Basque language


Basque is a language spoken in the Basque Country, a region that straddles the westernmost Pyrenees in adjacent parts of Northern Spain and Southwestern France. Linguistically, Basque is unrelated to the other languages of Europe and is a language isolate in relation to any other known living language. The Basques are indigenous to, and primarily inhabit, the Basque Country. The Basque language is spoken by 28.4% of Basques in all territories. Of these, 93.2% are in the Spanish area of the Basque Country and the remaining 6.8% are in the French portion.
Native speakers live in a contiguous area that includes parts of four Spanish provinces and the three "ancient provinces" in France. Gipuzkoa, most of Biscay, a few municipalities of Álava and the northern area of Navarre formed the core of the remaining Basque-speaking area before measures were introduced in the 1980s to strengthen the language. By contrast, most of Álava, the western part of Biscay and central and southern areas of Navarre are predominantly populated by native speakers of Spanish, either because Basque was replaced by Spanish over the centuries, in some areas or because it was possibly never spoken there, in other areas.
In Francoist Spain, Basque language use was affected by the government’s repressive policies. In the Basque Country, "Francoist repression was not only political, but also linguistic and cultural." The regime placed legal restrictions on the use of language, which was suppressed from official discourse, education, and publishing, making it illegal to register new-born babies under Basque names, and even requiring tombstone engravings in Basque to be removed. In some provinces, the public use of the language was suppressed, with people fined for speaking Basque. Public use of Basque was frowned upon by supporters of the regime, often regarded as a sign of anti-Francoism or separatism. Overall, in the 1960s and later, the trend reversed and education and publishing in Basque began to flourish. As a part of this process, a standardised form of the Basque language, called Euskara Batua, was developed by the Euskaltzaindia in the late 1960s.
Besides its standardised version, the five historic Basque dialects are Biscayan, Gipuzkoan and Upper Navarrese in Spain and Navarrese–Lapurdian and Souletin in France. They take their names from the historic Basque provinces, but the dialect boundaries are not congruent with province boundaries. Euskara Batua was created so that the Basque language could be used—and easily understood by all Basque speakers—in formal situations and this is its main use today. In both Spain and France, the use of Basque for education varies from region to region and from school to school.
A language isolate, Basque is believed to be one of the few surviving pre-Indo-European languages in Europe and is the only one in Western Europe. The origin of the Basques and of their languages is not conclusively known, though the most accepted current theory is that early forms of Basque developed before the arrival of Indo-European languages in the area, including the Romance languages that geographically surround the Basque-speaking region. Basque has adopted about 40 percent of its vocabulary from the Romance languages, and Basque speakers have in turn lent their own words to Romance speakers.
The Basque alphabet uses the Latin script.

Names of the language

In Basque, the name of the language is officially Euskara.
In French, the language is normally called basque, though in recent times euskara has become common. Spanish has a greater variety of names for the language. Today, it is most commonly referred to as el vasco, la lengua vasca, or el euskera. Both terms, vasco and basque, are inherited from the Latin ethnonym Vascones, which in turn goes back to the Greek term οὐασκώνους, an ethnonym used by Strabo in his Geographica.
The Spanish term Vascuence, derived from Latin vasconĭce, has acquired negative connotations over the centuries and is not well-liked amongst Basque speakers generally. Its use is documented at least as far back as the 14th century when a law passed in Huesca in 1349 stated that Item nuyl corridor nonsia usado que faga mercadería ninguna que compre nin venda entre ningunas personas, faulando en algaravia nin en abraych nin en basquenç: et qui lo fara pague por coto XXX sol—essentially penalising the use of Arabic, Hebrew, or Basque in marketplaces with a fine of 30 sols.

