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Basque language
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Basque is the language spoken by the Basque people who inhabit the Pyrenees in North-Central Spain and the adjoining region of South-Western France.
It is spoken by approximately a quarter of the Basques, with its stronghold in the contiguous area from central Biscay through Guipuscoa, northern Navarre and parts of Labourd to sparsely populated Lower Navarre and Soule. Until reintroduced into the education system, it had not been spoken in most of Álava, in western Biscay, or in the southern half of Navarre in the recent past. Out of a total of nearly 3,000,000 Basques, it is estimated that some 632,000 are Basque language speakers, of which approximately 566,000 live in the Spanish Basque country, with the rest residing in the French part.
Basque language has been standardized and updated by the end of the 20th century by means of its Batua version. This standard is mainly used in the Spanish Basque country, and to a lesser extent in the Northern Basque Country due to the limited availability of schools teaching in Basque or as a subject. Nevertheless, there are six main Basque dialects, comprising Bizkaian, Gipuzkoan, and Upper Navarrese (in Spain), and Lower Navarrese, Lapurdian, and Zuberoan (in France). However, the dialect boundaries are not congruent with political boundaries.
The Basques occupy a Spanish autonomous community known as the Basque Country (Euskadi), which has significant cultural and political autonomy, the Northern Basque Country in the French department of the Pyrennées Atlantiques, and the autonomous community of Navarre in Spain, which together make up the historical Basque Country (Euskal Herria). The Standard Basque name for the language is euskara. In dialectal forms it is known as euskara, euskera, eskuara, or üskara.
History and classificationGeographically surrounded by Indo-European languages, Basque is classified as a language isolate, the last remaining pre-Indo-European language. Consequently its prehistory may not be reconstructible by means of the comparative method except by applying it to language internal dialectal differences. Little is known of its origins but it is likely that an early form of the Basque language was present in Western Europe before the arrival of the Indo-European languages to the area.
Latin inscriptions in Aquitania preserve a number of words with cognates in proto-Basque, for instance the personal names Nescato and Cison (neskato and gizon mean "young girl" and "man" respectively in modern Basque). This proposed language is called "Aquitanian" and was presumably spoken before the Romans brought Latin to the western Pyrenees. Roman neglect of this hinterland allowed Aquitanian Basque to survive while the Iberian and Tartessian languages died out. Basque did come to acquire some Latin vocabulary, both before and after the Latin of the area developed into Gascon (a branch of Occitan) in the northeast, Aragonese in the southeast, and Castilian in the southwest.
In June 2006, archaeologists at the site of Iruña-Veleia discovered an epigraphic set with a series of 270 Basque inscriptions and drawings from the third century. Some of the words and phrases found were "urdin" (blue), "zuri" (white), "gori" (red), "edan" (drink) "ian" (eat), "lo" (sleep), "iesus iose ata ta mirian ama" (Jesus [with] the father Joseph and the mother Mary), and "geure ata zutan" (Our father in you). Further analysis of this discovery could show that the Basque language is more stable than previously thought.
Hypotheses on connections with other languagesThe impossibility of linking Basque with its Indo-European neighbours in Europe has inspired many scholars to search for its possible relatives elsewhere. Besides many pseudoscientific comparisons, the appearance of long-range linguistics gave rise to several attempts at connecting Basque with geographically very distant language families.
Many hypotheses on the origin of Basque are considered controversial, and the suggested evidence is not generally accepted by most linguists. However, this situation may change in the future. Some of these hypothetical connections are as follows.
- Iberian: another ancient language once spoken in the peninsula, shows several similarities with Aquitanian and Basque. However, there is not enough evidence to distinguish areal contacts from genetic relationship. Iberian itself is considered an isolate.
- Georgian: The Georgian hypothesis, linking Basque to South Caucasian or Kartvelian languages, seems now widely discredited. The hypothesis was inspired in part by the ancient Georgian kingdom of Kartli, which the Greeks and Romans referred to as Iberia. According to J.P. Mallory in his 1989 book, "In Search of the Indo-Europeans," the hypothesis was also inspired by a Basque place-name ending in -adze.
- Northeast Caucasian languages, such as Chechen, are seen by some linguists like Michel Morvan as more likely candidates for a very distant connection.
- Northwest Caucasian languages, such as Circassian are seen by some as the Caucasian group most akin to the Basque.
- Dene-Caucasian superfamily. Based on the possible Caucasian link, some linguists, for example John Bengtson and Merritt Ruhlen, have proposed including Basque in the Dene-Caucasian superfamily of languages, but the existence of this proposed superfamily would include languages from North America and Eurasia, and is considered controversial.
