Tigre language

Tigre
ትግሬ (təgré), ትግራይት (tigrayit)
Native toEritrea, Sudan[1]
RegionAnseba, Gash-Barka, Northern Red Sea, Red Sea State
EthnicityTigre
Native speakers
890,000 (2022)[1]
DialectsMansa (Mensa), Habab, Beni-Amir, Semhar, Algeden, Senhit (Ad-Tekleis, Ad-Temariam, Bet-Juk, Marya Kayah)
Tigre alphabet (Geʽez script), Arabic script
Official status
Recognised minority
language in
Language codes
ISO 639-2tig
ISO 639-3tig
Glottologtigr1270
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Tigre (also written Tigré; ትግሬ,[2][3] təgré[4] or ትግራይት tigrayit[1]) is an Ethiopian Semitic language spoken in the Horn of Africa, primarily by the Tigre people of Eritrea.[5] 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.[1] As of 1997, Tigre was spoken by approximately 800,000 Tigre people in Eritrea.[6] 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.[1]

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.

  1. ^ a b c d e Tigre at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
  2. ^ Littmann, Enno; Höfner, Maria (1962). 'Wörterbuch der Tigrē-Sprache: Tigrē-Deutsch-Englisch (in German). Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.
  3. ^ Munzinger, Werner (1865). Vocabulaire de la langue tigré (in French). Leipzig: T. O. Weigel.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  4. ^ Булах, Мария, ed. (2013). Семитские языки. Эфиосемитские языки. Языки мира / Российская академия наук, Институт языкознания (in Russian). Москва: Academia. p. 217. ISBN 978-5-87444-366-5.
  5. ^ "Tigre language". Bratannica Encyclopaedia.
  6. ^ "Languages of Eritrea". Ethnologue. Retrieved 1 November 2023.

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