ትግረ | |
|---|---|
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Eritrea | 1.8 million [1] |
 Sudan | c. 20,000 refugees [2] |
| Languages | |
| Tigre | |
| Religion | |
 Islam (95%) Christianity (5%) [3] [4] | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Tigrinya, Tigrayans, Amhara, Gurage, Harari and other Ethio-Semitic People [5] | |
The Tigre people (Tigre : ትግረtigre or ትግሬtigrē) are an ethnic group indigenous to Eritrea. They mainly inhabit the lowlands and northern highlands of Eritrea.
The Tigre are a nomadic agro-pastoralist community living in the northern, western, and coastal highlands of Eritrea (Gash-Barka, Anseba, Northern Red Sea regions of Eritrea and other regions too), as well as areas in eastern Sudan. The Tigre speak the Tigre language, which belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic family. They are not ethnically homogeneous; diversity is mainly along familial and clan lines. The Tigre ethnic group is broken into the Beni-Amer, Beit Asgede, Ad Shaikh, Mensa, Beit Juk, and Marya peoples. [2]
The original speakers of the Tigre language were mainly Christian, reflecting cultural exchange with neighboring Ethiopia. [2] The first Tigre converts to Islam were those who lived on islands in the Red Sea and adopted Islam in the 7th century during the religion's earliest years. Mainland Tigre adopted Islam much later on including as late as the 19th century. [6] During World War II, many Tigre served in the Italian Colonial army, part of the period of Italian Eritrea. [2]
The Tigre are closely related to the Biher Tigrinya of Eritrea, [6] as well as the Beja (particularly the Hadendoa). [7] There are also a number of Eritreans of Tigre origin living across the Middle East, North America, the United Kingdom and Australia.[ citation needed ]
About 95% of Tigre practice Islam, the remainder practice Christianity, and both incorporate elements of the animist folk religion. [2] [8] Religious divisions have not been of particular concern within the Tigre. [8] Most are Sunni Muslims, but there are a small number of Christians (who are members of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Eritrea) among them as well (often referred to as the Mensaï in Eritrea).[ citation needed ]
The Tigre language is an Afroasiatic language of the Semitic branch. Like Tigrinya, it is a member of the Ethiopian Semitic group, and is similar to ancient Ge'ez. [9] [ better source needed ] There is no known historically written form of the language. The Eritrean government uses the Ge'ez writing system (an abugida) to publish documents in the Tigre language.
Tigre is the lingua franca of the multi-ethnic lowlands of western and northern Eritrea, including the northern coast. As such approximately 75% of the Western Lowlands Eritrean population speaks Tigre.
Since around 1889, the Ge'ez script (Ethiopic script) has been used to write the Tigre language. Tigre speakers formerly used Arabic more widely as a lingua franca. [10] Due to most Tigre speakers being Muslim, the language is also written in the Arabic alphabet. [11]
The Tigre people, language and their area of inhabitation should not be confused with that of the Tigrayans, who live in northern Ethiopia and the Biher-Tigrinya who live in the central Eritrean highlands, both of which speak varying dialects of Tigrinya, a closely related Semitic language.
There are several dialects of Tigre, some of them are; Mansa’ (Mensa), Habab, Barka, Semhar, Algeden, Senhit (Ad-Tekleis, Ad-Temariam, Bet-Juk, Marya Kayah, Maria Tselam) and Dahalik, which is spoken in Dahlak archipelago. Intelligibility between the dialects is above 91% (except Dahalik), where intelligibility between Dahalik and the other dialects is between 24% to 51%. [12]
Sources disagree as to the current population of Eritrea, with some proposing numbers as low as 3.6 million and others as high as 6.7 million. Eritrea has never conducted an official government census.
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Hebrew, and numerous other ancient and modern languages. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant and expatriate communities in North America, Europe, and Australasia. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history, who derived the name from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis.
Tigrinya is an Ethio-Semitic language commonly spoken in Eritrea and in northern Ethiopia's Tigray Region by the Tigrinya and Tigrayan peoples. It is also spoken by the global diaspora of these regions.
