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.
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.
[citation needed] Although French remains the official language in Mayotte, Shimaore will probably be taught in Mahoran schools starting in the next few years,[when?]
[citation needed] Shimaore's position in this regard is however different from other French regions (such as Brittany), since the language is locally spoken by a majority of the population.
Mayotte is a geographically small territory, but frequent exchanges between villages only began in the last quarter of the twentieth century.
[5] On 3 March 2020, the Conseil départemental de Mayotte announced the adoption of official orthographies in both Latin and Arabic scripts for Shimaore.
Meaning that with the use of diacritics (and the letter waw "و" and ya' "ي" as needed), nasal vowels are written.
When non-nasal vowels are at the beginning of a word, alif-hamza "أ / إ" is used as a carrier of the appropriate diacritic (followed by the letter waw "و" and ya' "ي" as needed.)