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The Demosthenes hiearchy of exclusion goes Utlanning, Framling, Raman, Varelse, Djur.

Of these, U, F, V and D are recognizable as Swedish words:

  • Utlanning from Utlänning ("foreigner").
  • Framling from Främling ("stranger")
  • Varelse from Varelse ("creature", "being")
  • Djur from Djur ("animal", "beast")

But what does "raman" refer to? No combination of a, ä or å in the two vowel positions appears to produce any recognizable Swedish word. So where did Card get this word?

(I tend to think of Rendezvous with Rama, but it seems like a strange place for them to pop up. Of course, the piggies did do everything in trees ...).

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12

Although the word Ramen literally means "frame" in Swedish (e.g. that which can be built upon) the Ansible Wikia has an alternative and (to my mind) more sensible definition;

Raman : Although not a common word, may be constructed in Swedish from rå + män, where rå indicates "coarse (not refined); brutal (crude or unfeeling in manner or speech)" and män = "man" or "person." (e.g. råmän)

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  • Ramen means "the frame", whereas "frame" would be "ram". It is not necessarily a direct translation of the English word "frame". It is a direct translation when you mean something surrounding something else, or to frame a painting. But not when you refer to building frames as in scaffolding.
    – Amarth
    Commented Sep 11, 2019 at 17:26
  • "Råmän" seems to be the correct meaning, though unlike the others, it is not a real word. "Rå" might also mean cruel or raw. But rå it is also used to describe an imprecise mythological creature of the forest. Roe deer is I believe a word taken from Swedish, which has the equivalent "Rådjur", which in turn would originate from ancient Swedish. Some creature of the forest. You have the "Skogsrå" for example, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skogsr%C3%A5.
    – Amarth
    Commented Sep 11, 2019 at 17:30

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