Manubara

Manubara takes its name from one of the two members of the Manubaran family, a small group of the Southeast Papuan branch of Trans-New Guinea, spoken around Mount Brown in the Bird's Tail, the southeastern peninsula of New Guinea. The family consists of Doromu and Maria, also called Gebi or Manubara. Maria is spoken by villages of the mountainous interior behind the coast that would later hold Port Moresby.

The two share roughly sixty-three per cent of their vocabulary, marking them as related yet distinct tongues shaped by long separation in steep ridge country. The Spanish coastal voyages of 1545 under Yñigo Ortiz de Retez and of 1606 under Torres never reached the Mount Brown valleys.