| Eritrea (Ge'ez ኤርትራ ʾĒrtrā) is a country in northern East Africa. The name is derived from the Latin word for Red Sea, Mare Erythraeum, itself derived from a similar Greek word meaning "red" (ερυθρός, erythros). The country is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast. The east and northeast of the country have an extensive coastline on the Red Sea, directly across from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Dahlak Archipelago and several of the Hanish Islands are part of Eritrea.
Eritrea was consolidated into a colony by the Italian government on January 1, 1890.[4] The modern nation-state of Eritrea gained its independence from Ethiopia following a thirty year war which lasted from 1961 to 1991. Eritrea is officially a parliamentary democracy consisting of six regions, but it functions as a single-party state. Eritrea is a multilingual and multicultural country with two dominant religions and nine nationalities, each speaking a different language. The country has no official language, but it has three working languages: Tigrinya, Arabic, and English. A fourth language, Italian, is sometimes used commercially.[5][6]
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