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.

It was first reported to be a separate language by Lionel 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 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).

Shabo speakers live in three places in the Keficho Shekicho Zone: Anderaccha, Gecha, and Kaabo.

As they shift from hunting and gathering to more settled agriculture and to working as laborers, many of its speakers are shifting to other neighboring languages, in particular Majang language and Shekkacho (Mocha); its vocabulary is heavily influenced by loanwords from both these languages, particularly Majangir, as well as Amharic.

Once the many loanwords from its immediate neighbors, Majang and Shakicho, are removed, the wordlists collected show a significant number of Koman 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 to Koman. 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 his phylogenetic analysis says that Shabo is best treated as an isolate, but does not exclude the possibility of contradicting evidence gained from applying the comparative 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 a language 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 the Surmic and Koman branch as well as three languages from the Gumuz 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 to Lowland East Cushitic "tneki" and Saho "inik".

The consonants are:

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

• [p] and [f] are in free 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 lower incisors of men.
• [h] and [k] occasionally alternate.

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

Consonant length is found in several words, such as walla "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 on advanced tongue root. Five of these, /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/, have long counterparts. Occasionally final vowels are deleted, shortening medial vowels: e.g. deego or deg "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. Two minimal pairs are cited by Teferra 1995, including há "kill" versus hà "meat".

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)