The Torricelli languages are a family of about fifty languages of the northern Papua New Guinea coast, spoken by about 80,000 people. They are named after the Torricelli Mountains. The most populous and best known Torricelli language is Arapesh, with about 30,000 speakers.

They are not clearly related to other Papuan language families; however, attempts have been made to establish external links.^[1] The most promising^{[clarification needed]} external relationship for the Torricelli family is the Sepik languages. (In reconstructions of both families, the pronouns have a plural suffix *-m and a dual suffix *-p.)

C.L. Voorhoeve (1987) has proposed that they are related to the North Halmahera languages and most of the languages of the Bird’s Head Peninsula, thus forming the easternmost extension of the postulated West Papuan family.^[2]

The Torricelli languages occupy three geographically separated areas, evidently separated by later migrations of Sepik-language speakers several centuries ago. Foley considers the Torricelli languages to be autochthonous to the Torricelli Mountains and nearby surrounding areas, having been resident in the region for at least several millennia. The current distribution of Lower Sepik-Ramu and Sepik (especially Ndu) reflects later migrations from the south and the east.^[3] Foley notes that the Lower Sepik and Ndu groups have lower internal diversity comparable to that of the Germanic and Romance languages, while internal diversity within the Torricelli family is considerably higher.

Wilhelm Schmidt linked the Wapei and Monumbo branches, and the coastal western and eastern extremes of the family, in 1905. The family was more fully established by David Laycock in 1965. Most recently, Ross broke up Laycock and Z’graggen's (1975) Kombio branch, placing the Kombio language in the Palei branch and leaving Wom as on its own, with the other languages (Eitiep, Torricelli (Lou), Yambes, Aruek) unclassified due to lack of data. Usher tentatively separates Monumbo, Marienberg, and the Taiap (Gapun) language from the rest of the family in a 'Sepik Coast' branch.^[7]

The pronouns Ross (2005) reconstructs for proto-Torricelli are

Foley (2018) reconstructs the independent personal pronouns *ki ‘I’ and *(y)i ‘thou’, and *(y)ip ‘you (pl)’. Foley considers the second-person pronouns to be strong diagnostics for determining membership in the Torricelli family.

Foley (2018) reconstructs the following subject agreement prefixes for proto-Torricelli.^[3]

The lexical data below is from the Trans-New Guinea database.^[10]

A cognate set for 'louse' in Torricelli languages as compiled by Dryer (2022):^[11]

• Papuan languages