The Tirio languages are a 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 Trans–New Guinea languages 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:**...

. The three languages Tirio (Makayam, Aturu), Bitur (Mutum), and Were (Kiunum) are closely related, having about half their vocabulary in common. They share about a third of their vocabulary with Baramu. The moribund language Abom would appear to be the most divergent, sharing only an eighth of the lexicon.