The Southeast Papuan or "Bird's Tail" languages are a geographic grouping of half a dozen small families

Language family

A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...

 of Papuan languages

Papuan languages

The Papuan languages are those languages of the western Pacific which are neither Austronesian nor Australian. The term does not presuppose a genetic relationship. The concept of Papuan peoples as distinct from Melanesians was first suggested and named by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1892.-The...

 in the "Bird's Tail" (southeastern peninsula) of New Guinea: Koiarian

Koiarian languages

The Koiarian languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea...

, Kwalean

Kwalean languages

The Kwalean languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea. They are sometimes included in a speculative Southeast Papuan branch of Trans–New Guinea , but the Southeast Papuan families have not been shown to be any more closely...

, Manubaran

Manubaran languages

The Manubaran languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea...

, Yareban

Yareban languages

The Yareban languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea. They are sometimes included in a speculative Southeast Papuan branch of Trans–New Guinea , but the Southeast Papuan families have not been shown to be any more closely...

, Mailuan

Mailuan languages

The Mailuan languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea. They are sometimes included in a speculative Southeast Papuan branch of Trans–New Guinea , but the Southeast Papuan families have not been shown to be any more closely...

, and Dagan

Dagan languages

The Dagan languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea, the easternmost Papuan languages on the mainland...

. They are all believed to be part of the Trans–New Guinea (TNG) phylum, but have not been shown to be any more closely related to each other than they are to other TNG families. However, they do all have in common ya for 'you' (plural) instead of proto-TNG *gi.

The Goilalan languages

Goilalan languages

The Goilalan languages are a family placed in the Trans–New Guinea family by Wurm and tentatively retained there in the classification of Malcolm Ross . The languages,are clearly related, especially Biagai, Kunimaipa, and Weri, which might be considered divergent dialects....

are customarily included in Southeast Papuan, but it is questionable whether they are even Trans–New Guinea.