Grebo language
Kru language of Liberia
Grebo is a Kru language of Liberia. All of the Grebo languages are referred to as Grebo, though in Ivory Coast, Krumen is the usual name. The Grebo people live in the extreme south-west of Liberia, both on the coast and inland, between the rivers Cavally and Cess.
As in the other Kru languages, tone is extremely important. For instance, né with a high (or high-mid) tone is the first-person pronoun "I", while nè with a low tone is the singular form of "you".
01Phonology
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labio- velar |
Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lab. | |||||||
| Nasal | voiced | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ŋʷ | ŋ͡m | |
| voiceless | m̥ | n̥ | ||||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | c | k | k͡p | ||
| voiced | b | d | ɟ | ɡ | ɡ͡b | |||
| Fricative | f | s | h | |||||
| Approximant | voiced | w | l | j | ||||
| voiceless | w̥ | l̥ | ||||||
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | ret. | plain | ret. | ||
| Close | i | u | |||
| Close-mid | e | e̠ | o | o̠ | |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | |||
| Open | a | ||||
Vowels /e̠, o̠/ are considered as retracted or "muffled" vowels according to source.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Grebo language”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
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