The Mek languages are a well established family of Papuan languages spoken by the Mek people and Yali people. They form a branch of the Trans–New Guinea languages (TNG) in the classifications of Stephen Wurm (1975) and of Malcolm Ross (2005). Mek, then called Goliath, was identified by M. Bromley in 1967. It was placed in TNG by Wurm (1975).

Languages

The Mek languages form three dialect chains (Heeschen 1998):

Proto-language

Phonemes

Usher (2020) reconstructs the consonant and vowel inventories as 'perhaps' as follows:

Pronouns

Pronouns are: ! !!sg!!pl !1 !2 !3 The difference between the two 3pl forms is not known. 2pl and 3pl have parallels in Momuna /kun tun/.

Basic vocabulary

Some lexical reconstructions by Usher (2020) are: ! gloss !! Proto-Mek !! Proto-East Mek !! Kimyal !! Proto-Northwest Mek !! Proto-Momuna-Mek !! Momuna ! hair/feather ! ear/twelve ! eye ! tooth/sharp ! tongue ! foot/leg ! blood ! bone ! breast ! louse ! dog ! pig ! bird ! egg/fruit/seed ! tree/wood ! woman/wife ! sun ! moon ! water/river ! fire ! stone ! path/way ! name ! eat/drink ! one ! two/ring finger

Modern reflexes

Mek reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma are: Eipo language: Bime language: Kosarek language: Yale language: