The Rama language is one of the Indigenous languages of the Chibchan family spoken by the Rama people on the island of Rama Cay and south of lake Bluefields on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. Other Indigenous languages of this region include Miskito and Sumu. Rama is one of the northernmost languages of the Chibchan family. It is spoken in Honduras and Nicaragua.
The Rama language is severely endangered. Their language was described as "dying quickly for lack of use" as early as the 1860s. By 1980, the Rama were noted as having "all but lost their original ethnic language", and had become speakers of a form of English creole, called Rama Cay Creole, instead. In 1992, only approximately 36 fluent speakers could be found among an ethnic population of 649 individuals. The number of speakers on Rama Cay island was only 4 in 1992. There have been several language revitalization efforts. The fieldwork for the first dictionary of Rama was done during this time by Robin Schneider, a graduate student from the University of Berlin.
Phonology There are three basic vowel sounds: a, i and u. In addition to these, e and o have been introduced as distinct vowels in some foreign loanwords. Each vowel may be either short or long. Here the vowels are shown in standard Rama orthography (see for example ):
+ VowelsShortLong Front Back Front Back High (Mid) () () () () Low
The following consonants are found (IPA transcriptions are shown where helpful):
+ Consonants Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Labiovelar Glottal Nasals Plosives Fricatives Liquids , Semivowels
Rama words have non-predictable stress.
Phonotactics and sandhi Rama phonotactics includes notable consonant clusters at the beginning of words (e.g. "toucan", "hot", "man", "killed") and word-internally (e.g. "speaks", "fish"). Variations among speakers witness a tendency to simplify such clusters (e.g. or "man", or "we, us, our").
Such clusters often arise due to a tendency to omit unstressed short vowels. For example, when the third person singular subject prefix i- and the past tense suffix -u are added to the verb stem "eat", thus: i- + + -u, the verb stem loses its only vowel, resulting in the form "he/she/it ate". Sometimes omitting different vowels may lead to alternative results. Adding the past tense suffix -u to the verb stem "kill", i.e. + -u, may give either or "killed".
There are also cases of vowel alternation in morphemes (e.g. the first-person subject prefix may appear as n-, ni- or na-) and lexical stems (thus the stem "stay" may appear in the forms aakir-i "stays" and aaikur-u "stayed", where the short stem vowel copies the vowel of the suffix).
Consonants display a degree of sandhi-type alternation, as seen for example in the final consonant of the same stem "stay, be", cf. the imperative "stay!". This latter variant is found both word-final and before a suffix beginning with a consonant (e.g. "if there is").
Grammar In terms of grammatical typology Rama may be considered a fairly "normal" language for the linguistic area within which it is located, despite the lack of close genetic ties with its immediate neighbours. For example, Rama shares some general typological features with Miskito, a dominant contact language, displaying many characteristics typical of SOV languages (even though not all sentences are actually verb-final). A single set of prefixes serves to express both pronominal possessors (e.g. n- "my eye") and subjects (e.g. n- "I went"). Noun phrase relations are indicated by postpositions, tense and subordination by verbal suffixes.
Noun phrase
Elements of the noun phrase There are no articles. Nouns are frequently undetermined, e.g. "(The) lizard walks on (the) ground" (literally: lizard ground on (s)he-walks), "He/she caught (a) fish with (a) hook" (fish hook with (s)he-caught).
Demonstrative determiners precede the noun: "this house", "that dog". Quantifiers follow the noun: "one dog", "two cats", "many houses", "every morning", "all the people", "the other dog, another dog".
Most nouns do not change for number, but those denoting humans can take the plural suffix or , as in "men", "women", "children", etc.
Attributive adjectives follow the noun they qualify: "(a/the) big fish".
Possession Inalienable pronominal possession, found with body parts and characteristics, is expressed by prefixes attached to the possessed noun: "my eye", "his/her strength", "our fingers".
In other cases (including kinship relations), a genitive pronoun (formed from the pronominal prefix + ) precedes the possessed noun, e.g. "my cat / house / name / child / father / sister", "your family (lit. your people)", "his/her name", "our Rama language".
The forms etc. also function predicatively (as equivalents of English possessive pronouns), as in "That cat is mine".
Nominal possession is expressed by two constructions: possessor + possessed (i.e. simple juxtaposition), e.g. "my father's name" (my father name), and possessor + + possessed ( being a genitive postposition), e.g. "Nora's house".
Pronouns Personal pronouns have free (independent) and bound (prefix) forms as in the following table. The third person singular bound form is i- before a consonant or y- before a vowel.
+ Personal pronouns Independent Prefix I, me n- you (sg.) m- he/him, she/her, it i-, y- we, us nsu- you (pl.) m- -lut they, them an-
The independent pronouns are often used as subjects: "I live in Bluefields" (I town in stay), "Can you sew a dress?" (you dress sew-IRREALIS), "He/She is going". They may also be complements of postpositions: "My mother lives in this house with me" (my mother this house in stay I with), "from you", "The tiger came out at them" (tiger they at came-out). Note that -ut changes to -ul before a vowel, for example in "with us".
