Rawa

Rawa, also recorded as Erawa or Erewa, is one of the Finisterre languages, a family placed within the Trans–New Guinea phylum and spoken in the rugged Finisterre Range of north-eastern Papua New Guinea. Rawa splits into two dialects, Rawa and Karo, used on opposite sides of the mountains.

Comparative work ties the Finisterre languages to the neighbouring Huon languages: a small closed set of verbs takes pronominal object prefixes, some clearly cognate across the two groups, which linguists take as evidence of common descent. European ships first entered the Huon Gulf and Vitiaz Strait in the 1790s with the French expedition of d'Entrecasteaux, while the high valleys of the Rawa remained far longer untouched by outside contact.