History and classification

Basque is geographically surrounded by Romance languages but is a language isolate unrelated to them, and indeed, to any other language in the world. It is the last remaining descendant of one of the pre-Indo-European languages of Western Europe, the others being extinct outright. Consequently, its prehistory may not be reconstructible by means of the traditional comparative method except by applying it to differences between dialects within the language. 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 in the area.
Authors such as Miguel de Unamuno and Louis Lucien Bonaparte have noted that the words for "knife", "axe", and "hoe" derive from the word for "stone", and have therefore concluded that the language dates to prehistoric Europe when those tools were made of stone. Others find this unlikely: see the aizkora controversy.
Latin inscriptions in Gallia Aquitania preserve a number of words with cognates in the reconstructed proto-Basque language, for instance, the personal names Nescato and Cison. This language is generally referred to as Aquitanian and is assumed to have been spoken in the area before the Roman Republic's conquests in the western Pyrenees. Some authors even argue for late Basquisation, that the language moved westward during Late Antiquity after the fall of the Western Roman Empire into the northern part of Hispania into what is now Basque Country.
Roman neglect of this area allowed Aquitanian to survive while the Iberian and Tartessian languages became extinct. Through the long contact with Romance languages, Basque adopted a sizeable number of Romance words. Initially the source was Latin, later Gascon in the northeast, Navarro-Aragonese in the southeast and Spanish in the southwest.

Hypotheses concerning Basque's connections to other languages

Once accepted as a non-Indo-European language, many attempts have been made to link it with more geographically distant languages. Apart from pseudoscientific comparisons, the appearance of long-range linguistics gave rise to several attempts to connect Basque with geographically very distant language families. Almost all hypotheses concerning the origin of Basque are controversial, and the suggested evidence is not generally accepted by mainstream linguists. Some of these hypothetical connections are:

The region where Basque is spoken has become smaller over centuries, especially at the northern, southern, and eastern borders. Nothing is known about the limits of this region in ancient times, but on the basis of toponyms and epigraphs, it seems that in the beginning of the Common Era it stretched to the river Garonne in the north ; at least to the Val d'Aran in the east, including lands on both sides of the Pyrenees; the southern and western boundaries are not clear at all.
The Reconquista temporarily counteracted this contracting tendency when the Christian lords called on Northern Iberian peoples—Basques, Asturians, and "Franks"—to colonise the new conquests. The Basque language became the main everyday language, while other languages like Spanish, Gascon, French, or Latin were preferred for the administration and high education.
By the 16th century, the Basque-speaking area was reduced basically to the present-day seven provinces of the Basque Country, excluding the southern part of Navarre, the southwestern part of Álava, and the western part of Biscay, and including some parts of Béarn.
In 1807, Basque was still spoken in the northern half of Álava—including its capital city Vitoria-Gasteiz—and a vast area in central Navarre, but in these two provinces, Basque experienced a rapid decline that pushed its border northwards. In the French Basque Country, Basque was still spoken in all the territory except in Bayonne and some villages around, and including some bordering towns in Béarn.
In the 20th century, however, the rise of Basque nationalism spurred increased interest in the language as a sign of ethnic identity, and with the establishment of autonomous governments in the Southern Basque Country, it has recently made a modest comeback. In the Spanish part, Basque-language schools for children and Basque-teaching centres for adults have brought the language to areas such as western Enkarterri and the Ribera del Ebro in southern Navarre, where it is not known to ever have been widely spoken; and in the French Basque Country, these schools and centres have almost stopped the decline of the language.

Official status

Historically, Latin or Romance languages have been the official languages in this region. However, Basque was explicitly recognised in some areas. For instance, the fuero or charter of the Basque-colonised Ojacastro allowed the inhabitants to use Basque in legal processes in the 13th and 14th centuries.
The Spanish Constitution of 1978 states in Article 3 that the Spanish language is the official language of the nation, but allows autonomous communities to provide a co-official language status for the other languages of Spain. Consequently, the Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Autonomous Community establishes Basque as the co-official language of the autonomous community. The Statute of Navarre establishes Spanish as the official language of Navarre, but grants co-official status to the Basque language in the Basque-speaking areas of northern Navarre. Basque has no official status in the French Basque Country and French citizens are barred from officially using Basque in a French court of law. However, the use of Basque by Spanish nationals in French courts is permitted, 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 is commonly spoken. 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. The Ley del Vascuence, seen as contentious by many Basques, but considered fitting Navarra's linguistic and cultural diversity by some of the main political parties of Navarre, divides Navarre into three language areas: Basque-speaking, non-Basque-speaking, and mixed. Support for the language and the linguistic rights of citizens vary, depending on the area. Others consider it unfair, since the rights of Basque speakers differ greatly depending on the place they live.

