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 ; its vocabulary is heavily influenced by loanwords from both these languages, particularly Majangir, as well as Amharic.
Classification
Once the many loanwords from its immediate neighbors, Majang and Shakicho, are removed, the wordlists collected show a significant number of Komanwordsside 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 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 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 ; Kibebe evaluates Schnoebelen as the most rigorous comparison to date. Blench maintains that Shabo does pattern with the Nilo-Saharan family, and that recent data on Gumuz helped tie the languages together. More recently, Blench classifies Shabo as a language isolate, noting little evidence for it being part of Nilo-Saharan. Blench lists the following similarities among Shabo, Gumuz, and Koman lexical forms.
Gloss
Shabo
Gumuz
Koman
head
ƙoy
Proto-Common Gumuz *kʷa
Proto-Koman *kup
breast
kowan
Proto-Common Gumuz *kúá
Proto-Koman *koy
horn
kulbe
Guba dialect k’əla
Kwama kwaap
sun
ukʰa, oxa
Yaso dialect oka
Komo kʰaala
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.
and, and sometimes also and, are in free variation, as in Majang; Teferra speculatively links this to the traditional practice of removing the lower incisors of men.
and 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:, possibly with further distinctions based on advanced tongue root. Five of these,, have long counterparts. Occasionally final vowels are deleted, shortening medial vowels: e.g. deego or deg "crocodile". The syllable structure is V; all consonants except and 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".
Grammar
Syntax
Basic word order is subject–object–verb; there are postpositions rather than prepositions.
Pronouns
Shabo has an unusually complex pronoun system for Africa:
Number
Singular
Dual
Plural
1. masc.
tiŋŋ, ta, ti
antʃ
jiŋŋ
1. fem.
ta
ann
jaŋfu
2. masc.
kukk
tʃitʃak
sitalak, silak
2. fem.
kuŋg
sijak
subak
3. masc.
ji
otʃtʃa
odda
3. fem.
oŋŋa
ojja
otala
The pronouns "I" and "he" have been compared to Surmic languages; however, there are also resemblances in the pronouns with the Gumuz languages. The gender distinctions made are unusual for Africa.
Verbs
is by adding the particle be after the verb or noun negated: gumu be " not stick", ʔam be-gea "he will not come". Negative forms in b are widespread in Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic languages. There appears to be a causative suffix -ka: mawo hoop "water boiled" → upa mawo hoop-ka " man boiled water". A particle git marks the verb in constructions with "want": moopa git inɗeet "I want to sit". Much of the verbal morphology is uncertain; there appears to be a 3rd person singular future suffix -g- and a 2nd person plural suffix -ɗe
Nouns
Plurals are optional; when used, they are formed with a wordyɛɛro afterwards. There is a suffix -ka which sometimes mark the direct object, e.g. upa kaan-ik ye "a man saw a dog", but also has many other uses. A similar suffix is found in many Eastern Sudanic languages, but there is it specifically accusative.
Postpositions
Shabo uses postpositions after nouns, e.g.: upa mana pond ɗɛpik moi "a man sat on a rock".
