Krumen is a

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...

spoken by the

Krumen people The term Krumen (also Kroumen, Kroomen) refers to historical sailors from the Kru people group living mostly along the coast of Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire. One theory, advanced in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, was that the term Kru or ...

Liberia Liberia, officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to Liberia–Sierra Leone border, its northwest, Guinea to Guinea–Liberia border, its north, Ivory Coast to Ivory Coast–Lib ...

and

Ivory Coast Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire and officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital city of Yamoussoukro is located in the centre of the country, while its largest List of ci ...

( Tabou and Grabo subprefectures). It is a branch of the

Grebo languages Grebo is a dialect cluster of the Kru languages, spoken by the Grebo people of present-day Liberia and the Krumen of Ivory Coast in West Africa. Definition The first African tribal group contacted by European explorers and Americo-Liberian colo ...

, a subfamily of the

Kru languages The Kru languages are spoken by the Kru people from the southeast of Liberia to the west of Ivory Coast. Classification According to Güldemann (2018), Kru lacks sufficient lexical resemblances and noun class resemblances to conclude a relatio ...

and ultimately of the

Niger–Congo languages Niger–Congo is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic–Congo languages (which share a characteristic noun class system), and possibly several smaller groups ...

. It had 48,300 speakers in 1993.Ethnologue report on Krumen
at SIL The main varieties are: *Tepo: Tepo, Bapo, Wlopo / Ropo, Dapo, Honpo, Yrepo / Kapo, Glawlo dialects *Pye: Trepo, Wluwe-Hawlo, Gbowe-Hran, Wlepo, Dugbo, Yrewe / Giriwe / Jrwe �ʀwe/ Jrewe,Marchese, Lynell. 1983. ''Atlas linguistique Kru: nouvelle edition''. Abidjan: Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique (ACCT). Yapo, Pie dialects *Plapo Plapo has only a hundred speakers and no dialectal variation.

References

Grebo languages Languages of Liberia Languages of Ivory Coast {{Liberia-stub

See also

References