World Language Map

Where is Shabo spoken?

Shabo is a language isolate, spoken in Ethiopia. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

Tap or scroll to load the interactive map

The filter only changes what is drawn. Tap the map to list every language at a spot, whichever family is shown. You can also pick any family from its own page.

Key

Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
  • Indo-European
  • Afro-Asiatic
  • Nuclear Trans New Guinea
  • Otomanguean
  • Austroasiatic
  • Tai-Kadai
  • Pama-Nyungan

Everything else

  • All other families Smaller families, isolates and unclassified languages.
  • Point A language with no area map. The dot sits at its Glottolog position, in its family colour.

How to read the map. Each colour is a language family: a group of languages that share a common ancestor. The ten largest families have their own colour and every other family is grey. Areas are see-through, so where two languages share a place the colours mix. Tap anywhere to list every language whose area covers that spot. Areas are generalisations drawn from published atlases, many of them decades old, and cities are multilingual, so an area never says that everyone there speaks the language. A dot marks a language that has no area map. The family name is always given in words, because colour alone is hard to tell apart for some people.

Where Shabo is spoken

Shabo is spoken in one country: Ethiopia.

Country
Ethiopia

Shabo has no area on the map because no open area map covers it. The ringed point is the position Glottolog gives for the language.

How many people speak Shabo?

Wikidata gives about 400 first-language speakers (ethnologue.com, 2000). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Moribund. Glottolog lists it as moribund: the youngest speakers are middle-aged or older, and children are no longer learning it.

Where Shabo sits in the language family tree

Shabo is a language isolate: Glottolog knows of no language that it is demonstrably related to.

More about Shabo

Codes: ISO 639-3 sbf, Glottolog shab1252. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Shabo

Where is Shabo spoken?

Shabo is spoken in Ethiopia. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Shabo?

Wikidata gives about 400 first-language speakers (ethnologue.com, 2000). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.

Is Shabo related to any other language?

Glottolog lists Shabo as a language isolate: a language with no demonstrated relatives. It sits on its own in the classification.

Embed this map

Copy this code into your web page. It is free to use. Please keep the link under the map, as it is how people find where the map comes from.