The Piawi languages are a small independent family

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 classification of Malcolm Ross

Malcolm Ross

Malcolm David Ross is a linguist and professor at the Australian National University. He has published work on Austronesian and Papuan languages, historical linguistics, and language contact.-External links:**...

, that had been part of Stephen Wurm

Stephen Wurm

Stephen Adolphe Wurm was a Hungarian-born Australian linguist.- Biography :Wurm was born in Budapest, the second child to the German-speaking Adolphe Wurm and Hungarian-speaking Anna Novroczky, and was christened Istvan Adolphe Wurm...

's Trans–New Guinea proposal.

Classification

Piawi consists of only two languages:

• Piawi family: Pinai-Hagahai, Haruai
  Haruai language
  Haruai is one of two languages of the Piawi family of New Guinea. The language has borrowings from Kalam. Young men are likely to know Kobon and Tok Pisin, but many Haruai are monolingual. Commonly known as Waibuk, also Wiyaw, Wovan, Taman...
  
   (Waibuk)

Davies and Comrie 1985 noted some pronominal similarities with the Engan languages in Trans–New Guinea, which Ross took into consideration, but no lexical similarities. Comrie believes the family is as isolate. According to Ross, connections with Ramu languages such as Arafundi appear more promising.

Pronouns

Below is a comparison of proto-Piawi, proto-Ramu, Arafundi, and proto-North Engan pronouns, per Ross. Initial nasals are ubiquitous, and indeed are very common throughout New Guinea, so they are in themselves not good evidence of a relationship.

	"I"	"thou"	"s/he"	"we two"	"you two"	"we"	"you"
pPiawi	*ni-ga	*na-ga	*nu-ga	*(n)ane-ga-li(mi)	*ni-ga-li(mi)	*ane-ga, *nane-ga	*ni-ga
pRamu	*aŋko, *ni	*un, *nu	*man	*a-ŋk-a	*(n)o-ŋk-oa	*a-ni, *na-ni	*u-ni, *nu-ni
Arafundi	ɲiŋ	nan	nda	aci	niɲi	aŋ	nuŋ
pN Engan	*na-ba	*ne-ba	*-ba	*na-li-ba	*ɲa-li-mba	*na-ni-ma	*ɲa-ma, *ɲa-ka-ma

Both Engan and Piawi have a dual suffix *li.