Tigre language

Encyclopedia : T : TI : TIG : Tigre language

---

Tigre (sometimes written as Tigré, also sometimes known as Xasa) is a Semitic language of the North Ethiopic branch, descended from Ge'ez and closely related to Tigrinya. It is spoken by approximately one million people in Eritrea, with a few speakers in Sudan. Tigre is also the name for the people. The Tigre language, speakers and area should not be confused with the Tigray-Tigrinya people who live in the Tigray region of Ethiopia and in Eritrea and who speak Tigrinya.

Since the 19th century, Tigre has been written using the Ge'ez alphabet. This mode of writing was introduced by Swedish missionaries for biblical translation. However, as Ge'ez is the language of Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, many Tigre Muslims choose not to read their own language, and would prefer it to be written in the Arabic alphabet.

Sounds

Consonant and vowel phonemes

Tigre has a fairly typical set of consonant phonemes for an Ethiopian Semitic language, including the usual set of ejective consonants. Like Tigrinya, Tigre has preserved the two pharyngeal consonants which were apparently part of the ancient Ge'ez language. Tigre also has the set of seven vowels characteristic of Ethiopian Semitic, with one key difference: the distinction between the two vowels which are phonetically close to [ɐ] (traditionally the "first order vowel" and ä in the most common transcription system) and [a] in languages such as Tigrinya and Amharic is in Tigre more a matter of length than of quality: [a] vs. [aː].

The charts below show the phonemes of Tigre. For the representation of Tigre sounds, this article uses a modification of a system that is common (though not universal) among linguists who work on Ethiopian Semitic languages, but it differs somewhat from the conventions of the International Phonetic Alphabet. When the IPA symbol is different, it is indicated in brackets in the charts. For the long vowel aː, the symbol "ā" is used, in agreement with Raz's book.^{[#endnote_raz]} The consonants p, p' and x appear in parentheses because they occur only in a small number of loanwords. As in other Ethiopian Semitic languages, the phonemic status of ǝ is questionable; it may be possible to see treat it as an epenthetic vowel that is introduced to break up consonant clusters.

Gemination is significant in Tigre. That is, consonant length can distinguish words from one another. Although gemination plays a significant role in verb morphology, it is usually accompanied by other features, and there are few pairs of Tigre words that are distinguished only by gemination: šakkarko 'I praised', šakarko 'I got drunk'.

All consonants except the pharyngeal and glottal consonants and w and y can geminate.

See also

• Tigre people

External links

• [Online Tigre language tutorial]
• [Ethnologue on Tigre]
• [LanguageHat article about the difficulties of written Tigre]
• [Language, Education, and Public Policy in Eritrea]

Bibliography

• Littmann, E. and Höfner, M. (1962) Wörterbuch der Tigrē-Sprache: Tigrē-Deutsch-Englisch. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.

↑ *Raz, S. (1983). Tigre grammar and texts. Malibu, California, USA: Undena Publications.

 

---

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

?