BOLE is spoken in southern Yobe State and northern Gombe State in northeastern Nigeria.
Map credits: The map of Africa is adapted from a map available at http://www.miningco.com/. The map of Nigerian States is adapted from a map at http://www.nigeria-consulate-ny.org/main.html. The detail map of the Bole area is adapted from a scanned portion of Spectrum Road Map of Nigeria, Spectrum Books Limited, P.M.B. 5612, Ibadan, Nigeria, 1994.
The main BOLE speaking area lies between POTISKUM, the largest city of Yobe State, and GOMBE, the largest city and capital of Gombe State. The largest town in the actual Bole speaking area is FIKA, located in the northern part of the Bole area. Fika is the traditional capital of the Bole people. The autonym of the Boles is Biya Pikka 'People of Fika', they call their language Bo Pikka 'Language of Fika', and the paramount traditional Bole ruler is Moi Pikka 'Emir of Fika'. Fika was the home of the court of Moi Pikka until 1924, when the colonial administration moved his court to POTISKUM, which is on the main east-west road. The court of Moi Pikka remains there, and in part because of this, a large Bole speaking population lives in Potiskum town. Potiskum is actually at the nexus of the Ngizim and Karekare areas, though as is the case in every major town of northern Nigeria, the lingua franca of Potiskum is Hausa.
The linguistic neighbors of Bole on the north, west, and south are all Chadic languages of varying degrees of relatedness. Directly to the north and northwest is NGAMO, a close linguistic "sister" to Bole. A bit further to the north, in the area around Potiskum, are KAREKARE, a sort of "half-sister" and NGIZIM, a more distant "second cousin". The area directly to the west is now mainly HAUSA-speaking, though there are or have been several poorly studied and perhaps now extinct linguistic sisters of Bole in this general area, such as Deno, Kubi, and Kirfi. To the south, in Gombe State is TANGALE, another "half-sister" of Bole, and to the southeast is TERA, a "third or fourth cousin" from the Biu-Mandara branch of Chadic. The area directly east of Bole was probably at one time occupied by speakers of other Biu-Mandara languages, but KANURI, which is not a Chadic language, has long since replaced them.