- Vasconic languages: This theory, proposed by the German linguist Theo Vennemann, claims that there is enough toponymical evidence to conclude that Basque is the only survivor of a larger family that once extended throughout most of Europe, and has also left its mark in modern Indo-European languages spoken in Europe.
Geographic distribution
The region in which Basque is spoken is smaller than what is known as the Basque Country, or Euskal Herria in Basque.
Basque toponyms show that Basque was spoken further along the Pyrenees than today.
An example is the Aran Valley (now a Gascon-speaking part of Catalonia), since haran itself is the Basque word for "valley". However, the growing influence of Latin began to drive Basque out from less-mountainous areas of this region.
The Reconquista temporarily counteracted this tendency when the Christian lords called on northern peoples — Basques, Asturians, and "Franks" — to colonize the new conquests. Later the Basque language came to be used mainly by peasants, while people in the cities preferred Castilian, Gascon, Navarrese Romance, French, or Latin for high education.
Basque experienced a rapid decline in Navarre during the 1800s. However, after Basque nationalism took the language as an identity sign, and with the establishment of autonomous governments, it has made a modest comeback. Basque-language schools have taken the language to areas like Encartaciones and the Navarrese Ribera where it may have never been natively spoken in historic times.
Official status and dialectsOfficial statusHistorically, Latin or Romance languages have been the official languages in this region.
However, Basque was explicitly recognized in some areas. For instance, the local charter of the Basque-colonized Ojacastro valley (now in La Rioja) allowed the inhabitants to use Basque in legal processes in the 13th and 14th centuries.
Today Basque holds co-official language status in the Basque regions of Spain: the full autonomous community of the Basque Country and some parts of Navarre. Basque has no official standing in the Northern Basque Country of France and French citizens are barred from officially using Basque in a French court of law. Interestingly, the use of Basque by Spanish nationals in French courts is allowed (with translation), as Basque is officially recognised on the other side of the border.
The positions of the various existing governments differ with regard to the promotion of Basque in areas where Basque usage is common. The language has official status in those territories that are within the Basque Autonomous Community, where it is spoken and promoted heavily, but only partially in Navarre, which is divided by law into three distinct language areas: Basque-speaking, non-Basque-speaking, and mixed (this law is strongly rejected by the Basque nationalists of Navarre). The law is called the "Ley del Vascuence", since vascuence (from Latin vasconice loqui, "to talk in the Vascon way") is the traditional name for the Basque language in Spanish (though euskera and vasco are also used).
DialectsThere are six main Basque dialects, comprising Bizkaian, Gipuzkoan, and Upper Navarrese (in Spain), and Lower Navarrese, Lapurdian, and Zuberoan (in France). However, the dialect boundaries are not congruent with political boundaries.
One of the first scientific studies of Basque dialects, regarding the auxiliary verb forms, was made by Louis-Lucien Bonaparte, a nephew of Napoleon.
In 2005 the daily Berria published a new map of dialects, moderninzed by Koldo Zuazo, Basque Philology Professor at the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU). In this new map, the distinguished dialects are Western, Central, Navarrese, Navarrese-Lapurdian, and Zuberoan.
Standardized dialectsThe most-widely-used standardized dialect is Batua ("unified" in Basque), which is the language taught in most schools and used by media and in official papers. Batua is based largely on the Gipuzkoan regional dialect, where it is the most used, although it allows use of Northern and Navarrese vocabulary and grammar. It is also referred to as Standard Basque.
Azkue's gipuzkera osotua, promoted in 1935, was the first attempt to create a standard Basque language. It did not succeed.
In the 1940s, a group (Jakintza Baitha, "Wisdom House") gathered around the academian Federico Krutwig, who preferred to base the standard on the Labourdin of Joannes Leyçarraga's Protestant Bible and the first printed books in Basque. However they did not receive official or popular support.
In 1944, Pierre Laffite published his Navarro-Labourdin Littéraire, based on Classical Lapurdian, which has become the de facto standard form of Lapurdian. It is taught in some schools of Lapurdi and used on radio, in church, and by the newspaper Herria.
The most distinct dialects, Biscayan and Zuberoan, also are standardized.
Basque on the InternetOne in a thousand (0.1%) websites are in Basque.
Influence in other languagesThe Romance languages Gascon, Aragonese, and Castilian have marked Basque influence in them, as a result of substratum, language contact, and bilingualism.
A notable example is that of the Pyrenean and Iberian Romance words for "left (side)" (izquierdo, esquerdo, esquerre, quer, esquer) derived from Basque ezker to avoid the ominous connotations of Latin sinister.
In the case of Castilian (Spanish) and Gascon, the following Basque substrate influences are found.
