Tigrinya

Story

Tigrinya is a North Ethio-Semitic language of the Afroasiatic family, a direct descendant of the ancient Ge'ez language that was once the tongue of the Aksumite Empire, one of the four greatest powers of the ancient world alongside Rome, China, and Persia. The earliest surviving written record of Tigrinya is a 13th-century inscription of local laws discovered in the Logosarda district of southern Eritrea, showing the language had already diverged from classical Ge'ez by that point. Like Amharic, it is written in the Ge'ez abugida (Fidel), sharing 68 percent lexical similarity with the classical ancestor language. Tigrinya is the most widely spoken language in Eritrea, comprising about 55 percent of its population, and it achieved national-language status in Ethiopia in 2020, the same year Ethiopia expanded its official federal working languages from one to five.

At a glance

• Also known as: ትግርኛ
• Family: Afroasiatic
• Region: Horn of Africa
• Speakers: 9.7M (total l1 speakers estimated at 9.7 million (2022 ethnologue figure); around 3 million in eritrea and 6 to 7 million in ethiopia's tigray region)
• Writing system: Ge'ez script (Ethiopic abugida, called Fidel)
• Greeting: ሰላም (Selam) (peace / hello)

Spoken in

Eritrea, Ethiopia

Common questions