| Also Known As: Comores Swahili,Komoro,Comoro,Comorian,Maore,Shimaore
Description:
Shimaore (French also: Mahorais) or Maore Comorian is one of the two indigeneous languages spoken in the French-ruled Comorian islands of Mayotte; Shimaore being a dialect of the Bantu Swahili language, while Bushi 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 indigeneous 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.
The same 2002 census indicates that 37,840 persons responded as knowing how to read or write Shimaore. However this number has to be taken with caution, since until a few years ago Shimaore did not have a standard writing system.
From a sociolinguistic perspective, French tends to be regarded by many Shimaore speakers as the language of higher..... full article at Wikipedia |