- lack of "v" sound (replaced by "b")
- lack of initial "r" sound in Basque and Gascon (replaced by err-/arr-)
- simple five vowel system
- transformation of initial "f" into mute "h": fablar ? hablar (this is even more marked in Gascon). The f sound did not exist in old Basque.
However, there are alternative explanations based on internal developments.
In the 16th Century, Basque sailors mixed many Basque words with a European Atlantic pidgin in their contacts with Iceland. Another Basque pidgin arose from contact between Basque whalers and Aboriginal inhabitants in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Strait of Belle Isle.
Several travelling professional groups of Castile used Basque words in their jargon: examples are the gacería, the mingaña, and the Galician fala dos arxinas.
A small part of the Gypsies living in the Basque Country spoke Erromintxela, which mixes Romany vocabulary with Basque syntax and morphology (it is comparable with the Caló of Spanish-speaking Gitanos).
Grammar
Basque is an ergative-absolutive language. The subject of an intransitive verb is in the absolutive case (which is unmarked), and the same case is used for the direct object of a transitive verb. The subject of the transitive verb (that is, the agent) is marked differently, with the ergative case (shown by the suffix -k). This also triggers main and auxiliary verbal agreement.
The auxiliary verb, which accompanies most main verbs, agrees not only with the subject, but with any direct object and the indirect object present. Among European languages, this polypersonal system (multiple verb agreement) is only found in Basque, some Caucasian languages, and Hungarian. The ergative-absolutive alignment is also unique among European languages, but not rare worldwide.
Consider the phrase:
- :"Martin buys the newspapers for me."
Martin-ek is the agent (transitive subject), so it is marked with the ergative case ending -k (with an epenthetic -e-). Egunkariak has an -ak ending which marks plural object (plural absolutive, direct object case). The verb is erosten dizkit, in which erosten is a kind of gerund ("buying") and the auxiliary dizkit means "he/she (does) them for me". This dizkit can be split like this:
di- is used in the present tense when the verb has a subject (ergative), a direct object (absolutive), and an indirect object, and the object is he/she/it/them. -zki- means the absolutive (in this case the newspapers) is plural, if it were singular there would be no infix; and -t or '-da-' means "to me/for me" (indirect object). in this instance there is no suffix after -t. A zero suffix in this position indicates that the ergative (the subject) is third person singular (he/she/it).
The phrase "you buy the newspapers for me" would translate as:
The auxiliary verb is composed as di-zki-da-zue and means 'you pl. (do) them for me'
- di- = direct object, present tense
- -zki- = direct object is plural
- -da- = indirect object (to me/for me)
- -zue = subject (you pl.)
In spoken Basque, the auxiliary verb is often dropped when redundant: "Zuek egunkariak erosten niri", you pl. buying the newspapers for me. Whenever it is not dropped, the pronouns are almost always dropped: "egunkariak erosten dizkidazue", the newspapers buying be-them-for-me-you(plural). The pronouns are used only to show emphasis: "egunkariak zuek erosten dizkidazue", it is you (pl.) who buy the newspapers for me; or "egunkariak niri erosten dizkidazue", it is me for whom you buy the newspapers for.
Modern Basque dialects allow for the conjugation of about fifteen verbs, called synthetic verbs, some only in literary contexts. These can be put in the present and past tenses in the indicative and subjunctive moods, in three tenses in the conditional and potential moods, and in one tense in the imperative. Colloquial Basque, however, only uses indicative present, indicative past, and imperative. Each verb that can be taken intransitively has a nor (absolutive) paradigm and possibly a nor-nori (absolutive-dative) paradigm, as in the sentence Aititeri txapela erori zaio ("The hat fell from grandfather['s head]"). Each verb that can be taken transitively uses those two paradigms for passive-voice contexts in which no agent is mentioned, and also has a nor-nork (absolutive-ergative) paradigm and possibly a nor-nori-nork (absolutive-dative-ergative) paradigm. The last would entail the dizkidazue example above. In each paradigm, each constituent noun can take on any of eight persons, five singular and three plural, with the exception of nor-nori-nork in which the absolutive can only be third person singular or plural. (This draws on a language universal: *"Yesterday the boss presented the committee me" sounds at least odd, if not incorrect.) The most ubiquitous auxiliary, izan, can be used in any of these paradigms, depending on the nature of the main verb.
There are more persons in the singular (5) than in the plural (3) for synthetic verbs because of the two familiar persons—informal masculine and feminine second person singular. The pronoun hi is used for both of them, but where the masculine form of the verb uses a -k, the feminine uses an -n. This is a property not found in Indo-European languages. The entire paradigm of the verb is further augmented by inflecting for "listener" (the allocutive) even if the verb contains no second person constituent. If the situation is one in which the familiar masculine may be used, the form is augmented and modified accordingly; likewise for the familiar feminine.
