kКј/ is pronounced as a fricative, or sometimes as an affricate. In these circumstances, /k/ is pronounced as a velar fricative. The velar consonants /k/ and /kКј/ are pronounced differently when they appear immediately after a vowel and are not geminated. All the consonants, with the exception of the pharyngeal and glottal, can be geminated. But there is a small number of pairs of words which are only differentiable from each other by gemination, e.g. While gemination plays an important role in the morphology of the Tigrinya verb, it is normally accompanied by other marks. Gemination, the doubling of a consonantal sound, is meaningful in Tigrinya, i.e. When the IPA symbol is different, it is indicated in square brackets. The sounds are shown using the same system for representing the sounds as in the rest of the article. ^ The consonant /v/ occurs only in recent borrowings from European languages.^ a b c d The fricative sounds, , and occur as allophones.When the IPA symbol is different, the orthography is indicated in brackets. The charts below show the phonemes of Tigrinya. Unlike many of the modern Ethiopian Semitic languages, Tigrinya has preserved the two pharyngeal consonants which were apparently part of the ancient GeКЅez language and which, along with, 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. That is, there is a set of ejective consonants and the usual seven-vowel system. Tigrinya has a fairly typical set of phonemes for an Ethiopian Semitic language. No dialect appears to be accepted as a standard.ДЇor 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 dialects differ phonetically, lexically, and grammatically. In Australia, Tigrinya is one of the languages broadcast on public radio via the multicultural Special Broadcasting Service. It is also spoken by large immigrant communities around the world, in countries including Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. Tigrinya is the most widely spoken language in Eritrea (see Demographics of Eritrea), and the fourth most spoken language in Ethiopia after Amharic, Oromo, and Somali. The Jeberti in Eritrea also speak Tigrinya. BihГ©r roughly means 'nation' in the ethnic sense of the word in Tigrinya, Tigre, Amharic and Ge'ez. In Ethiopia, a Tigrayan, that is a native of Tigray, who also speaks the Tigrinya language, is referred to in Tigrinya as tigrДЃwДЃy (male), tigrДЃweytД« (female), tigrДЃwЕЌt or, more commonly, tegaru (plural). In Eritrea, Tigrinya speakers are officially known as the BihГ©re-Tigrigna ('nation of Tigrinya speakers') or Tigrinya people. There is no general name for the people who speak Tigrinya. 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. 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. At the time, it was reported to be the first of its kind. 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. The earliest written example of Tigrinya is a text of local laws found in the district of Logosarda, Debub Region in Southern Eritrea, which dates from the 13th century. Ge'ez, because of its status in Ethiopian culture, and possibly also its simple structure, acted as a literary medium until relatively recent times. Although it differs markedly from the GeКЅez (Classical Ethiopic) language, for instance in having phrasal verbs, and in using a word order that places the main verb last instead of first in the sentence-there is a strong influence of GeКЅez on Tigrinya literature, especially with terms relating to Christian life, Biblical names, and so on.

Online tigrigna english dictionary