Demographics

The 2006 sociolinguistic survey of all Basque-speaking territories showed that in 2006, of all people aged 16 and above:
Taken together, in 2006, of a total population of 2,589,600, 665,800 spoke Basque. This amounts to 25.7% Basque bilinguals overall, 15.4% passive speakers, and 58.9% non-speakers. Compared to the 1991 figures, this represents an overall increase of 137,000, from 528,500 15 years previously.
The 2011 figures show an increase of some 64,000 speakers compared to the 2006 figures to 714,136, with significant increases in the Autonomous Community, but a slight drop in the Northern Basque Country to 51,100, overall amounting to an increase to 27% of all inhabitants of Basque provinces.
Across allBACNavarreFBC
201628.4% 33.9% 12.9% 20.5%
201127.0% 32.0% 11.7% 21.4%
200625.7% 30.1% 11.1% 22.5%
200125.4% 29.4% 10.3% 24.8%
199624.4% 27.7% 9.6% 26.4%
199122.3%24.1%9.5%-

Basque is used as a language of commerce both in the Basque Country and in locations around the world where Basques immigrated throughout history.

Dialects

The modern Basque dialects show a high degree of dialectal divergence, sometimes making cross-dialect communication difficult. This is especially true in the case of Biscayan and Souletin, which are regarded as the most divergent Basque dialects.
Modern Basque dialectology distinguishes five dialects:
These dialects are divided in 11 subdialects, and 24 minor varieties among them.
According to Koldo Zuazo, the Biscayan dialect or "Western" is the most widespread dialect, with around 300,000 speakers out of a total of around 660,000 speakers. This dialect is divided in two minor subdialects: the Western Biscayan and Eastern Biscayan, plus transitional dialects.

Influence on other languages

Although the influence of the neighbouring Romance languages on the Basque language has been much more extensive, it is usually assumed that there has been some feedback from Basque into these languages as well. In particular Gascon and Aragonese, and to a lesser degree Spanish are thought to have received this influence in the past. In the case of Aragonese and Gascon, this would have been through substrate interference following language shift from Aquitanian or Basque to a Romance language, affecting all levels of the language, including place names around the Pyrenees.
Although a number of words of alleged Basque origin in the Spanish language are circulated, most of these have more easily explicable Romance etymologies or not particularly convincing derivations from Basque. Ignoring cultural terms, there is one strong loanword candidate,, long considered the source of the Pyrennean and Iberian Romance words for "left ". The lack of initial in Gascon could arguably be due to a Basque influence but this issue is under-researched.
The other most commonly claimed substrate influences:
The first two features are common, widespread developments in many Romance languages. The change of to occurred historically only in a limited area that corresponds almost exactly to areas where heavy Basque bilingualism is assumed, and as a result has been widely postulated. Substrate theories are often difficult to prove. As a result, although many arguments have been made on both sides, the debate largely comes down to the a priori tendency on the part of particular linguists to accept or reject substrate arguments.
Examples of arguments against the substrate theory, and possible responses:
  1. Spanish did not fully shift to, instead, it has preserved before consonants such as and .
  2. Evidence of Arabic loanwords in Spanish points to continuing to exist long after a Basque substrate might have had any effect on Spanish.
  3. Basque regularly developed Latin into.
  4. The same change also occurs in parts of Sardinia, Italy and the Romance languages of the Balkans where no Basque substrate can be reasonably argued for.
Beyond these arguments, a number of nomadic groups of Castile are also said to use or have used Basque words in their jargon, such as the gacería in Segovia, the mingaña, the Galician fala dos arxinas and the Asturian Xíriga.
Part of the Romani community in the Basque Country speaks Erromintxela, which is a rare mixed language, with a Kalderash Romani vocabulary and Basque grammar.

Basque pidgins

A number of Basque-based or Basque-influenced pidgins have existed. In the 16th century, Basque sailors used a Basque–Icelandic pidgin in their contacts with Iceland. The Algonquian–Basque pidgin arose from contact between Basque whalers and the Algonquian peoples in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and Strait of Belle Isle.

