The term "Kru/Bassa" refers to some of the languages in the Western Kru subbranch of the Kru branch of Niger-Congo. It is spoken in the southern part of Liberia and on into the eastern part of Côte d'Ivoire. Although considered as a possible subgroup of Kwa by Greenberg (1963), more recently Bennett and Sterk (1977) accord the Kru branch a more distant relationship to Kru, but still within Niger-Congo.
UBS (1982) notes 121,000 speakers in Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire. A figure of 500,000 is given by Gnielinsky (1972); Liberia's 1974 census gives 214,150 Bassa speakers and 121,400 Kru speakers. Grimes (1996) cites estimates of 48,300 Krumen speakers 347,600 Bassa speakers.
All the languages in the Kru group are used primarily as local languages.
The orthographic status of the Kru/Bassa languages is unknown to us as of this writing.
Because of the considerable dialect/language variation in this area and the lack of the necessary comparative data and analysis, including detailed dialect surveys, it is impossible to determine how many sets of learning materials would be needed for these languages.
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