Mumeng

Mumeng is an Oceanic dialect chain of the South Huon Gulf linkage, part of the Huon Gulf group of Western Oceanic languages, spoken in the mountain villages behind the southern shore of the Huon Gulf in Morobe Province.

Its varieties fall into two clusters, Dambi–Kumalu and Gorakor–Patep–Zenag, whose speakers understand one another only in part, while Kapin may be a more distant member of the same chain.

The neighboring Iwal tongue, the most conservative of the South Huon Gulf languages, preserves old counting on hands and feet up to twenty, called one person. Spanish ships under Yñigo Ortiz de Retez passed this coast in 1545, and the French expedition of 1792 to 1793, in which Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec served, left his name on the gulf and the peninsula beyond it.