tigre

Tigre (ትግረ), also spelled Tigré (ትግሬ, tigrē) or additionally known in Eritrea by its autonym Tigrayit (ትግራይት), is a language spoken in the Horn of Africa. A Semitic language, it is primarily spoken by the Tigre people in Eritrea. 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. 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 parts of Sudan, as well as Eritrea's Red Sea coast north of Zula. In 2017 there were 19,000 speakers of Tigre in Sudan, mainly spoken around Tokar and Garora regions.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, but is quite distinct from Tigre despite the similarity in name.

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