Klao (also ''Klaoh''), or Kru, is a Kru language of the Niger–Congo language family, spoken primarily in

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 ...

, with some speakers also in

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered to the southeast by Liberia and by Guinea to the north. Sierra Leone's land area is . It has a tropical climate and envi ...

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

and

Guinea Guinea, officially the Republic of Guinea, is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Guinea-Bissau to the northwest, Senegal to the north, Mali to the northeast, Côte d'Ivoire to the southeast, and Sier ...

. It uses SVO

word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how languages employ different orders. Correlatio ...

for main clauses and SOV for embedded clauses. A Klao translation of the

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

by missionary Nancy Lightfoot was released in 2000. The language has Western, West Central, Central, and Eastern dialects.Ethnologue report for language code:klu
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Phonology

Consonants

* /l/ may also be heard as flap sounds �or �

Vowels

* Sounds /ə, ə̃, ɵ, ɵ̃/ may also be heard as �, ɪ̃, ʊ, ʊ̃among dialects.

References

Kru languages Languages of Liberia Languages of Sierra Leone {{Kru-lang-stub