Tigrinya is a Semitic language spoken in Central Eritrea by about 7 million speakers, which is half of the Eritrean population. It was one of two official languages with Arabic but in 1958 it was replaced by the Amharic language.
More over, Eritrean was colonized by Italy until 1941, therefore, many, mainly older Eritreans, speak Italian as well.
The language has its own script, which contains more than 200 characters with different sounds, derived from the ancient language “Gee ’ez”, which is only used in the Orthodox Church today.
