About

Shabo is a language isolate spoken in the Sheka Forest region of Ethiopia. It is spoken by the Shabo people, one of the few remaining groups of hunter-gatherer people in the region. The Shabo people live amongst other groups of people, such as the Majang and the Shekkacho, and they speak their languages rather than Shabo. Very few non-Shabo people are multilingual in the Shabo language. The language was originally thought to be part of the Nilo-Saharan language family, but it was later identified as a language isolate due to its unique grammatical rules and structures. Very few children still learn Shabo as their native tongue, and almost no one speaks it as a main language for day-to-day communication.

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Also known as: Mikeyir, Mekeyer, Mikair, Chabu, Shaqqo, Shabu, Shako, Sabu​​

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Language Family: Language isolate

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Written Alphabet: Latin (used only by transcribers)

Category: Severely Endangered

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Speakers: Around 600