Shabo language
Shabo (or preferably Chabu; also called Mikeyir) is an endangered language and likely language isolate spoken by about 400 former hunter-gatherers in southwestern Ethiopia, in the eastern part of the South West Ethiopia Peoples' Region.
| Shabo | |
|---|---|
| Chabu | |
| Mikeyir | |
| Pronunciation | tʃabu, tsabu |
| Native to | Ethiopia |
| Region | western SNNPR |
| Ethnicity | 600 Shabo (2000) |
Native speakers | 400 (2000) |
Language isolate. Previously linked with Nilo-Saharan | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | sbf |
| Glottolog | shab1252 |
| ELP | Shabo |
| Linguasphere | 05-PEA-aa |
It was first reported to be a separate language by Lionel Bender in 1977, based on data gathered by missionary Harvey Hoekstra. A grammar was published in 2015 (Kibebe 2015). Some early treatments classified it as a Nilo-Saharan language (Anbessa & Unseth 1989, Fleming 1991, Blench 2010), but more recent investigation (Kibebe 2015) found none of the grammatical features typical of Nilo-Saharan, and showed that the Nilo-Saharan vocabulary items are loans from Surmic languages (Dimmendaal to appear, Blench 2019).