Kru Languages

Kru languages, a branch of the Niger-Congo language family that consists of some 24 languages (or language clusters) spoken by some three million Kru people living in the forest regions of southwestern Côte d’Ivoire and southern Liberia. The two largest members of the western group of Kru languages are the Guere language complex, with some 500,000 speakers, and Bassa, with some 350,000 speakers. In eastern Kru the Bete language complex numbers more than 500,000 speakers.

Belonging to neither of these two groups is another Kru language, Seme (Sεmε), which is spoken in Burkina Faso hundreds of miles away from any other Kru language. Its location is of particular interest as it lends support to the hypothesis that in earlier times the Kru population had lived farther north; but, under pressure from Mande invasions, most Kru peoples moved south—except for the Seme, who moved northeast.

Many Kru languages show evidence of a previous noun class system—making a distinction, for instance, between human and nonhuman reference. All Kru languages have tonal features that mark both lexical and grammatical distinctions. Frequently languages have three or four levels of tone. Tone often distinguishes between the imperfective and the perfective (expressing completed action) forms of the verb and between definite and indefinite and singular and plural.