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The Kru language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
s belong to the Niger-Congo language family
Niger-Congo languages

The Niger?Congo languages constitute one of the world's major Language family, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages....
 and are spoken in the area ranging from the south-east of Liberia
Liberia

Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the west coast of Africa, bordered by Sierra Leone, Guinea, C?te d'Ivoire, and the Atlantic Ocean....
 to the east of Côte d'Ivoire
Côte d'Ivoire

, formerly Ivory Coast, officially the , is a country in West Africa. The government officially discourages the use of the name Ivory Coast in English, preferring the French name to be used in all languages ....
. The name Kru is of unknown origin and is according to Westermann
Diedrich Hermann Westermann

Diedrich Hermann Westermann was a Germany missionary, Africanist, and linguistics. He substantially extended and revised the work of Carl Meinhof, his teacher, although he rejected some of Meinhof's theories only implicitly....
 (1952) 'used by Europeans to denote a number of tribes speaking related dialects, and the dialects as a whole'; Marchese (1989) notes that the term might be derived from the fact that many of these peoples were recruited as 'crew' by European seafarers.

The Kru languages are known for some of the most complex tone
Tone (linguistics)

Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning?that is, to distinguish or inflection words. All languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called intonation , but not all languages use tones to distingu...
 systems in Africa, rivaled perhaps only by the Omotic languages
Omotic languages

The Omotic languages are a branch of the Afro-Asiatic family spoken in southwestern Ethiopia. The Ge'ez alphabet is used to write some Omotic languages, the Roman alphabet for some others....
.

The Marchese (1989) classification of Kru languages is as follows.






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The Kru language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
s belong to the Niger-Congo language family
Niger-Congo languages

The Niger?Congo languages constitute one of the world's major Language family, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages....
 and are spoken in the area ranging from the south-east of Liberia
Liberia

Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the west coast of Africa, bordered by Sierra Leone, Guinea, C?te d'Ivoire, and the Atlantic Ocean....
 to the east of Côte d'Ivoire
Côte d'Ivoire

, formerly Ivory Coast, officially the , is a country in West Africa. The government officially discourages the use of the name Ivory Coast in English, preferring the French name to be used in all languages ....
. The name Kru is of unknown origin and is according to Westermann
Diedrich Hermann Westermann

Diedrich Hermann Westermann was a Germany missionary, Africanist, and linguistics. He substantially extended and revised the work of Carl Meinhof, his teacher, although he rejected some of Meinhof's theories only implicitly....
 (1952) 'used by Europeans to denote a number of tribes speaking related dialects, and the dialects as a whole'; Marchese (1989) notes that the term might be derived from the fact that many of these peoples were recruited as 'crew' by European seafarers.

The Kru languages are known for some of the most complex tone
Tone (linguistics)

Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning?that is, to distinguish or inflection words. All languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called intonation , but not all languages use tones to distingu...
 systems in Africa, rivaled perhaps only by the Omotic languages
Omotic languages

The Omotic languages are a branch of the Afro-Asiatic family spoken in southwestern Ethiopia. The Ge'ez alphabet is used to write some Omotic languages, the Roman alphabet for some others....
.

The Marchese (1989) classification of Kru languages is as follows. Many of these languages are dialect clusters and are sometimes considered more that a single language.

External links

  • at Ethnologue
    Ethnologue

    Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christianity linguistics service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles, in their native language....