Documentation and Grammatical Description of the Shabo Language: A Very Endangered Isolate Language of Southwestern Ethiopia

Kibebe Tsehay, Addis Ababa University

Project Details:

Individual Graduate Studentship. Duration: 2010-2012. £20,915

Project Summary:

This project aims at documenting and describing the seriously endangered language Shabo (also called Mikeyir, Mekeyer). Shabo (ISO 639-2/3 Cod: sbf) is a language of Ethiopia spoken by about 600 (probably less) people around the Sheka Forest in Southwestern Ethiopia. The language is still used in some of the daily life domains, but only a few children of the ethnic group are acquiring it as their mother tongue. Moreover, since the Shabos are scattered amongst the Majangir and Shekkacho people, almost all of them are multilingual with the languages spoken by these groups.