Afro-Asiatic · ISO 639-3 tir · ti
Tigrinya Language ትግርኛ
Tigrinya is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken by about 10 million people in 3 countries. It is an official language of Eritrea. It is written in the Ethiopic and Latin scripts.
Where Tigrinya is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Tigrinya
Language family
- Afro-Asiatic
- Semitic
- West Semitic
- Ethiosemitic
- Tigrinya
Writing system
Ethiopic and Latin scripts
Related languages
About the Tigrinya language
Tigrinya (ትግርኛ) is spoken by about 10 million people, which makes it the 117th most spoken language in the world — just behind Min Dong Chinese (10 million) and ahead of North Mesopotamian Arabic (10 million). It belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language family and, more precisely, to the Ethiosemitic group within the West Semitic branch.
Where is Tigrinya spoken?
Tigrinya is used in 3 countries. The largest communities live in Ethiopia (7.1 million), Eritrea (3.8 million) and Israel (10,342). More than half of the population speaks it in Eritrea — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Share of the population that speaks Tigrinya: Ethiopia 6% (7.1 million), Eritrea 60% (3.8 million) and Israel 0.1% (10,342).
Tigrinya is an official language in 1 country: Eritrea.
Writing system and status
Tigrinya is written in the Ethiopic and Latin scripts. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Amharic, Sebat Bet Gurage, Tigre, Arabic, Standard Arabic, Egyptian Arabic and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 ti, ISO 639-3 tir.
Frequently asked questions about Tigrinya
How many people speak Tigrinya?
Where is Tigrinya spoken?
In which countries is Tigrinya an official language?
What language family does Tigrinya belong to?
What is Tigrinya called in Tigrinya?
Is Tigrinya an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.