Mussau

Mussau, or Mussau-Emira, is the Oceanic language of Mussau and Emirau, the two principal islands of the St Matthias or Mussau group, the northernmost island chain of the Bismarck Archipelago. Together with the closely related Tenis tongue it forms the St Matthias subgroup, which linguists treat as an independent primary branch within the Oceanic family.

Mussau itself is a hilly island largely covered by primeval rainforest. The archipelago was reached by the Lapita seafarers, the Austronesian potters whose sites stretch from Mussau to Samoa and who are believed to have spoken Proto-Oceanic, the ancestral language from which Mussau descends, during their spread through Island Melanesia between roughly 1600 and 500 BCE.