Duau

Duau is a dialectically diverse Oceanic language of the Papuan Tip cluster, belonging to the Dobu–Duau linkage alongside Dobu, Molima, Bunama and Galeya. It is spoken on Normanby Island, the southernmost of the D'Entrecasteaux Islands off the eastern tip of New Guinea, above all in the island's southeast.

The closely related Dobu speech of nearby Dobu Island serves as a lingua franca across the archipelago, while the islanders farm yams and taro, fish the Solomon Sea, and take part in the kula, the inter-island circuit of ceremonial shell exchange. The D'Entrecasteaux group was first sighted by Europeans in 1792, when the French navigator Bruni d'Entrecasteaux sailed through these waters.