Kru Language Letters

“Kru” names two things. In the narrow sense it is the language of the Kru people of the Liberian coast, called Klao by its speakers. In the wide sense it is a family of a few dozen related languages spoken in the coastal forest belt from central Liberia to southwestern Côte d’Ivoire; its relationship to Niger–Congo remains debated. The ISO 639-2 and 639-5 standards give the family the collective code kro, “Kru languages”, while each member has its own ISO 639-3 code, such as klu for Klao and bsq for Bassa.

On the Liberian side the family includes Klao, Bassa, Grebo, Eastern and Western Krahn, Sapo, Kuwaa, Dewoin and Tajuasohn. On the Ivorian side it includes Bété, Dida, Godié, Neyo, Kouya, Bakwé, Wané, the Kru Aizi languages (Tiagba and Mobu), the Krumen languages and Wè, which is known in French as Guéré and Wobé and continues across the border into Krahn. Bassa and Grebo have collections of their own here, and the Liberia and Ivory Coast collections have the flags, money and emoji of the two countries.

Kru language letters: Ɛ ɛ, Ɔ ɔ and Ɓ ɓ

Kru languages have more vowel sounds than the five letters a e i o u can show, so their Latin spellings add the two vowel letters that are standard across West Africa: Ɛ ɛ, the open e of English bed, and Ɔ ɔ, the open o of British law. They come right after E and O in the alphabet. Writing e or o in their place changes the vowel, so for a reader of Klao, Bassa or Grebo it is a misspelling, not a shortcut.

Bassa adds Ɓ ɓ, the implosive b, said with the air drawn inward. The double consonants kp and gb, a k or g said together with a p or b, are found throughout the family and are written as two letters, as in the Gboloo variety of Grebo. Bassa also has a script of its own, Bassa Vah, which Unicode added in version 7.0; its letters are in the Bassa collection.

The plain letters on this page are the Latin letters Liberian Kru spellings use; c, q and x are left out of this set, since the grid shows the core alphabet and not every letter a spelling may borrow for names and loanwords. Ivorian Kru languages are spelled by the conventions used for the national languages of Côte d’Ivoire and may use further vowel letters, so check a primer for the language you are writing before relying on this set.

Tone and the Grebo tone letter ꞉

All Kru languages are tonal: the pitch of a syllable is part of the word, and two words can differ by tone alone. The Jabo (Gweabo) variety of Grebo, which Edward Sapir described in 1931, has four level tones, more than most of the world’s languages use. Spelling systems differ in how much of this they write down.

Unicode’s own notes for ꞉, the MODIFIER LETTER COLON (U+A789), name Grebo as one of the orthographies that use it as a tone letter. It looks like a colon, but Unicode’s word-break data classifies it as ALetter. Copy the real ꞉ instead of typing the ordinary colon :, which a computer treats as punctuation.

Kru languages are also well known to linguists for their word order. A plain sentence runs subject, verb, object, as in English, but when an auxiliary verb is present the main verb moves to the end, after the object. Hilda Koopman’s 1984 study of Vata, a Kru language of Côte d’Ivoire, made this pattern a classic case in syntax.

How to type ɛ, ɔ and ɓ on a keyboard, iPhone or Android

The quickest way is to copy them from this page. In Microsoft Word on Windows, type the code and press Alt+X: 025B for ɛ, 0190 for Ɛ, 0254 for ɔ, 0186 for Ɔ, 0253 for ɓ, 0181 for Ɓ and A789 for ꞉. On a Mac, add the Unicode Hex Input source in Keyboard settings, then hold Option and type the same four-digit code. In HTML write ɛ for ɛ, Ɛ for Ɛ, ɔ for ɔ, Ɔ for Ɔ, ɓ for ɓ and Ɓ for Ɓ. If you write a Kru language every day, a keyboard layout for West African letters, such as the free ones made with Keyman, puts them on keys of their own.

An English phone keyboard may offer ɛ on a long-press but still lack ɔ, so set up text replacements for reliable access: on an iPhone in Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement, on Android in your keyboard’s personal dictionary or shortcuts. Paste ɛ as the phrase with a trigger such as ee3, and ɔ with oo3.

Watch the look-alikes: ɛ is not Greek ε (epsilon) or Cyrillic є, and ɔ is not the reversed ↄ. They look right on screen but break searching and sorting in Kru text.

Where the Kru languages are spoken, and the Kru people

In Liberia the Kru languages are spoken across the southeast, from Grand Bassa County, the Bassa homeland around Buchanan, through Sinoe, Grand Kru, Maryland and River Gee on the coast and Grand Gedeh, the Krahn heartland, inland, and by many people in Monrovia, where the district of New Kru Town on Bushrod Island carries the name. Unicode’s CLDR estimates about 540,000 speakers in Liberia for the code kro; CLDR counts Bassa (about 760,000) and Grebo (about 540,000) separately, so the family as a whole is far larger. In Côte d’Ivoire the family covers the southwest, from the Bété country around Gagnoa and Daloa to the Wè country around Guiglo and the coast at San-Pédro and Sassandra.

The Kru people of the coast were famous for generations as seafarers. From the eighteenth century on, Kru men, the “Krumen” or “Kroomen”, signed on to European ships along the West African coast as sailors, boatmen and dockworkers 🚢⚓, and many served on British naval ships hunting slave traders in the nineteenth century. Kru communities settled in the port towns, which is why Freetown has a Kroo Town, and at home the Kru still fish from long dugout canoes 🛶.