Shabo (or preferablyChabu; also calledMikeyir) is anendangered language and likelylanguage isolate spoken by about 400 former hunter-gatherers in southwesternEthiopia, in the eastern part of theSouth West Ethiopia Peoples' Region.

It was first reported to be a separate language byLionel Bender in 1977,^[2] based on data gathered by missionary Harvey Hoekstra. A grammar was published in 2015 (Kibebe 2015). Some early treatments classified it as aNilo-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 fromSurmic languages (Dimmendaal to appear, Blench 2019).

Shabo speakers live in three places in theKeficho Shekicho Zone:Anderaccha,Gecha, andKaabo.

As they shift fromhunting and gathering to more settled agriculture and to working as laborers, many of its speakers are shifting to other neighboring languages, in particularMajang andShekkacho (Mocha); its vocabulary is heavily influenced byloanwords from both these languages, particularly Majang, as well asAmharic.

Once the manyloanwords from its immediate neighbors, Majang and Shakicho, are removed, the wordlists collected show a significant number ofKoman words side by side with a larger number of words with no obvious external relationships. The tentative grammar so far collected offers few obviously convincing external similarities. On this basis, Fleming (1991) has classified Shabo as Nilo-Saharan and, within Nilo-Saharan, as nearest toKoman. Anbessa & Unseth consider it Nilo-Saharan, but present little by way of argument for their position, and no detail on its position within the family. Schnoebelen (2009) in hisphylogenetic analysis says that Shabo is best treated as an isolate, but does not exclude the possibility of contradicting evidence gained from applying thecomparative method (which still needs to be done); Kibebe (2015) evaluates Schnoebelen as the most rigorous comparison to date. Blench (2010) maintains that Shabo does pattern with the Nilo-Saharan family, and that recent data on Gumuz helped tie the languages together. More recently, Blench (2019) classifies Shabo (Chabu) as alanguage isolate, noting little evidence for it being part of Nilo-Saharan.^[3]

Blench (2017) lists the following similarities among Shabo, Gumuz, and Koman lexical forms.^[4]

The comparison with reconstructed languages of theSurmic and Koman branch as well as three languages from theGumuz branch shows slight phonological similarity for the first person singular of Proto-Southwest Surmic and the probable ancestor of the Gumuz languages but additional information is lacking and, otherwise, so far it does not seem very approximate.

The number "iŋki" ("one") has been compared toLowland East Cushitic "tneki" andSaho "inik".

The consonants are:

Consonants in parentheses are not entirely phonemic according to Teferra (1995):

• [p] and[f] are infree variation
• [s] and[ʃ], and sometimes also[c],[ɟ], and[ʒ], are in free variation, as in Majang; Teferra speculatively links this to the traditional practice of removing the lowerincisors of men.
• [h] and[k] occasionally alternate.

Implosive consonants are common in languages of the area, butejective consonants are not found in Majang.

Consonant length is found in several words, such aswalla "goat",kutti "knee"; however, it is often unstable.

Teferra tentatively postulates 9 vowels:/i//ɨ//u//e//ə//o//ɛ//a//ɔ/, possibly with further distinctions based onadvanced tongue root. Five of these,/a//e//i//o//u/, have long counterparts. Occasionally final vowels are deleted, shortening medial vowels: e.g.deego ordeg "crocodile".

The syllable structure is (C)V(C); all consonants except/pʼ/ and/tʼ/ can occur syllable-finally.

The language is tonal, but its tonology is unclear. Twominimal pairs are cited by Teferra 1995, includinghá "kill" versushà "meat".

Basic word order is subject–object–verb; there arepostpositions rather thanprepositions.

Shabo has an unusually complex pronoun system for Africa:^[5]

The pronouns "I" and "he" have been compared toSurmic languages; however, there are also resemblances in the pronouns with theGumuz languages (Bender 1983). The gender distinctions made are unusual for Africa.

Negation is by adding the particlebe after the verb or noun negated:gumu be "(it is) not (a) stick",ʔam be-gea "he will not come" ("come not-?"). Negative forms inb are widespread inNilo-Saharan andAfro-Asiatic languages.

There appears to be acausative suffix-ka:mawo hoop "water boiled" →upa mawo hoop-ka "(a) man boiled water".

A particlegit (infinitive?subjunctive?) marks the verb in constructions with "want":moopa git inɗeet ("sitgit want") "I want to sit".

Much of the verbal morphology is uncertain; there appears to be a 3rd person singular future suffix-g- (e.g.inɗage t'a-g "he will eat") and a 2nd person plural suffix-ɗe

Plurals are optional; when used, they are formed with a wordyɛɛro afterwards.

There is a suffix-ka which sometimes mark thedirect object, e.g.upa kaan-ik ye "a man saw a dog" ("man dog saw"), but also has many other uses. A similar suffix is found in manyEastern Sudanic languages, but there it is specifically accusative.

Shabo uses postpositions after nouns, e.g.:upa mana pond ɗɛpik moi "a man sat on a rock" (lit. "man rock on ? sat").

