Skip to main content

Search from vocabulary

Content language

Concept information

Preferred term

swbComorian  

Type

  • Language

Definition

  • Maore Comorian, or Shimaore (French Mahorais), is one of the two indigenous languages spoken in the French-ruled Comorian islands of Mayotte; Shimaore being a dialect of the Comorian (Swahili) language, while KiBushi is an unrelated Malayo-Polynesian language originally from Madagascar. Historically, Shimaore- and KiBushi-speaking villages on Mayotte have been clearly identified, but Shimaore tends to be the de facto indigenous lingua franca in everyday life, because of the larger Shimaore-speaking population. Only Shimaore is represented on the local television news program by RFO. The 2002 census references 80,140 speakers of Shimaore in Mayotte itself, to which one would have to add people living outside the island, mostly in metropolitan France. There are also 20,000 speakers of Comorian in Madagascar, some of which are Shimaore speakers.

Entry terms

  • Comorian, Maore
  • Maore Comorian
  • Maore dialect

ISO 639-3 code

  • swb

Notation

  • swb

In other languages

  • Mahorais

    French

  • comorien
  • Komorisch

    German

  • comoriano

    Italian

  • Portuguese

  • língua comoriana
  • comorense

    Spanish

  • Idioma mahorés

URI

http://lexvo.org/id/iso639-3/swb

Download this concept: