Torricelli

The Torricelli languages are a family of some fifty Papuan tongues named after the Torricelli Mountains of north-western Papua New Guinea, whose ridges run between the Pacific coast and the Sepik River basin. Their speakers have held these hills for several millennia, and migrations of Sepik-speaking peoples later split the family into three geographically separated areas.

Its most populous branch is Arapesh, including Bukiyip, famed for a complex agreement system with eighteen noun classes; the Wapei branch contains Olo. The family has no proven relatives, though shared pronoun endings hint at a link with the Sepik languages. Torricelli speech keeps subject–verb–object order and prepositions, unlike most Papuan families.

The Spaniard Yñigo Ortiz de Retez was the first European to trace the northern coast and named the island New Guinea in 1545, long before the mountain villages were reached by outsiders.