Tigre language
| Tigre | |
|---|---|
| ትግራይት Tigrayit, ኻሳ Xasa | |
| Native to | Eritrea |
|
Native speakers
|
1.05 million in Eritrea (2006) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | tigr1270 |
Tigre (Ge'ez: ትግረ tigre or ትግሬ tigrē), better known in Eritrea by its autonym Tigrayit ትግራይት, and also known by speakers in Sudan as Xasa (Arabic: الخاصية ḫāṣiyah), is an Afroasiatic language spoken in Northeast Africa. It belongs to the North Ethiopic subdivision of the family's South Semitic branch and is primarily spoken by the Tigre people in Eritrea. Along with Tigrinya, it is believed to the most closely related living language to Ge'ez language, which is still in use as the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. As of 1997, Tigre was spoken by approximately 800,000 Tigre people in Eritrea. The Tigre mainly inhabit western Eritrea, though they also reside in the northern highlands of Eritrea and its extension into the adjacent part of Sudan, as well as Eritrea's Red Sea coast north of Zula.
The Tigre people are not to be confused with their neighbors to the south, the Tigrayans of Ethiopia and Biher Tigrinya in Eritrea. The northern Ethiopian province which is now named the Tigray Region is a territory of the Tigrayans. Tigrinya is also derived from the parent Ge'ez tongue, but is quite distinct from Tigre despite the similarity in name.
Tigre has preserved the two pharyngeal consonants of Ge'ez. The Ge'ez vowel inventory has almost been preserved except that the two vowels which are phonetically close to [ɐ] and [a] seem to have evolved into a pair of phonemes which have the same quality (the same articulation) but differ in length; [a] vs. [aː]. The original phonemic distinction according to quality survives in Tigrinya and Amharic. The vowel [ɐ], traditionally named "first order vowel", is most commonly transcribed ä in Semitic linguistics.
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