Kavieng

Kavieng corresponds above all to Tigak, also called Omo, the Oceanic language whose territory takes in the town of Kavieng on Balgai Bay at the northern tip of New Ireland, in the Bismarck Archipelago. Tigak belongs to the Meso-Melanesian linkage of the Oceanic branch of Austronesian, alongside Nalik, Kara and Notsi; inland the isolate Kuot is the island's only non-Austronesian language.

The first Austronesian speakers reached the Bismarcks with the Lapita seafarers roughly three thousand years ago, and their speech developed into the local Oceanic languages. The Dutch navigators Jacob Le Maire and Willem Schouten made the first recorded European landfall on New Ireland in 1616.

William Dampier established that New Ireland was a separate island in 1700. From 1799 whaling ships began calling regularly for water and provisions, drawing the northern coast into wider Pacific contacts.