Jackson speaking Konobo

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CC BY-SA 4.0

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This video was recorded by Peace Corps Volunteer Doorey in Liberia and features Eastern Krahn speaker Jackson Sluwor Glorloe. Eastern Krahn is spoken by around 62,900 people in Liberia, and over 10,000 more internationally. Also known as Konobo, Eastern Krahn is a Kru language within the Wee dialect continuum, a collection of dialects in the Atlantic-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family. Although distinct from Western Krahn dialects, Konobo shares with them some mutual intelligibility. According to an account by Andrew Dalby, the Kru languages occupy an important crossroads between African and European relations as they were among the first encountered by arriving ships along the historical Pepper Coast. The Kru languages contain some of the most complex tonal systems in Africa.

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