Yareba

Yareba, also called Middle Musa, is the central member of the Yareban or Musa River family, a small group of the Southeast Papuan branch of Trans-New Guinea. The family is spoken in the valleys of the Musa River on the eastern side of the Bird's Tail, where the river runs through Oro Province to its mouth in Dyke Ackland Bay.

All the Yareban tongues share the same first- and second-person singular pronouns, na and a, a token of their common descent. In 1545 the Spanish navigator Yñigo Ortiz de Retez coasted the northern shore of New Guinea and gave the island its name, yet the forested Musa valley remained unseen by European eyes for more than three centuries afterward.