A demonstrative shows whether something is near or far from the speaker/writer and also indicates whether it is singular or plural. An example of the use of a demonstrative in English would be: "we bought this last year", or "those are nice." In the first example the word "this" replaces whatever object that is near the speaker and is the subject of the conversation.
In English, demonstratives can be distinguished in the number of objects ("this" and "that" = one; "these" and "those" = many) and distance to the speaker ("This" and "these" = near; "that" and "those" = far). Thus they are four main demonstratives.
Usage in Tigrigna Demonstratives are used in the almost exact same way as in English. The only difference is that with Tigrigna there is an additional differentiation for gender. This doubles the amount of demonstratives from four in English to eight in Tigrigna, with one male and female version for each of the English ones. Please memorize them.
| Singular | Plural |
| Near | እዚ | This (m) | እዞም | These |
| እዛ | This (f) | እዘን | These (f) |
| Far | እቲ | That (m) | እቶም | Those |
| እታ | That (f) | እተን | Those (f) |
Here are some Tigrigna examples of these demonstratives with their English translations (the demonstratives are underlined in each one):
| ትግርኛ | Transliteration | Translation |
| a) | "እዚ ቈልዓ ኣብ ቤተ ትምህርቲ ኣሎ" | a) | "this child at school is" | a) | "This child is at school" |
| b) | "እዛ ጓል ንፍዕቲ ኢያ" | b) | "this girl smart is" | b) | "This girl is smart" |
| c) | "እቲ ጎቦ ዓቢ ኢዩ" | c) | "that mountain big is" | c) | "That mountain is big" |
| d) | "እታ መኪና ጽቡቕቲ ኢያ" | d) | "that car nice is" | d) | "That is a nice car" |
| e) | "እዞም ሰብኡት ከይዶም" | e) | "these men have left" | e) | "These men have left" |
| f) | "እዘን ኣንስቲ ሐጸርቲ ኢየን" | f) | "these women short are" | f) | "These are short women" |
| g) | "እቶም ኣሰቡት ኣብ ገዛ ኣለው" | g) | "those men in the house are" | g) | "Those men are in the house" |
| h) | "እተን ኣንስቲ ናብ ምጽዋእ ከይደን" | h) | "those women to Massawa went" | h) | "Those women went to Massawa" |
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