tigrinya

Tigrinya is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family, belonging to the Ethiopic branch descended from Ge'ez. It is spoken primarily in Eritrea and in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, by the Tigrinya people, and within diaspora communities in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and the Horn of Africa. Estimates place it among several million native speakers.

The language is written in the Ge’ez script, also known as Fidel, an abugida in which each symbol encodes a consonant with a specific vowel. Vowel quality is indicated by modifying the base form or by distinct characters. Tigrinya text is written left to right, and a standard literary form exists for both Eritrean and Ethiopian contexts.

Linguistically, Tigrinya shows typical Semitic morphology, with root-and-pattern word formation and rich verbal conjugation for person, number, and gender. The usual word order is subject–object–verb, and pronouns, definite marking, and case relations are expressed through affixes and clitics attached to nouns and verbs.

Dialects vary regionally, with Eritrean Tigrinya and Ethiopian Tigrinya representing the major varieties; lexical differences and pronunciation variances reflect contact with Amharic, Tigre, Arabic, and other languages. The language has a strong literary and oral tradition and a growing body of media, education, and literature in Tigrinya.

In Eritrea, Tigrinya is widely used in education, media, and public life, reflecting its prominent regional status; in Ethiopia it is a regional language used in the Tigray Region. Diaspora communities maintain the language as a marker of identity and culture.