The Saho language is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Eritrea, Sudan and Ethiopia. It belongs to the family's Cushitic branch.
Tigre, better 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.
Ethiopian Semitic is a family of languages spoken in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan. They form the western branch of the South Semitic languages, itself a sub-branch of Semitic, part of the Afroasiatic language family.
The Agaw or Agew are a pan-ethnic identity native to the northern highlands of Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea. They speak the Agaw languages, which belong to the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, and are therefore linguistically closely related to peoples speaking other Cushitic languages.
Habesha peoples is an ethnic or pan-ethnic identifier that has been historically employed to refer to Semitic language-speaking and predominantly Orthodox Christian peoples found in the highlands of Ethiopia and Eritrea between Asmara and Addis Ababa and this usage remains common today. The term is also used in varying degrees of inclusion and exclusion of other groups.
South Semitic is a putative branch of the Semitic languages, which form a branch of the larger Afro-Asiatic language family, found in Africa and Western Asia.
Dahalik is an Afroasiatic language spoken exclusively in the Dahlak Archipelago in Eritrea. Its speech area is off the coast of Massawa, on three islands in the Dahlak Archipelago: Dahlak Kebir, Nora, and Dehil.
The languages of Ethiopia include the official languages of Ethiopia, its national and regional languages, and a large number of minority languages, as well as foreign languages.
The main languages spoken in Eritrea are Tigrinya, Tigre, Kunama, Bilen, Nara, Saho, Afar, and Beja. The country's working languages are Tigrinya, Arabic, English, and formerly Italian.
Tigrayans are a Semitic-speaking ethnic group indigenous to the Tigray Region of northern Ethiopia. They speak the Tigrinya language, an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Ethiopian Semitic branch.
The provinces of Eritrea existed since pre-Axumite times and became administrative provinces from Eritrea's incorporation as a colony of Italy until the conversion of the provinces into administrative regions. Many of the provinces had their own local laws since the 13th century.
Eritreans are the native inhabitants of Eritrea, as well as the global diaspora of Eritrea. Eritreans constitute several component ethnic groups, some of which are related to ethnic groups that make up the Ethiopian people in neighboring Ethiopia and people groups in other parts of the Horn of Africa. Nine of these component ethnic groups are officially recognized by the Government of Eritrea.
Religion in Eritrea consists of a number of faiths. The two major religions in Eritrea are Christianity and Islam. However, the number of adherents of each faith is subject to debate. Estimates of the Christian share of the population range from 47% and 63%, while estimates of the Muslim share of the population range from 37% to 52%.
Al-Habash was an ancient region in the Horn of Africa situated in the northern highlands of modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea.
The forefathers of the Taroa people were two brothers Yazid and Zebed, descendants of Kerosh (Quraysh) and Manneja (Muawiyah), who lived in Arabia. Later on they separated: Zebed remained in his country of origin, while Yazid crossed the Red Sea, landed on African soil and settled on the Buri Peninsula, south of Massawa. From him were born Haranreway, Hatsotay, Toray, Schiahai, Adalie (Adaglie), Mensaay, and Mereyay. The first of these formed a branch called Haranrewa; the others a second branch with name of six people: Hazo, Taroa, Schiahay, Adallye, Mensaay and Mareya.
The Tigrinya people, also known as Tigrigna, are an ethnic group native to Eritrea. They speak the Tigrinya language. There also exists a sizable Tigrinya community in the diaspora.
Tig (ትግ) is a prefix to several words, which sometimes causes confusion amongst indigenous Eritrean and Ethiopians as well as foreigners. Moreover, there is a need for clarifying the categories that are attached to the prefix as there are several points of overlap in the linguistic variations of the words. Thus demystification of the typology, phonetics, and syntax is needed for all variations of the Ethiopian/Eritrean prefix across the indices of Region (Territory), Language (Linguistic), and Ethnicity (Peoples) – See Figure 1.
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