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The term "Kru/Bassa" refers to some of the languages in the Western Kru subbranch of the Kru branch of Niger-Congo. 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 [Kwa??], but still within Niger-Congo. (Webbook)
Ethnologue classifies 3 languages as: Niger-Congo, Atlantic-Congo, Volta-Congo, Kru, Western, Bassa. In addition it lists 20 other languages under Niger-Congo, Atlantic-Congo, Volta-Congo, Kru, Western, .... It is not clear which among the latter should be considered here, so only the Bassa languages will be covered.
It is spoken in the southern part of Liberia and on into the eastern [western??] part of Côte d'Ivoire. (Webbook)
At least two dialect surveys have been taken of the Kru group, but because of the complicated nature of the dialect/language situation, more research is needed. (Webbook)
(See note in #1, above)
All the languages in the Kru group are used primarily as local languages. (Webbook)
The orthographic status of the Kru/Bassa languages is unknown to us as of this writing. (Webbook)
It is apparently an Latin-based alphabet including extended characters and diacritics to mark tone.
Alphabet of Bassa as reported by Hartell (1993):
Sample text of Bassa in the "Language Museum" at http://www.language-museum.com/b/bassa.php
Unicode fonts with extended Latin ranges would be necessary
No initiatives on this are known.
Kru
Bassa
Dewoin
Gbii
Chanard, Christian (2006), Systèmes alphabétiques des langues africaines, LLACAN, CNRS, http://sumale.vjf.cnrs.fr/phono/
Dwyer, David (1997), Webbook of African Languages, http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/hiermenu.html (page on "Kru/Bassa," http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/Kru_root.html )
Hartell, Rhonda L., ed. (1993), The Alphabets of Africa. Dakar: UNESCO and SIL. (The French edition, published the same year, is entitled Alphabets de Langues Africaines).
SIL International, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, "Bassa," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=bsq
______, "Dewoin," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=dee
______, "Gbii," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ggb
______, "Language Family Trees: Niger-Congo, Atlantic-Congo, Volta-Congo, Kru, Western," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=89958
SIL International, "ISO 639 Code Tables," http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp
U.S. Library of Congress, "ISO 639.2: Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages: Alpha-3 codes arranged alphabetically by the English name of language," http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/English_list.php
Wikipedia, "Kru languages," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kru_languages
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