For other uses please see Tigre (disambiguation)Tigre may mean:-Places in America:* Tigre Island, island of Honduras* Tigre River, located in Peru* Tigre River, located in Venezuela* Tigre Partido, an administrative division in Buenos Aires, Argentina...
Tigre (
Ge'ezGe'ez , also called Ethiopic, is an abugida script that was originally developed to write Ge'ez, now the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church...
ትግረ
tigre or ትግሬ
tigrē; sometimes written as
Tigré, also known as
Xasa in
SudanSudan is a country in northeastern Africa. It is the largest country in Africa and in the Arab World, and tenth largest in the world by area...
;
ArabicThe Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic and Urdu. After the Latin alphabet, it is the second-most widely used alphabet around the world....
ألخاصية ) is a
SemiticThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
language which along with
TigrinyaTigrinya , also spelled Tigrigna, Tigrina, Tigriña, less commonly Tigrinian, Tigrinyan, is a Semitic language spoken by the Tigray-Tigrinya people in central Eritrea , where it is one of the two dominant languages of Eritrea, and in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia Tigrinya ( ትግርኛ, tigriññā), also...
is a direct descendant of the extinct
Ge'ez languageGe'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa...
. (
Ge'ezGe'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa...
is still in use as the liturgical language of the
Eritrean Orthodox Tewahdo ChurchThe Eritrean Orthodox Tewahdo Church is an Oriental Orthodox church. Its autocephaly was recognised by the Ethiopian Patriarchate after Eritrea gained its independence in 1993.-Origins:...
.) As of 1997, Tigré was spoken by approximately 800,000 people
EritreaEritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast. The east and northeast of the country have an extensive coastline on the Red Sea, directly across from Saudi Arabia and Yemen...
. The
Tigre peopleThe Tigre are an ethnic group residing in the north and eastern lowlands of Eritrea who speak the Tigre language.They are a mostly Muslim nomadic people who inhabit the northern, western, and coastal lowlands of Eritrea as well as areas in eastern Sudan...
are nearly all found in western Eritrea, with the remainder inhabiting the adjacent part of
SudanSudan is a country in northeastern Africa. It is the largest country in Africa and in the Arab World, and tenth largest in the world by area...
.
For other uses please see Tigre (disambiguation)Tigre may mean:-Places in America:* Tigre Island, island of Honduras* Tigre River, located in Peru* Tigre River, located in Venezuela* Tigre Partido, an administrative division in Buenos Aires, Argentina...
Tigre (
Ge'ezGe'ez , also called Ethiopic, is an abugida script that was originally developed to write Ge'ez, now the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church...
ትግረ
tigre or ትግሬ
tigrē; sometimes written as
Tigré, also known as
Xasa in
SudanSudan is a country in northeastern Africa. It is the largest country in Africa and in the Arab World, and tenth largest in the world by area...
;
ArabicThe Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic and Urdu. After the Latin alphabet, it is the second-most widely used alphabet around the world....
ألخاصية ) is a
SemiticThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
language which along with
TigrinyaTigrinya , also spelled Tigrigna, Tigrina, Tigriña, less commonly Tigrinian, Tigrinyan, is a Semitic language spoken by the Tigray-Tigrinya people in central Eritrea , where it is one of the two dominant languages of Eritrea, and in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia Tigrinya ( ትግርኛ, tigriññā), also...
is a direct descendant of the extinct
Ge'ez languageGe'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa...
. (
Ge'ezGe'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa...
is still in use as the liturgical language of the
Eritrean Orthodox Tewahdo ChurchThe Eritrean Orthodox Tewahdo Church is an Oriental Orthodox church. Its autocephaly was recognised by the Ethiopian Patriarchate after Eritrea gained its independence in 1993.-Origins:...
.) As of 1997, Tigré was spoken by approximately 800,000 people
EritreaEritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast. The east and northeast of the country have an extensive coastline on the Red Sea, directly across from Saudi Arabia and Yemen...
. The
Tigre peopleThe Tigre are an ethnic group residing in the north and eastern lowlands of Eritrea who speak the Tigre language.They are a mostly Muslim nomadic people who inhabit the northern, western, and coastal lowlands of Eritrea as well as areas in eastern Sudan...
are nearly all found in western Eritrea, with the remainder inhabiting the adjacent part of
SudanSudan is a country in northeastern Africa. It is the largest country in Africa and in the Arab World, and tenth largest in the world by area...
