Kuot

Kuot, also called Panaras, is a language isolate and the only non-Austronesian, or Papuan, language spoken on New Ireland in the Bismarck Archipelago. It is generally regarded as a surviving relic of the older Papuan-speaking population of the Bismarcks before Austronesian languages spread through the region with the Lapita seafarers around 1500 BCE.

Kuot is spoken in ten villages along the eastern and western coasts of the island's narrow central neck, and it has no major dialect divisions. It is the only Papuan language known to use verb-subject-object word order. Long contact with the surrounding Oceanic languages has left marks in both directions, and linguists attribute certain sound changes in Nalik, Kara, Barok, Madak and Lamasong to Kuot influence.