Grammar

Basque is an ergative–absolutive language. The subject of an intransitive verb is in the absolutive case, and the same case is used for the direct object of a transitive verb. The subject of the transitive verb is marked differently, with the ergative case. 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 agreement is found only in Basque, some languages of the Caucasus, Mordvinic languages, Hungarian, and Maltese. The ergative–absolutive alignment is also rare among European languages—occurring only in some languages of the Caucasus—but not infrequent worldwide.
Consider the phrase:
Martin-ek is the agent, so it is marked with the ergative case ending -k. Egunkariak has an -ak ending, which marks plural object. The verb is erosten dizkit, in which erosten is a kind of gerund and the auxiliary dizkit means "he/she them for me". This dizkit can be split like this:
The phrase "you buy the newspapers for me" is translated as:
The auxiliary verb is composed as di-zki-da-zue and means 'you pl. them for me'
The pronoun zuek 'you ' has the same form both in the nominative or absolutive case and in the ergative case. In spoken Basque, the auxiliary verb is never dropped even if it is redundant, e.g. dizkidazue in zuek niri egunkariak erosten dizkidazue 'you are buying the newspapers for me'. However, the pronouns are almost always dropped, e.g. zuek in egunkariak erosten dizkidazue 'you are buying the newspapers for me'. The pronouns are used only to show emphasis: egunkariak zuek erosten dizkidazue 'it is you who buys the newspapers for me', or egunkariak niri erosten dizkidazue 'it is me for whom you buy the newspapers'.
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. Each verb that can be taken intransitively has a nor paradigm and possibly a nor-nori paradigm, as in the sentence Aititeri txapela erori zaio. Each verb that can be taken transitively uses those two paradigms for antipassive-voice contexts in which no agent is mentioned, and also has a nor-nork paradigm and possibly a nor-nori-nork 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. 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 than in the plural 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 rarely found in Indo-European languages. The entire paradigm of the verb is further augmented by inflecting for "listener" even if the verb contains no second person constituent. If the situation calls for the familiar masculine, the form is augmented and modified accordingly. Likewise for the familiar feminine.
This multiplies the number of possible forms by nearly 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 was originally the second person plural, later came to be used as a formal singular, and then later still 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 in total, called aspects: perfect, habitual, and future/potential. Verbs of Latinate origin in Basque, as well as many other verbs, have a suffix -tu in the perfect, adapted from the Latin perfect passive -tus suffix. The synthetic verbs also have periphrastic forms, for use in perfects and in simple tenses in which they are deponent.
Within a verb phrase, the periphrastic verb comes first, followed by the auxiliary.
A Basque noun-phrase is inflected in 17 different ways for case, multiplied by four 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 has been estimated that, with two levels of recursion, a Basque noun may have 458,683 inflected forms.
WordCaseResultmeaning
etxeetxehouse
etxeaetxeathe house
etxeaketxeakthe houses
etxea + raetxerato the house
etxeak + raetxeetarato the houses
etxea + tiketxetikfrom the house
etxeak + tiketxeetatikfrom the houses
etxea + ainoetxerainountil the house
etxeak + ainoetxeetarainountil the houses
etxea + netxeanin the house
etxeak + netxeetanin the houses
etxea + koetxekoof the house
etxeak + koetxeetakoof the houses

The proper name "Mikel" is declined as follows:
WordCaseResultmeaning
MikelenMikelenof Mikel
MikelenganaMikelenganato Mikel
MikelekinMikelekinwith Mikel

Within a noun phrase, modifying adjectives follow the noun. As an example of a Basque noun phrase, etxe zaharrean "in the old house" is morphologically analysed as follows by Agirre et al.
WordFormMeaning
etxenounhouse
zahar-adjectiveold
-r-e-epenthetical elementsn/a
-a-determinate, singularthe
-ninessive casein

Basic syntactic construction is subject–object–verb. The order of the phrases within a sentence can be changed with thematic purposes, whereas the order of the words within a phrase is usually rigid. As a matter of fact, Basque phrase order is topic–focus, meaning that in neutral sentences the topic is stated first, then the focus. In such sentences, the verb phrase comes at the end. In brief, the focus directly precedes the verb phrase. This rule is also applied in questions, for instance, What is this? can be translated as Zer da hau? or Hau zer da?, but in both cases the question tag zer immediately precedes the verb da. This rule is so important in Basque that, even in grammatical descriptions of Basque in other languages, the Basque word galdegai is used.
In negative sentences, the order changes. Since the negative particle ez must always directly precede the auxiliary, the topic most often comes beforehand, and the rest of the sentence follows. This includes the periphrastic, if there is one: Aitak frantsesa irakasten du, "Father teaches French," in the negative becomes Aitak ez du frantsesa irakasten, in which irakasten is separated from its auxiliary and placed at the end.

