Binanderean

Binanderean is the Papuan language family of the northeast coast of New Guinea's Bird's Tail peninsula, spread across Oro Province and the adjoining edge of Morobe. Long classed within Trans–New Guinea, the family is grouped by some scholars with the Goilalan languages and the Purari isolate, also called Namau, of the Purari Delta.

Contact with Austronesian newcomers ran deep: Oceanic-speaking villages along the coast were absorbed into Binanderean communities, the Papuan Tip languages took on a subject–object–verb word order under Binanderean influence, and Maisin became a mixed Oceanic language heavy with Binanderean material.

The Orokaiva, the family's largest people, were renowned warriors organized into river, coastal and inland groups. When the French expedition of Bruni d'Entrecasteaux charted the nearby islands in 1793, the inland valleys of the Bird's Tail still lay entirely beyond European knowledge.