Tigre language

This article should specify the language of its non-English content, using {{lang}}, {{transliteration}} for transliterated languages, and {{IPA}} for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriate ISO 639 code. Wikipedia's multilingual support templates may also be used. See why. (May 2019)

Tigre
ትግረ (Tigre) / ትግራይት (Tigrayit) ኻሳ (Xasa)[1]
Native to	Eritrea, Sudan[2]
Region	Anseba, Gash-Barka, Northern Red Sea, Red Sea State
Ethnicity	Tigre
Native speakers	890,000 (2022)[2]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Semitic South Semitic Ethiopic North Tigre
Dialects	Mansa (Mensa), Habab, Beni-Amir, Semhar, Algeden, Senhit (Ad-Tekleis, Ad-Temariam, Bet-Juk, Marya Kayah)
Writing system	Tigre alphabet (Geʽez script), Arabic script
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Eritrea  Sudan
Language codes
ISO 639-2	tig
ISO 639-3	tig
Glottolog	tigr1270
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Tigre (ትግረ, also known as Tigré ትግሬ; tigrē, or by its Eritrean autonym Tigrayit ትግራይት) is an Ethiopian Semitic language spoken in the Horn of Africa, primarily by the Tigre people of Eritrea.^[3] Along with Tigrinya, it is believed to be the most closely related living language to Ge'ez, which is still in use as the liturgical language of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Tigre has a lexical similarity of 71% with Ge’ez and of 64% with Tigrinya.^[2] As of 1997, Tigre was spoken by approximately 800,000 Tigre people in Eritrea.^[4] The Tigre mainly inhabit western Eritrea, though they also reside in the northern highlands of Eritrea and its extension into the adjacent parts of Sudan, as well as Eritrea's Red Sea coast north of Zula. There is a small number of Tigre speakers in Sudan, as well as communities of speakers found in the diaspora.^[2]

The Tigre people are not to be confused with their neighbors to the south, the Tigrinya people of Eritrea and the Tigrayans of Ethiopia, who speak Tigrinya. Tigrinya is also derived from the parent Geʽez tongue^{[citation needed]}, but is quite distinct from Tigre despite the similarity in name.