Confession: I don’t know about you but I am a universal human being made in Eritrea from the Tigrigna speaking Christian background, though I have no religion to worship, only spirituality!

I am a materialist that adopted Buddhism later on in life as my spiritual way of life (not religion) and I respect any religion in this world equally. I have chosen to exit from this imposed identity in seeing the Eritrean situation neutrally, thus to write whatever I have to write without fear and inhibition. I am neither a politician with personal interest in the country nor am I a person that shies away from saying my mind to satisfy a group or an individual: that is what you get from me. What is amazing is that people keep quiet when I say what I think of the Tigrigna speaking people which I consider one of the main problems of unity and cry loud when I do it on other similar ethnic groups. Seriously, I don’t care about this because I know I am neutral in this experience. I let you deal with your bias on your own psychological turf! I will equally condemn the elements of division from the Christians, the Jeberties and the Moslems and I have been consistent on this. You can cry loud when it comes to your ethnic or religious group but I will continue moving on without a problem. Once again, I challenge issues with evidence not with prejudice and I condemn the Kebessian elites not the people (Christians and Jeberties) and some destructive and backward individuals from other ethnic groups that use religion for their personal interest without a second thought.

Don’t expect anything from me except my truth, a subjective truth that may not have anything to do with the objective reality. I have no time to entertain anything for personal reasons but to fearlessly tell my mind free of bias. Few people may accuse me of being prejudiced against the Jeberties but can they accuse me of bashing the Tigrigna Christians as well based on my frank opinion on that ethnic group? This is hypocrisy if they don’t and I tell them to live with it if they want but I don’t care. I am telling you that I will say anything I have to say without being afraid of your opinion of me. Enjoy what you think of me but it would not affect my spirituality in any way nor would it pressurize me to distort my reality for the sake of your positive opinion. END

I had an article on the confusing Eritreans that conduct meetings with two Languages Arabic and Tigrigna for no other reason than pretension, ego and unnecessary attachment to Arabic. They do it thinking they were practicing democracy without knowing what they practice was a unique radical democracy never experienced in history.

Hagherawi: ”The issue of languages has to do with “Official languages” policy of those in power, rather than ordinary Eritreans. One possible solution will be to have one official language: English. While Tigrigna and Arabic can be used in unofficial situations and in mass media. Nowadays, many Eritrean families (Christians and Muslims) prefer to send their kids to English medium schools. A few generation down the road there won’t be any language issue in Eritrea.

Comment: A lot better than our current primitive situation. I don’t see anything wrong with this suggestion and I agree that this may solve the problem, while simultaneously strengthening the Eritrean unity. I rather see the communities do their meetings in English rather than swinging us between Tigrigna and Arabic for no purpose other than insecurity.

MightyEmbasoyra: Even though I don’t speak Tigre, I would support it to be the one and only one national language of Eritrea. I think that would help unite us. Besides, how hard can it be?

Comment: This idea is even better than having English to solve the problem though we can use both if we want. Tigre is the solution in my opinion for this crisis. None of our languages can emasculate Tigre because it is as old if not older than Tigrigna, a direct child of Geez in the region. Tigre directly connects the Christian and Moslem highlanders to Geez, the foundation of their original language to be considered as equally prestigious as Tigrigna. In the flip, Tigre is spoken by majority Eritrean Moslems thus strongly represents our Moslem population as well. Therefore, as Mighty said, it can unite us better needless to say that it will stop the stagnation of Eritrean life because of the impossible to understand Tigrigna/Arabic feud, something that is in the way of the Eritrean society’s development and harmony. Anything even Amharic is better than talking two languages in every meeting; this has to stop one way or another and immediately!!!!

Tes: “I have to admit how frustrated I get in Eritrean meeting when I sat to listen an alien language Arabic as my official languages. I don’t know how and why we are strangling ourselves by this inconvenience to say the least. It is completely foreign, no region or ethnic speak that language in Eritrea. It make it worse the Arab treat us and to the black people as whole as subhuman or equal to dogs. So why do we need to associate ourselves with them in anyway … you go far away from them and their language.

Response: I hear you brother! I feel down when they do that and it sometimes looks like they were reading scripts for a movie; unfortunately this is real. How long can we go like this and for what? What a problem and how may the few foreigners that attend our meetings think of us? How may the Arabs that discriminate us further undermine us as a society? This is like begging to slave for someone that considers you inferior. It is embarrassing for a society to do this in 21^st century. I Agree with Tes that Arabic was foreign to Eritreans and that Arabs racially discriminate and undermine all Eritreans irrespective of religion with reservation, though it is one of our languages via the Rashaida ethnic group. We, however, did not dignify Arabic for our Rashaidas or any Eritrean ethnic group’s sake but for something strange I cannot understand.

Further, it is true that Arabs racially discriminate black Africans like us and no Eritrean is an Arab by origin except the Rashaidas, therefore we have no reason to respect Arabic more than our own languages to satisfy the weird desire of few Eritrean elites that don’t represent their communities. I cannot imagine our Moslems respecting Arabic more than their native languages and I believe this convoluted misuse is imposed on us all by the few elites that want to relate themselves with the Arabs just because the Holy Koran was written in Arabic. This is not Arab-bashing but a valid argument that must be taken seriously by the elites responsible for this disaster.

