Mato is a minor Austronesian language of northern Papua New Guinea[2] just inside Morobe Province.
Mato is also referred to by the names Nenaya, Nengaya, and Nineia.
The linguistic situation is very stable, due in part to the geographical isolation of the Mato people.
The grammar between the dialects does not vary; when it does differ, the residents of the Mato area said the words could be pronounced either way and that it depended on the preference of the speaker.
In the Tabares dialect, the velar fricative /x/ is released as [x] initially and [ɣ] (voiced) intervocalically, except when followed by the high front vowel /i/, where it is also retroflexed [ɣ˞].