Ramu Languages

The Ramu languages are a family of about thirty languages spoken in the Ramu and Keram river watersheds of Madang and East Sepik provinces in northern Papua New Guinea, first identified by John Zgraggen in 1971 and later linked by Donald Laycock to the neighboring Sepik languages in a proposed wider Ramu-Lower Sepik grouping that remains a hypothesis rather than an established fact. This group holds every New Guinea and Pacific Language Families member whose sourced description identifies it as Ramu or as a named branch within the family, including the Keram, Grass and Porapora branches and the Middle Ramu, Tamolan-Ataitan-Porapora and Lower Ramu divisions, kept separate from Sepik proper because the wider Ramu-Lower Sepik link is not itself an established genealogical unit.