To me the only justification for Arabic to be our national language may be because of our Rashaidas and not because of the Holly Koran. I don’t see any good reason for the rest of our people to infatuate with the Arabs to the point of having their language dominating our native languages. I cannot respect Arabic more than Tigre and all other Eritrean languages nor can I disrespect my people by imposing a foreign language over theirs. Arabic in our country should stop at the Holy Koran paradigm of our society because it is foreign to us Eritreans.….Period>

Tes: “I respect and love Islam as a religion when it is not associated with Arab. When I was a child I had many Moslem uncles/aunts and AMOY Halima was my favorite. We were so close big family, good time. Lot of respect to each other faiths. Never heard them speaking Arabic but saho and tigrigna. My family [] also speaks both languages saho and tigrigna. This was inherited for years down to generation after generation. Then now Arab was a central issue of discontent especial by the diaspora Moslem brothers. Why? I didn’t know. Do they want to be Arabs? I don’t even want them. Why then? To conclude it, what I think is that in Eritrea the two official language should be Tigrigna and Tigre and allowing the other minorities to use their language in their region in a way they see fit i mean those Kunama, Afar , saho and so forth. Otherwise using Arab is lack of self respect. It gets us nowhere.”

Comment: Our people in general respect their languages, the reason AMOY Halima had no problem using them to communicate with others in her community. I cannot imagine her respecting Arabic more than her languages because there is no reason for that, needless to state that she might not even understand it. Who decides this for our people more than themselves any way and what is the justification to impose this on our people without referendum? We need to get out of this self-humiliating practice as soon as we can even through referendum if necessary! Let the individuals with this fascination practice it in their privacy but we need to reject it as much as we can because we are not Arabs.

Selamawit2: “I think the language of the majority should be the official language of a country.
If the origin (!) Tigre speakers are really the majority in Eritrea; then of course it should be Tigre. But the statistics should be valid!”

Abraham Haile: “Language = Communication=Communication=Communication, Period.
Language is neither religion nor tribe. All religion of different communities can access a sole Language. In Egypt, Moslems and Christians, use one Language regardless to their ethnic origin. Why could be different in Eritrea? All we need is Education, we shouldn’t relate the language with our religion. I believe that we are solely responsible to educate ourselves and start to see things openly and honestly. This is not like a person of my faith is the only close person, brother or sister to me, let us grow up and think collectively and fairly. Let us leave religion in our house. Religion is a private matter. First, let us fight for liberty and then people will settle the language and flag problems. “

ማሊሻ: ‘ኣብ ታሪኽ ዓለምን ፣ ኣብ ነዊሕ ዛንታ ሰብን ብጭብጢ እተረጋገጸ ሓቂ እንተሎ እዚ እዩ። ዝኾነ ይኹንሕብረተሰብ ወይ ህዝቢ ፣ ንሕሉፍ ናይ ዘመናት ታሪኹ ዝጸልእ ፣ ውርሻኡ ዝንዕቕ ፣ መረበቱ ወይ ትውልዲ ዓዱዝኽሕድ ፣ ቋንቋታቱ ብባርዕ ዘልምስ ፣ ቅርስታቱ ዘፍርስ ፣ ባህልታቱ ስርዓቱ ዘድፍር ፣ ደቂ ሩባኡን ጎዶቦታቱንዘየኽብር ፣ ይትረፍ መሪሕነት ክጭብጥን ሃገር ክኣልን ፣ ናይ ገዛእ ርእሱ ሉኣላዊት ሃገርን መሬትን ውን ከቶኣይግበኦን እዩ።”

Keren: “There are 22 Arab nations to worry about Arabic language. It is not Eritrea’s responsibility to protect Arabic language by law and to denigrate a truly indigenous Eritrean languages such as Tigre. Eritrea has only a legal responsibility to protect Eritrean languages. If one wants to study in alien languages such as Italian, Arabic, Chinese or Amharic, it is not Eritrea’s legal responsibility. It becomes your own personal responsibility.”

In discussing this topic, I found the following comment important to start with:

Tes: “Yes there were/are thousands of Eritrea migrants in Arab states including Sudan so do other people from Asia. Does that make the Bangladesh or Philippine to change their official language to Arab? I don’t think so.”

There are about 22 Arabic countries around (Keren’s information) and 48 Muslim majority countries overall. Many countries in the world have Moslems that relate to the Koran, which is written in Arabic. The question is how they relate to Arabic based on this reality. In the Arabic countries, the native language is Arabic and they genuinely and appropriately use it for national language irrespective of the Koran’s linguistic format. The fact remains that majority Moslem societies only relate to Arabic through the Koran, nothing for otherwise. We will see this down the line in the process and I will concretely substantiate my argument that we artificially relate to Arabic more than any other Moslem societies in the world. Please challenge me on the merit not on your emotion!

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