Tigre (Ge'ez ትግረ tigre or ትግሬ tigrē; sometimes written as Tigré, also known as Xasa in Sudan; Arabic الخاصية ḫāṣiyah) is a Semitic language, which, along with Tigrinya, is believed to be one of direct descendants of the extinct Ge'ez language. (Ge'ez is still in use as the liturgical language of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church.) As of 1997, Tigré was spoken by approximately 800,000 people in Eritrea. The Tigre people are nearly all found in western Eritrea, with the remainder inhabiting the adjacent part of Sudan. In Eritrea, they inhabit the central and northern plateau and the Red Sea shores north of Zula. Traditionally, the local language of the Dahlak Archipelago, Dahlik, has been considered a dialect of Tigré, but recently one researcher has reassessed this view.
The Kunama language is a language isolate which has been included in the proposed Nilo-Saharan language family. Kunama spoken by the Kunama people of western Eritrea and just across the Ethiopian border. The language has several dialects including: Barka. Marda, Aimara, Odasa, Tika, Lakatakura, Sokodasa, Takazze-Selit, and Tigray. Ilit and Bitama are not mutually intelligible and so may be considered distinct languages.
Amharic (Amharic: አማርኛ? amarəñña) is a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia. It is the second most-spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic, and the official working language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Thus, it has official status and is used nationwide. Amharic is also the official or working language of several of the states within the federal system. It has been the working language of government, the military, and of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church throughout medieval and modern times. Outside Ethiopia, Amharic is the language of some 2.7 million emigrants. It is written using Amharic Fidel, ፊደል, which grew out of the Ge'ez abugida—called, in Ethiopian Semitic languages, ፊደል fidel ("alphabet", "letter", or "character") and አቡጊዳ abugida (from the first four Ethiopic letters, which gave rise to the modern linguistic term abugida).
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