Bel

Bel is the name given to a group of closely related Austronesian languages of the Malayo-Polynesian branch, spoken along Astrolabe Bay and the nearby coast of Madang Province in northern Papua New Guinea. Its members include Takia on southern Karkar Island and Bagabag, Marik on the Gogol River, and Gedaged around Madang, which is itself sometimes called Bel.

Long contact with neighbouring Papuan languages reshaped their grammar: where most Austronesian languages place the verb before its object, the Bel languages shifted to subject–object–verb order. In 1827 the French explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville sailed into the bay and named it Astrolabe Bay after his corvette.