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 language, while
ShiBushi is an unrelated
Malayo-Polynesian language originally from
Madagascar. Historically, Shimaore- and ShiBushi-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, of which 3,000 are Shimaore speakers.