Tigre (: ትግረ tigre or ትግሬ tigrē), better known in Eritrea by its autonym Tigrayit (ትግራይት), is an Afroasiatic language spoken in the Horn of Africa. It belongs to the North Ethiopic subdivision of the South Semitic languages and is primarily spoken by the Tigre people in Eritrea. Along with Tigrinya, it is believed to be the most closely related living language to Ge'ez, which is still in use as the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Tigre has a lexical similarity of 71% with Ge’ez and of 64% with Tigrinya. As of 1997, Tigre was spoken by approximately 800,000 Tigre people in Eritrea. The Tigre mainly inhabit western Eritrea, though they also reside in the northern highlands of Eritrea and its extension into the adjacent part