. In Eritrea, they inhabit the central and northern plateau and the Red Sea shores north of Zula. Traditionally, the local language of the
Dahlak ArchipelagoThe Dahlak Archipelago is an island group located in the Red Sea near Massawa, Eritrea. It consists of two large and 124 small islands. The pearl fisheries of the archipelago have been famous since Roman times and still produce a substantial number of pearls. Only four of the islands are...
, Dahlik, has been considered a dialect of Tigré, but recently one researcher has reassessed this view.
The Tigré people are not be confused with their neighbors to the south, the Tigrinya people of Eritrea and Ethiopia. The northern Ethiopian province which is now named the
Tigray RegionTigray Region is the northernmost of the nine ethnic regions of Ethiopia containing the homeland of the Tigray people. It was formerly known as Region 1...
is a territory of the Tigrinyas.
Traditionally, the
Arabic alphabetThe Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic and Urdu. After the Latin alphabet, it is the second-most widely used alphabet around the world....
was used to write Tigré, at least among Muslims. The
Ge'ez alphabetGe'ez , also called Ethiopic, is an abugida script that was originally developed to write Ge'ez, now the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church...
has been used since since the 1902 translation of the New Testament by
Tewolde-Medhin Gebre-MedhinTäwäldä-Mädhin Gäbrä-Mädhin was a pastor, educator and translator, originally from the town of S'eä’azäga, Eritrea in the Horn of Africa. He was ordained as a deacon in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in 1872...
,
Dawit AmanuelDawit Amanuel is noted in Ethiopian and Eritrean church history as being the main translator of the New Testament in the Tigre language, published in 1902...
, and Swedish
missionariesA missionary is a member of a religion who works to convert those who do not share the missionary's faith; someone who proselytizes. The word "mission" is derived from the Latin missioninimus A missionary is a member of a religion who works to convert those who do not share the missionary's faith;...
. Many
Muslim:A Muslim , , is an adherent of the religion of Islam. The feminine form is Muslimah . Literally, the word means "one who submits ". Muslim is the participle of the same verb of which Islam is the infinitive. Muslims believe that there is only one God, translated in Arabic as Allah...
Tigrés still use the Arabic alphabet.
Sounds
Tigré has preserved the two
pharyngeal consonantA pharyngeal consonant is a type of consonant which is articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx.Pharyngeal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet :* Pharyngeal plosives are thought to be impossible...
s of Ge'ez. The Ge'ez vowel inventory has almost been preserved except that the two vowels which are phonetically close to 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. . The original phonemic distinction according to quality survives in Tigrinya and
AmharicAmharic is a Semitic language spoken in North Central Ethiopia by the Amhara. It is the second most-spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic, and the official working language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Thus, it has official status and is used nationwide...
. The vowel , traditionally named "first order vowel", is most commonly transcribed
ä in Semitic linguistics.
The phonemes of Tigré are displayed below in both
International Phonetic AlphabetThe International Phonetic Alphabet
["The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...]
(IPA) symbols (indicated by the IPA brackets) and the symbols common (though not universal) among linguists who work on Ethiopian Semitic languages. For the long vowel , the symbol 'ā' is used per Raz (1983). Three consonants, /p, p', x/, occur only in a small number of loanwords, hence they are written in parentheses.
As in other Ethiopian Semitic languages, the phonemic status of is questionable; it may be possible to treat it as an
epentheticIn phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word...
vowel that is introduced to break up consonant clusters.
Consonant length
Consonant length is phonemic in Tigré (that is, a pair of words can be distinct by consonant length alone), although there are few such minimal pairs. Some consonants do not occur long; these include the pharyngeal consonants, the glottal consonants, , and . In this language, long consonants arise almost solely by
geminationIn phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant.Consonant length is distinctive in some languages, for instance Arabic, Estonian, Finnish, Russian, Classical Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Latin, and Luganda....
as a
morphologicalMorphology is the identification, analysis and description of the structure of words . While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most languages, words can be related to other words by rules...
process; there are few, if any, long consonants in word roots. Gemination is especially prominent in verb morphology.
External links
'
http://www.awkir.com Awkir