Sepik

The Sepik or Sepik River languages form a family of about fifty Papuan languages spoken across the Sepik river basin of northern New Guinea, in the grasslands and swamps stretching from the upper reaches to its delta on the Bismarck Sea. The grouping takes its name from the river.

Its best-known members are the Ndu languages, including Iatmul, Abelam and Boiken. Sepik languages tend to simple phonologies with few consonants, and most distinguish masculine and feminine genders on nouns, classifying even inanimate things by shape and size.

After the Portuguese first reached New Guinea in 1526 and the Spanish gave the island its name in 1545, coastal contacts grew, yet the Sepik interior remained beyond outside reach. Its peoples lived in villages along the river and its tributaries, relying on fishing, sago and the exchange networks of the basin.