.
- only occurs in loanwords.
- Some speakers pronounce as an affricate.
- is pronounced before voiced phonemes.
Vowels
::data[format=table title="Ske monophthongs{{sfn|Johnson|2014|p=56}}"]
| Front | Central | Back | Close | Close-mid | Open-mid | Open |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| :: |
- is phonetically after most consonants (generally not after ) in a stressed syllable.
::data[format=table title="Ske diphthongs{{sfn|Johnson|2014|p=56}}"]
| Falling | Rising |
|---|---|
| :: |
Orthography
Kay Johnson worked with the Ske community to develop the following orthography: ::data[format=table title="Ske orthography{{sfn|Johnson|2014|pp=67-68}}"]
| Phoneme | Grapheme |
|---|---|
| a | |
| b | |
| bw | |
| d | |
| é; ie | |
| e | |
| q | |
| g | |
| h | |
| i | |
| k | |
| l | |
| m | |
| mw | |
| n | |
| ng | |
| ó | |
| o | |
| p | |
| pw | |
| r | |
| s | |
| t | |
| u | |
| v | |
| vw | |
| w | |
| z | |
| :: |
Some older sources write as or .
Grammar
Basic word order in Ske is subject–verb–object.
Pronouns
Personal pronouns are distinguished by person and number. They are not distinguished by gender. The basic pronouns are:
::data[format=table]
| singular | plural | 1st person | exclusive | inclusive | 2nd person | 3rd person |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nou | qmwam | |||||
| id | ||||||
| iq | qmi | |||||
| ni | nier | |||||
| :: |
Nouns
Nouns in Ske are generally not preceded by articles. Plurality is indicated by placing the pronoun nier or a number after the noun.
Nouns may be either free, or directly possessed. Directly possessed nouns are suffixed to indicate whom an item belongs to. For example:
:dloq :dlom :dlon :dlon subu
Possession may also be indicated by the use of possessive classifiers, separate words that occur before or after the noun and take possessive suffixes. These classifiers are:
- no- for general possessions (noq tobang )
- blie- for things that are cared for, such as crops and livestock (blied bó )
- a- for things to be eaten (am bwet )
- mwa- for things to be drunk (mwar ri ) and for buildings (mwan im )
- bie- for fire (biem ab )
- die- for fruits that are cut open (dien valnga )
- na- for associations, over which the possessor has no control (vnó naq )
The possessive suffixes are as follows:
::data[format=table]
| singular | plural | 1st person | exclusive | inclusive | 2nd person | 3rd person | Generic |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| :: |
A verb may be transformed into a noun by the addition of a nominalising suffix -an:
:vwel (verb) :vwelan (noun)
Modifiers generally come after a noun:
:vet :vet alok :vet aviet
Verbs
Verbs are preceded by markers providing information on the subject and the tense, aspect and mood of an action. These markers differ substantially between older and younger speakers; the newer forms are in brackets below.
::data[format=table] | Person || Subject marker - imperfective (present tense) || Subject marker - perfective (past tense) || Subject marker - irrealis (future tense) || English | |---| | 1st person singular | | 2nd person singular | | 3rd person singular | | 1st person dual (inclusive) | | 1st person dual (exclusive) | | 2nd person dual | | 3rd person dual | | 1st person plural (inclusive) | | 1st person plural (exclusive) | | 2nd person plural | | 3rd person plural | ::
There is a pattern of verb-consonant mutation whereby v at the start of a verb changes to b, and vw to bw. This mutation occurs in imperfective aspect (present tense), and in irrealis mood (future tense):
:ni va = I went :mwa ba = I am going :mwade ba = I will go
(Among a few older speakers there is also mutation of z to d, but most Ske speakers today use only the d forms.)
Hypothetical phrases are marked with mó:
:ni mó umné = I should do it
Negative phrases are preceded by kare ("not") or a variant:
:kare ni umné = I didn't do it
Transitive and intransitive verb forms are distinguished. Transitive verbs are commonly followed or suffixed with -né:
:mwa róh = I move :mwa róh né vet = I move the stone
Ske makes extensive use of stative verbs for descriptive purposes.
Ske has a copular verb, vé or bé.
Verbs in Ske can be linked together in serial verb constructions.
Sample phrases
::data[format=table] | English || Ske (traditional) || Ske (younger speakers) | |---| | Good morning | | Good day | | Good evening / Good night | | Where are you going? | | I'm going to... | | Where have you come from? | | I've come from... | | Where is it? | | It's here | | Come here! | | Go away! | | What's your name? | | My name is... | | Where are you from? | | I am from... | | How much? / How many? | | one | | two | | three | | four | | five | | Thank you | | It's just fine | ::
Notes
References
::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::