For the ethnicity based in Eritrea, see, The Bible in Tigrinya, United Bible society, 1997, Rehman, Abdel. Tigrinya, the language of Eritrea, and Tigre in northern Ethiopia and the Sudan, seem to be direct descendants of Ge'ez, while the exact connection with the southern group, consisting of Amharic, Gafat, Argobba, Harari, and Gurage, the latter a cluster of rather divergent dialects, is not clear. Grammatically, Tigrinya is a typical Ethiopian Semitic (ES) language in most ways: Tigrinya grammar is unique within the Ethiopian Semitic language family in several ways: Tigrinya is written in the Ethiopic script, originally developed for Ge'ez. Publisher. This is supported by the fac… Ge’ez is the oldest recorded Ethio-Semitic language and, though now extinct, it is still used in the Christian liturgy of the Ethiopian Church. For the representation of Tigrinya sounds, this article uses a modification of a system that is common (though not universal) among linguists who work on Ethiopian Semitic languages, but differs somewhat from the conventions of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Tigrinya has 7 million speakers and is the most spoken language in Eritrea. As in Ge'ez and Amharic, there is also a separate "gerundive" form of the verb, conjugated with suffixes and used to link verbs within a sentence: The verb of existence together with object suffixes for the possessor expresses possession ('have') and obligation ('must'): For second person pronouns, there is a separate vocative form, used to get a person's attention: There is a definite article, related (as in English) to the demonstrative adjective meaning 'that': The gerundive form is used for past tense, as well as for the linking function as in Ge'ez and Amharic: Yes-no questions are marked by the particle. v+738. Unlike many of the modern Ethiopian Semitic languages, Tigrinya has preserved the two pharyngeal consonants which were apparently part of the ancient Geʽez language and which, along with [x'], voiceless velar ejective fricative or voiceless uvular ejective fricative, make it easy to distinguish spoken Tigrinya from related languages such as Amharic, though not from Tigre, which has also maintained the pharyngeal consonants. [7] No dialect appears to be accepted as a standard. Pp. //if browser does not support the image object, exit. The Ethiopic script is an abugida: each symbol represents a consonant+vowel syllable, and the symbols are organized in groups of similar symbols on the basis of both the consonant and the vowel. $10 (paperback). The rows are assigned to the consonants, again in the traditional order. In Eritrea, during British administration, the Ministry of Information put out a weekly newspaper in Tigrinya that cost 5 cents and sold 5,000 copies weekly. /kʼɐrrɐbɐ/, ('he brought forth'); /kʼɐrɐbɐ/, ('he came closer'). When the IPA symbol is different, it is indicated in square brackets. [8] In the table below the columns are assigned to the seven vowels of Tigrinya; they appear in the traditional order. document.write('' + currentYear); Tauris and Co. Ltd., London and New York, ISBN 1 86064 7448, Jenny Hammond, Fire From The Ashes, A Chronicle of the Revolution in Tigray, Ethiopia, 1975-1991, 1999, published by The Read Sea Press, Inc., ISBN 1 56902 0868, Philip Briggs, Ethiopia, The Bradt Travel Guide, Third Edition, 2002, published by Bradt Travel Guides Ltd, England, UK, ISBN 1 84162 0351. URL: http://name.umdl.umich.edu/AEE6156.0001.001 [unavailable for reprint] Amharic is the official national language of Ethiopia. Since these two sounds are completely conditioned by their environments, they can be considered allophones of /k/ and /kʼ/. The Aksumites developed Ge'ez, a unique script derived from the Sabean alphabet, and it is still used by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church today. Ethiopian Semitic (also known as Ethiopian, Ethiosemitic, Ethiopic, or Afro-Semitic) is a language group, which together with Old South Arabian forms the Western branch of the South Semitic languages. The Semitic language family consists of dozens of distinct languages and modern day dialects, but the major Semitic languages are Arabic, Copying information and images from this website to another website or Intranet is prohibited. Edited by M. Lionel Bender. Tigrinya dialects differ phonetically, lexically, and grammatically. Na'ama Pat-El. The Nilo-Saharan languages are largely spoken in the western part of the country along the border with Sudan (mainly in Gambella and Benshangul regions). The Semitic Languages, 2nd ed., 2019. In Ethiopia, a native of Tigray is referred to in Tigrinya as tigrāwāy (male), tigrāweytī (female), tigrāwōt or, more commonly, tegaru (plural). Gemination, the doubling of a consonantal sound, is meaningful in Tigrinya, i.e. Print length. Imperial Ethiopia Homepage. Amharic was the language of primary school instruction, but has been replaced in many areas by local languages such as Oromo and Tigrinya. // --> is written እንታይ, literally ’ǝ-nǝ-ta-yǝ. "Tigrinya" redirects here. John Huehnergard. Bihér roughly means nation in the ethnic sense of the word in Tigrinya, Tigre, Amharic and Ge'ez. The consonant /v/ appears in parentheses because it occurs only in recent borrowings from European languages. Although Geez is ceased to be spoken popularly sometime between 900 and 1200 AD, it continues as a language of Ethiopian Church. The orthography does not mark gemination, so the pair of words k'ärräbä 'he approached', k'äräbä 'he was near' are both written ቀረበ. Afroasiatic language groups in Ethiopia include Ethiopian Semitic, Cushitic, and Omotic (though its classification remains uncertain). John Huehnergard. The dominant language is Amharic, which has long been Ethiopia's sole official language. Since such minimal pairs are very rare, this presents no problem to readers of the language. 