Austronesian influence is evident in SVO word order (as opposed to SOV word order in most other Papuan language families), pronouns, numerals, and other typological features.
[2]: 626 They have been plausibly connected to the geographically close North Halmahera (NH) family, a relationship considered clear by Reesink 1998;[4] however, the evidence does not appear to be conclusive.
[2]: 580 A link between WBH and the isolates Abun and Maybrat has also been proposed (Wichmann 2013, Flassy 2002).
[6][2]: 582 The following basic vocabulary words are from Voorhoeve (1975),[7] as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database.
[8] The words cited constitute translation equivalents, whether they are cognate (e.g. kalen, kelem, kele for “bird”) or not (e.g. tolok, begu, niwi for “egg”).