Sumo (also known as Sumu) is the collective name for a group of
Misumalpan
The Misumalpan languages (also Misumalpa or Misuluan) are a small family of languages spoken by indigenous peoples on the east coast of Nicaragua and nearby areas. The name "Misumalpan" was devised by John Alden Mason and is composed of syllables ...
languages spoken in
Nicaragua
Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the cou ...
and
Honduras
Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...
. Hale & Salamanca (2001) classify the Sumu languages into a northern Mayangna, composed of the Tawahka and Panamahka dialects, and southern Ulwa. Sumu specialist
Ken Hale considered the differences between Ulwa and Mayangna in both vocabulary and morphology to be so considerable that he prefers to speak of Ulwa as a language distinct from the northern Sumu varieties.
Phonology
Consonants
Vowels
Sources
*Hale, Ken, and Danilo Salamanca (2001) "Theoretical and Universal Implications of Certain Verbal Entries in Dictionaries of the Misumalpan Languages", in Frawley, Hill & Munro eds. ''Making Dictionaries: Preserving indigenous Languages of the Americas''. University of California Press.
*Norwood, Susan (1997). Gramática de la lengua sumu. Managua: CIDCA.
References
Misumalpan languages
Languages of Nicaragua
North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region
Languages of Honduras
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