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The Sepik-Ramu languages are a hypothetical language family linking the Sepik, Ramu, Nor-Pondo (Lower Sepik), Leonhard Schultze (Walio-Papi), and Yuat families, together with the Taiap language isolate, and proposed by Donald Laycock in 1973. List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family The Sepik languages are a proposed family of some 50 Papuan languages spoken in the Sepik river basin of northern Papua New Guinea. The Yuat languages are an independent family of a dozen Papuan languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross, that had been part of Stephen Würm Taiap (also called Gapun, after the name of the village where it is spoken is an endangered Language isolate spoken by around a hundred people in A language isolate, in the absolute sense is a Natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or "genetic" relationship with other living languages that is Dr Donald Laycock was an Australian linguist and anthropologist

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 Sepik is the longest river on the island of New Guinea. The majority of the river flows through the Papua New Guinea (PNG provinces of Sandaun The Ramu is a River in northern Papua New Guinea. The headwaters of the river are formed in the Kratke Range from where it then travels approximately Papua New Guinea (or ˈpæpjuːə in Tok Pisin: Papua Niugini) officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania 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 in 2005 and found no evidence that it forms a valid family. Malcolm David Ross (born 1942 is a linguist and professor at the Australian National University. 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. The Ramu-Lower Sepik languages form a family of 35 Papuan languages spoken in the Ramu and Sepik river basins of northern Papua New Guinea The Sepik languages are a proposed family of some 50 Papuan languages spoken in the Sepik river basin of northern Papua New Guinea.

Classification

This list is a mirror of the Ethnologue article here. Ethnologue Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics a Christian

Sepik-Ramu phylum (based on Laycock 1973)


See also

Taiap (also called Gapun, after the name of the village where it is spoken is an endangered Language isolate spoken by around a hundred people in The Yimas Language is spoken by the Yimas people of Papua New Guinea. Abau is a Papuan language spoken in the Sandaun Province of Papua New Guinea, primarily along the shores of the Sepik River Iwam or May River Iwam is a language of Papua New Guinea spoken in East Sepik Province. Amal is a language of Papua New Guinea. Kwanga is a Sepik-Ramu language spoken in Papua New Guinea. Classification The 14th ( 2000) edition of Ethnologue classified The Ndu languages are the best known family of the Sepik languages of northern Papua New Guinea. The term Papuan languages refers to those Languages of the western Pacific which are neither Austronesian nor Australian.
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