They are spoken at the mouth of the Nunez River in Guinea, West Africa.
The Rio Nunez languages have been studied by Fields (2001),[1] but otherwise remain sparsely documented.
[2] Previously, Fields had proposed a Coastal group consisting of Mbulungish, Mboteni, and Nalu that she considered to be distinct from the surrounding Mel languages.
[2] Speakers of Rio Nunez languages had cultivated African rice (Oryza glaberrima) for thousands of years on the swampy coast of Guinea.
Mel speakers were later arrivals on the Guinean coast, as the Proto-Mel homeland is located in the north-central highlands of Sierra Leone just to the south of the Lesser Scarcies River, rather than on the coast (Fields 2008:83).