Tags: Language.
Yabem or Jabêm is an Austronesian language spoken natively (in 1978) by about 2000 people at the southern tip of the Huon Peninsula in Morobe Province Papua New Guinea. However Yabem was adopted as local lingua franca for evangelical and educational purposes by the German Lutheran missionaries who first arrived at Simbang a Yabem-speaking village in 1886. By 1939 it was spoken by as many as 15000 people and understood by as many as 100000 (Zahn 1940).