Basque

Basque (Euskara) is a thriving language spoken in certain regions of north Spain and southwest France, called the Basque country. It is natural to assume, because of where it is spoken, that Basque is a romance language, however, Basque is very different from most modern languages and no one knows for sure where the language comes from, therefore it is widely considered to be a language isolate.

A language isolate is a natural language with no genealogical relationship with any other language. Languages can be classed as isolate if their language family consists only of themselves or if they are the only surviving daughter. 

Basque is the last remaining Pre-Indo-European language, which used to be spoken across Western Europe before the Roman conquests.  It has been hypothesised that Basque descended from Aquitanian, because of their lexical similarities. For example, they had an identical word for age (adin) showing that they must be closely related, but we are unsure whether there are any other daughter languages of Aquitania. 

There are also minor views that people have found sister languages of Basque, for example, the Caucasian languages, but no studies have been conclusive. For example, G Bertorelle et al conducted a study comparing the genes of Basque speakers with speakers of the Caucasian languages. However, most of their results show that even if there are DNA similarities, the groups must have diverged such a long time ago that they could not be sisters (maybe descended from it, but that could not change its isolate status).

Since Basque has very few similarities with most modern languages, it is very hard to learn, unless you are brought up with the language as your native language. I read an article about a 16^th century polyglot, Joseph Scaliger, who had to stop learning Basque because he could not find a way to learn the vocabulary as it was so different from any other language he had learned.  Scaliger said “[Basque] is a really strange language...It is said that they understand one another, but I don’t believe any of it”. According to some sources, Basque was not written until around the same time as Scaliger attempted to learn it (16^th century) therefore, he may have struggled due to the irregularities in orthology.  

When it was first written they largely used the Latin alphabet along with some other characters to represent new sounds (such as the ñ in Spanish). However in the 20^th century, the written language changed to include a mass of new and unknown diacritics. However, The Royal Basque Language Academy has helped to regulate the language, change it largely to its original alphabet and to bring it back to its high popularity before Franco’s dictatorship. 

Sample of Basque language:

Gizon-emakume guztiak aske jaiotzen dira, duintasun eta eskubide berberak dituztela; eta ezaguera eta kontzientzia dutenez gero, elkarren artean senide legez jokatu beharra dute.

Translation

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Sourced from: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/basque.htm (06/01/13) - on this website you can also hear a recording of the Basque sample text.

 

This is one of the pictures used as part of a promotion campaign of the Basque language and culture.