(Gizon bat etorri da, "a man has come"; gizon bat etorri duk, "a man has come [you are a male close friend]", gizon bat etorri dun, "a man has come [you are a female close friend]", gizon bat etorri duzu, "a man has come [I talk to you]")
Notice that this nearly multiplies the number of possible forms by three. Still, the restriction on contexts in which these forms may be used is strong since all participants in the conversation must be friends of the same sex, and not too far apart in age. Some dialects dispense with the familiar forms entirely. Note, however, that the formal second person singular conjugates in parallel to the other plural forms, perhaps indicating that it used to be the second person plural, started being used as a singular formal, and then the modern second person plural was formulated as an innovation.
All the other verbs in Basque are called periphrastic, behaving much like a participle would in English. These have only three forms total, called aspects: perfect (various suffixes), habitual (suffix -t[z]en), and future/potential (suffix. -ko/-go). Verbs of Latinate origin in Basque, as well as many other verbs, have a suffix -tu in the perfect, adapted from the Latin -tus suffix. The synthetic verbs also have periphrastic forms, for use in perfect tenses and in simple tenses in which they are deponent.
Within a verb phrase, the periphrastic comes first, followed by the auxiliary.
A Basque noun-phrase is inflected in 17 different ways for case, multiplied by 4 ways for its definiteness and number. These first 68 forms are further modified based on other parts of the sentence, which in turn are inflected for the noun again. It's been estimated that, with two levels of recursion, a Basque noun may have 458,683 inflected forms.Captive in the rainforests of the West
they brought you to Rome, slave,
they gave you the blacksmith work
and you make chains.
The red iron that you carry out the oven
can be adapted as you want,
you can make swords
in order that your people could break the chains,
but you, this slave,
you make chains, more chains.
:Joseba Sarrionandia
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Esklabu erremintaria
Sartaldeko oihanetan gatibaturik
erromara ekarri zinduten, esklabua,
erremintari ofizioa eman zizuten
eta kateak egiten dituzu.
Labetik ateratzen duzun burdin goria
nahieran molda zenezake,
ezpatak egin ditzakezu
zure herritarrek kateak hauts deitzaten,
baina zuk, esklabu horrek,
kateak egiten dituzu, kate gehiago.
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See also
Dictionaries
Etymological Dictionaries- M. Löpelmann, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der baskischen Sprache, Berlin, 1968.
- R.L. Trask edited for web publication by Max W. Wheeler (University of Sussex, 2008). An edition of the unfinished etymological dictionary of the late R. L. Trask.
External links-
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- Ethnologue has reports on , and .
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- · Issue 18, 1978. Miguel Echegaray shares several suggestions of possible etymological connections between Basque and English words.
- from
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- in the Rosetta Project
- of the Basque Government
- incl. sound file
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Grammar
Dictionaries- (67,000 headwords + 120,000 expressions and idioms)
Classification
Basque lettering- , by P. and J. de Zabalo, Biblioteca de Cultura Vasca, Editorial Vasca Ekin, Buenos Aires, 1947. Designs for a national typography derived from Medieval and Modern-Age inscriptions.
- , a blog post reviewing Basque-style computer fonts.
- , in the Spanish-language Auñamendi Encyclopedia.
Basque media
Bibliography- BENGTSON, John D., 2004. "Some features of Dene-Caucasian phonology (with special reference to Basque)." Cahiers de l'Institut de Linguistique de Louvain (CILL).
- BENGTSON, John D., 2006. "Materials for a Comparative Grammar of the Dene-Caucasian (Sino-Caucasian) Languages."
- BENGTSON, John D., 1997. Review of "The History of Basque". London: Routledge, 1997. Pp.xxii,458" by R.L. Trask.
- BENGTSON, John D., 1997. "Ein Vergleich von Burushaski und Nordkaukasisch". In "GEORGICA (Zeitschrift für Kultur, Sprache und Geschichte Georgiens und Kaukasiens)."
- BENGTSON, John D., 1996. "A Final (?) Response to the Basque Debate in Mother Tongue 1."
- HUALDE, José Ignacio & ORTIZ DE URBINA, Jon (eds.): A Grammar of Basque. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2003. ISBN 3-11-017683-1.
- MORVAN, Michel, 1996. The linguistic origins of basque (in French). Bordeaux: Presses universitaires. ISBN 2-86781-182-1
- ORPUSTAN, Jean-Baptiste, 1999. The basque language in the Middle Ages (in French). Baigorri. ISBN 2-909262-22-7
- TRASK, R. Larry: History of Basque. New York/London: Routledge, 1996. ISBN 0-415-13116-2.
- MORVAN, Michel: Etymological Dictionary of the Basque Language (forthcoming).
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