The prefix forms of the pronouns are used as subject prefixes with verbs: "I gave it to Nelly" (Nelly OBJECT I-gave), "Tomorrow I will cook some meat" (tomorrow meat I-will-cook), "With whom did you go?" (who with you-went), "he/she went", "They came to the island" (island in they-came). In the second person plural, m- is prefixed and -lut suffixed to the verb.
Subject prefixes are omitted when the subject is represented by an independent pronoun: "I am going" is either or , "He is going" is either or , etc. They are also commonly absent in the presence of a full subject noun phrase: "My father is going", but "repetition" of the subject is also possible: "The lizard (he) walks on the ground" (lizard ground on it-walks).
A pronominal object is expressed by adding the postposition aa to the pronouns, which adopt the prefix form in the singular but the full form in the plural: but (for ) etc. But third person objects are commonly zero-marked, that is, the absence of an overt object of a transitive verb implies an understood "him", "her" or "it", e.g. Anangsku "They cleaned it" (lit. they-cleaned).
The demonstrative pronouns are the same as the corresponding determiners: "this", "that", as in "This is my house".
The interrogative pronouns are "what", "who", as in "What is your name?", "Who speaks Rama?" (who Rama language speaks), "With whom did you go?" (who with you-went).
Postpositions Rama postpositions perform roughly the same functions as English prepositions, as in "on the ground", "in (the) town", "with me", "of the house", etc.
Postpositional phrases may occur either before or after the verb. Some postpositions have a shorter and a longer form; following the verb the long forms are used, e.g. "I ran away from my father" (I-ran my father from) but before the verb the short forms are more usual: (my father from I-ran).
+ Postpositions Long form Short form Meaning or function object marker "of, for", genitive "to, for" "like" "for" "from" "in, on, at, to" "for" "in, on, at, to" "with"
Although or is given as an object marker, most objects (other than personal pronouns) take no postposition, e.g. "The tiger ate the man" (tiger man ate).
In addition to the simple postpositions there are more complex forms of the relational type that express more specific relationships. These are composed of a noun-like lexical form followed by a postposition, such as "inside", "out of". They are placed after a noun phrase, e.g. "inside the hole", or a postpositional phrase, e.g. "out of the pot" (literally: pot in out-from). Such expressions may also be used adverbially.
The verb
Overview The simplest structure for verb forms consists of these elements:
an optional subject prefix (already discussed above under Pronouns) the verb stem either a tense/mood suffix (or zero) or a subordination marker
e.g. "I live in Bluefields" (no subject prefix and no tense suffix), "He/She is going" (no subject prefix, present tense suffix), "With whom did you go?" (second person subject prefix, past tense suffix), "I will cook some meat" (first person subject prefix, future/irrealis suffix), "when they see the tiger" (third person plural subject prefix, "when" subordinator), "I am looking for meat to buy" (first person singular subject prefix, purpose subordinator).
This basic structure may be expanded by adding other elements, including aspect markers (which come between the stem and the tense/mood suffix) and preverbs (which precede the subject prefix, if present). More complex meanings can be expressed through the use of serial verb constructions.
Tense/mood and subordinator suffixes Most verb forms end in a suffix such as one of the following which either specifies a tense (or a mood) or else signals a subordinate clause:
+ Tense/mood and subordinator suffixesTense/mood suffixesSubordinator suffixes Suffix Meaning Suffix Meaning present tense "in order to" past tense "when, if" future/irrealis "in order to"no suffix tenseless/habitual "if" imperative "upon, and then, since"
Use of one of the subordinator suffixes constitutes the main subordination strategy. Since these suffixes occupy the same place as the tense suffixes, the resulting subordinate clauses are tenseless, in this respect resembling non-finite clauses in European languages. Nonetheless, Rama verb forms with subordinators take subject prefixes under the same basic conditions as tensed ones, and in this way resemble finite forms.
Examples with "come": "I am coming", "I came", "I will come", "for me to come", "when I come", "if I come" etc.
In some cases the lack of any suffix signals a lack of marked tense or a habitual sense: compare "I am ready to go" (now) with "I live in the town". Imperatives in the second person singular are also suffixless, e.g. "Come!" One verb, "go", has a suppletive imperative or "go!".
Sometimes forms with the -bang suffix are used in independent clauses: see the section on Aspect below.
Aspect Using the simple past tense of "eat", the sentence means "The tiger ate the man", but the "manner of eating" may be specified further to express completion of the action by adding to the stem the aspect marker , giving "The tiger ate the man all up". Further examples with are: "He/she shut the door tight" ( "close") and "They saw the whole manatee" ( "see"). Another aspect-marking suffix similarly used is () expressing repetition.
A range of further aspectual nuances may be conveyed by a variety of periphrastic constructions. Several of these involve the verb "stay" or its derivative (which contains the preverb ), either of which, following a verb stem, may convey progressive aspect: "I am crying" ( "cry"; the second vowel in can copy the vowel of the suffix). can also express "be about to (do something)".
The suffix (see also above) may express intention, as in "I am going to look at the baby" ( "look at"), and in first person plural imperatives (i.e. "let's..."), as in "Let's sleep!" ( "sleep"). In the latter use the subject prefix may be omitted, e.g. "Let's speak Rama!" ( "speak").