738 pages. When it is necessary to represent a consonant with no following vowel, the consonant+ə form is used (the symbol in the sixth column). } READ PAPER. English, Arabic, Italian and French are widely spoken by many Ethiopians. The largest ethnic and linguistic groups are the Oromos, Amharas and Tigrayans. if (!document.images) All of these possible realizations - velar ejective fricative, uvular ejective fricative, velar ejective affricate and uvular ejective affricate - are cross-linguistically very rare sounds. Additionally, there are dozens of Nilo-Saharan languages, as well as some languages that are unclassified. Na'ama Pat-El. slideit() Most of the languages that are expressed in Ethiopia today are of the Afroasiatic language family. English Tigrigna Dictionary: A Dictionary of the Tigrinya Language: (Asmara) Simon Wallenberg Press. Upon Eritrea's independence in 1991, Tigrinya retained the status of working language in the country, the only state in the world, until changes made in Ethiopia in 2020, to recognize Tigrinya on a national level. When the IPA symbol is different, it is indicated in square brackets. It is also spoken by large immigrant communities around the world, in countries including Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. A Tigrinya noun is treated as either masculine or feminine.However, most inanimate nouns do not have a fixed gender. Amharic, spoken by around 24 million people in the central and northwestern parts of Ethiopia, is the official language of the country. existence. Indeed, ‘the field is inexhaustible and exceptionally fascinating’, as it comprises a rich variety of languages, dialects and ‘sub-dialects’’, Semitic and non-Semitic, spoken side by side in adjacent regions and at various substrata. The Ge'ez language is a religious language that is used in the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Churches. Tigrinya (along with Arabic) was one of Eritrea's official languages during its short-lived federation with Ethiopia; in 1958 it was replaced by the Southern Ethiopic language Amharic prior to its annexation. This paper. That is, there is a set of ejective consonants and the usual seven-vowel system. Introduction Pages to the Tigrinya Language, Tigrina Learning and Playing Game Board -, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tigrinya_language&oldid=1022385371, ISO language articles citing sources other than Ethnologue, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Wikipedia The sounds are shown using the same system for representing the sounds as in the rest of the article. The velar consonants /k/ and /kʼ/ are pronounced differently when they appear immediately after a vowel and are not geminated. In Australia, Tigrinya is one of the languages broadcast on public radio via the multicultural Special Broadcasting Service.[6]. [2] It is also spoken by the global diaspora of these regions. Tigrigna and Amharigna (Amharic) are the modern languages which are derived from Ge'ez. Ethiopian Semitic (also Ethio-Se­mitic, Ethiose­mitic, Ethiopic or Abyssin­ian) is a fam­ily of lan­guages spo­ken in Ethiopia, Er­itrea and Sudan. The Omotic languages are predominantly spoken between the Lakes of southern Rift Valley and the Omo River. In addition to the 77 living Semitic languages, there are some important extinct tongues, some of which are listed below: Amharic differs radically from the general structure of the Semitic languages, especially in syntax. As early as 2000 BC, other Semitic speakers were living in Ethiopia and Eritrea where Ge'ez developed. The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia Paperback – January 1, 1976 by M. Lionel Bender (Editor) Previous page. However, since the pharyngeal and glottal consonants of Tigrinya (and other Ethiopian Semitic languages) cannot be followed by this vowel, the symbols in the first column in the rows for those consonants are pronounced with the vowel a, exactly as in the fourth row. Typical grammatical features. Amharic (also known as Amarinya, Amarigna) is a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia. document.images.slide.src=eval("image"+step+".src") /kʼ/ is pronounced as a fricative, or sometimes as an affricate. Ethio-Semitic languages, the Semitic languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea, including Geʿez, the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox church; Amharic, one of the principal languages of modern Ethiopia; Tigré, of northwestern Eritrea and Sudan; Tigrinya, or Tigrai, of northern Ethiopia and central Eritrea; Argobba; Hareri; and Gurage. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-languages-are-spoken-in-ethiopia.html This is especially clear from verb roots in which one consonant is realized as one or the other allophone depending on what precedes it. Ethiopian Semitic (also known as Ethiosemitic or Ethiopic, or in the past by a few linguists as Abyssinian due to geographyIgor Mikhailovich Diakonov: Nauka, Central Department of Oriental Literature, (1965) pp 12) is a language group which forms the Western branch of the South Semitic languages. during the first Aksumite kingdom when the Sabeans sought refuge in Aksum. At the time, it was reported to be the first of its kind.[5]. Printed copies of the web pages are permitted as long as the copyright statement is not removed and the information is used for personal and/or educatrional use only. Download PDF. But there is a small number of pairs of words which are only differentiable from each other by gemination, e.g. return The Cushitic languages use the Roman alphabet and Ge'ez script. //--> Stress is neither contrastive nor particularly salient in Tigrinya. The sounds are shown using the same system for representing the sounds as in the rest of the article. The Aksumites Grammatically, Tigrinya is a typical Ethiopian Semitic (ES) language in most ways: . In these circumstances, /k/ is pronounced as a velar fricative. Semitic Languages Astrology Baseball Cards Signs Shop Signs Sign developed Ge'ez, a unique script derived from the Sabean alphabet, and it is still used by "The modern Ethiopian languages were already coming into being at the same time Giiz [Ge'ez] was just becoming a language on its own" (Hetzron and Bender 1976: 26). Geez was the official language of Ethiopia before Amharic. A short summary of this paper. Although some scholars once considered the so-called Ethiopic … They form the west­ern branch of the South Se­mitic lan­guages, it­self a sub-branch of Se­mitic, part of the Afroasi­atic lan­guage fam­ily . step++ They use the Ge'ez script that is unique to the country, which consists of 33 letters, each of which denotes 7 characters, making a total of 231 characters. if (step<13)