^[6]

mawo hoop: water boiled

upa mawo hoop-ka: A man boiled water (lit. "man water boiled-caus.")

gumu be: it is not a stick (lit. "stick not".)

ma gumu: it is a stick (lit. "stick ?")

dɛrbakan kaal nu ɗe-be: Derbakan does not have a dog (lit. "Derbakan dog poss.? ?:not")

dɛrbakan kaal nu yaaŋk: Derbakan has a dog (lit. "Derbakan dog poss.? positive?")

ʔam be-gea: he will not come (lit. "come not-?")

inɗigi am-k: he will come (lit. "? come ?")

tin-ta be-ge: he will not eat (lit. "? eat not ?")

inɗage t'a-g: he will eat (lit. "? eat ?")

paar bap: two snakes (lit. "snake two")

upa kaan-ik ye: a man saw a dog (lit. "man dog-obj. saw")

kaan upa-k ye: a dog saw a man (lit. "dog man-obj. saw")

koto upa dɛpik ye: a woman saw a man (lit. "woman man tense? saw")

gom c'uwa t'a: fire burned wood (lit. "fire wood ate")

cu ɗɛpik ibalabiyan-an ɗe (word divisions uncertain): you (pl.) came (lit. "you(pl.) ?:? come-2pl.")

subuk maakɛle kak t'a-ɗe: you (pl.) ate corn (lit. "you(pl.) corn aux? eat-2pl.")

wo ka git inɗeet: I want to drink (lit. "drink ? infin.? want")

moopa git inɗeet: I want to sit (lit. "sit ? infin.? want")

abiyaŋge: they came

upa kakaak jaal kaki ye ʔam: I saw the man who came yesterday (lit. "man came yesterday ? saw ?")

upa mana pond ɗɛpik moi: a man sat on a rock (lit. "man rock on aux.? sat")

• Shabo word list (Wiktionary)

• Aberra. 2019.Shabo English Dictionary. With English-Shabo index. Published via Amazon.
• Ahland, Colleen, andRoger Blench, "The Classification of Gumuz and Koman Languages",[1] presented at theLanguage Isolates in Africa workshop, Lyons, December 4, 2010
• Bender, M. Lionel. 1977. "The Surma Language Group – A Preliminary Report".Studies in African Linguistics, Supplement 7. pp. 11–21.
• Roger Blench (2019), 'Chabu and Kadu: two orphan branches of Nilo-Saharan',Proceedings of Vienna Nilo-Saharan meeting
• Gerrit Dimmendaal (to appear) On stable and unstable features in Nilo-Saharan.Nairobi Journal of Languages and Linguistics
• Fleming, Harold C. 1991. "Shabo: presentation of data and preliminary classification", in: M.Lionel Bender (ed.), 1991,Proceedings of the Fourth Nilo-Saharan Conference Bayreuth, Aug. 30.
• Kibebe Tshay Taye. 2015.Documentation and grammatical description of Chabu. Doctoral dissertation, Addis Ababa University.
• Schnoebelen, Tyler. 2009. "(Un)classifying Shabo: phylogenetic methods and results". Peter K. Austin, Oliver Bond,Monik Charette, David Nathan & Peter Sells, eds.,Proceedings of Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory 2. London: SOAS.[2] (long version, unpublished[3])
• Schnoebelen, Tyler. 2009.Classifying Shabo. Presentation at the 40th Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL 40), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, April 9–11, 2009.
• Schnoebelen, Tyler. 2010.Shabo is an isolate. "Language Isolates in Africa" workshop, December 3, 2010. Lyon, France.
• Tefera, Anbessa and Peter Unseth. 1989. "Toward the classification of Shabo (Mikeyir)." In M.Lionel Bender (ed.),Topics in Nilo-Saharan linguistics, 405-18. Nilo-Saharan, 3. Hamburg: Helmut Buske.ISBN 3-87118-927-8 (NISA 3). (This was the primary source for this article.)
• Tefera, Anbessa. 1991. "A Sketch of Shabo Grammar". in: M.Lionel Bender (ed.), 1991,Proceedings of the Fourth Nilo-Saharan Conference Bayreuth, Aug. 30.
• Teferra, Anbessa. 1995. "Brief phonology of Shabo (Mekeyir)".Robert Nicolaï et Franz Rottland, eds.,Fifth Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquium. Nice, 24–29 août 1992. Proceedings, pp. 169–193. Köln: Köppe Verlag. Sep. 2, 1989 (Nilo-Saharan 7), Hamburg: Helmut Buske. pp. 29–38. (Used in this article.)
• Unseth, Peter. 1984.Shabo (Mekeyir). A first discussion of classification and vocabulary. [Unpublished manuscript]

• Red Book of Endangered Languages
• Video presentation by Tyler Schnoebelen on Shabo as an isolate
• Shabo basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database

• Shabo language
• Language isolates of Africa
• Endangered language isolates

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