Be (native pronunciation: [ʔɑŋ˧ɓe˧]), also known as Ong Be, Bê, or Vo Limgao (Mandarin: 临高话 Lín'gāohuà), is a pair of languages spoken by 600,000 people, 100,000 of them monolingual, on the north-central coast of Hainan Island, including the suburbs of the provincial capital Haikou.

[6] Liang (1997) notes that it is similar to the autonym ŋaːu¹¹fɔːn¹¹ (from ŋaːu¹¹ 'person' and fɔːn¹¹ 'village'), by which Gelong 仡隆 (Cun language) speakers refer to themselves.

Based on toponymic evidence from place names with the prefix dya- (调 diao), Jinfang Li considers Be to have originated from the Leizhou peninsula of Guangdong province.

Liang & Zhang (1996:21–25)[8] also believe that Be had migrated from the Leizhou Peninsula to northern Hainan about 2,500 years ago during the Warring States period.

[11] Chen (2018) contains extensive comparative lexical data for the Be dialects of Changliu (長流), Yongxing (永興), Longtang (龍塘), Qiaotou (橋頭), Huangtong (皇桐), and Xinying (新盈).