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Sepik-ramu




All told, Sepik-Ramu consists of a hundred languages of the Sepik and Ramu river basins of northern Papua New Guinea , spoken by only 200 000 people in all. The languages tend to have simple phonologies, with few consonants or vowels and usually no tones.

The best known Sepik-Ramu language is Iatmül . The most populous are Iatmül's fellow Ndu languages Abelam and Boiken, with about 35 000 speakers apiece.

Malcolm Ross re-evaluated the Sepik-Ramu hypothesis and found no evidence that it forms a valid family. However, all of the constituent branches, except for Yuat within Ramu, hold together in his evaluation. Ross links Nor-Pondo to Ramu in a Ramu-Lower Sepik proposal, places Leonhard Schultze (tentatively broken up into Walio and Papi) within an extented Sepik family, and treats Yuat and Taiap and independent families.


CLASSIFICATION

This list is a mirror of the Ethnologue article here .

Sepik-Ramu phylum (based on Laycock 1973)






SEE ALSO