The very success of the Ranamemi peoples creates a problem for the student of languages. Over the course of centuries, Ranamemi culture has spread over a huge area, from the Indian Subcontinent to the shores of the Eastern Atlantic along the Iberean Penninsula and Northern Africa. Their influence, and the influences on them, extends even further.
Among this large group are diverse cultures and societies. The Ranamemi language is in reality no one thing, but a family of dialects more or less similar to each other. To learn, or even survey, all of them would be a daunting task. Fortunately, there has always existed among the Ranamemi a strong collective literary tradition, and a standardized form of Ranamemi in which this tradition has been maintained.
Modern Standard Ranamemi is the current version of this language. While it differs in some particulars from every dialect of the language, it is the main medium of communication throughout the Ranamemi world in the print and broadcast media, except for the most colloquial of popular works. Accordingly, this paper deals only with this version. The student is directed to handbooks on the various national dialects of Ranamemi for more detailed information.
© 1999, Terrence Donnelly