Phonology

Vowels

The Basque language features five vowels:,,, and . In the Zuberoan dialect, extra phonemes are featured:
Basque has a distinction between laminal and apical articulation for the alveolar fricatives and affricates. With the laminal alveolar fricative, the friction occurs across the blade of the tongue, the tongue tip pointing toward the lower teeth. This is the usual in most European languages. It is written with an orthographic. By contrast, the voiceless apicoalveolar fricative is written ; the tip of the tongue points toward the upper teeth and friction occurs at the tip. For example, zu "you" is distinguished from su "fire". The affricate counterparts are written and. So, etzi "the day after tomorrow" is distinguished from etsi "to give up"; atzo "yesterday" is distinguished from atso "old woman".
In the westernmost parts of the Basque country, only the apical and the alveolar affricate are used.
Basque also features postalveolar sibilants, sounding like English sh and ch.
There are two palatal stops, voiced and unvoiced, as well as a palatal nasal and a palatal lateral. These and the postalveolar sounds are typical of diminutives, which are used frequently in child language and motherese. For example, tanta "drop" vs. ttantta "droplet". A few common words, such as txakur "dog", use palatal sounds even though in current usage they have lost the diminutive sense, the corresponding non-palatal forms now acquiring an augmentative or pejorative sense: zakur—"big dog". Many Basque dialects exhibit a derived palatalisation effect, in which coronal onset consonants change into the palatal counterpart after the high front vowel. For example, the in egin "to act" becomes palatal in southern and western dialects when a suffix beginning with a vowel is added: = "the action", = "doing".
The letter has a variety of realisations according to the regional dialect:, as pronounced from west to east in south Bizkaia and coastal Lapurdi, central Bizkaia, east Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, south Navarre, inland Lapurdi and Low Navarre, and Zuberoa, respectively.
The letter is silent in the Southern dialects, but pronounced in the Northern ones. Unified Basque spells it except when it is predictable, in a position following a consonant.
Unless they are recent loanwords, words may not have initial. In older loans, initial r- took a prosthetic e-, resulting in err-, more rarely irr-.

Stress and pitch

Basque features great dialectal variation in accentuation, from a weak pitch accent in the western dialects to a marked stress in central and eastern dialects, with varying patterns of stress placement. Stress is in general not distinctive ; there are, however, a few instances where stress is phonemic, serving to distinguish between a few pairs of stress-marked words and between some grammatical forms, e.g. basóà vs. básoà ; basóàk vs. básoàk vs. básoak.
Given its great deal of variation among dialects, stress is not marked in the standard orthography and Euskaltzaindia provides only general recommendations for a standard placement of stress, basically to place a high-pitched weak stress on the second syllable of a syntagma, and a low-pitched even-weaker stress on its last syllable, except in plural forms where stress is moved to the first syllable.
This scheme provides Basque with a distinct musicality that differentiates its sound from the prosodical patterns of Spanish. Some Euskaldun berriak with Spanish as their first language tend to carry the prosodical patterns of Spanish into their pronunciation of Basque, e.g. pronouncing nire ama as nire áma, instead of as niré amà.

Morphophonology

The combining forms of nominals in final vary across the regions of the Basque Country. The can stay unchanged, be lowered to an, or it can be lost. Loss is most common in the east, while lowering is most common in the west. For instance, buru, "head", has the combining forms buru- and bur-, as in buruko, "cap", and burko, "pillow", whereas katu, "cat", has the combining form kata-, as in katakume, "kitten". Michelena suggests that the lowering to is generalised from cases of Romance borrowings in Basque that retained Romance stem alternations, such as kantu, "song" with combining form kanta-, borrowed from Romance canto, canta-.

Vocabulary

Through contact with neighbouring peoples, Basque has adopted many words from Latin, Spanish, and Gascon, among other languages. There are a considerable number of Latin loans, for example: lore, errota, gela, gauza.

Writing system

Basque is written using the Latin script including ñ and sometimes ç and ü. Basque does not use Cc, Qq, Vv, Ww, Yy for words that have some tradition in this language; nevertheless, the Basque alphabet does include them for loanwords:
The phonetically meaningful digraphs dd, ll, rr, ts, tt, tx, tz are treated as pairs of letters.
All letters and digraphs represent unique phonemes. The main exception is when l and n are preceded by i, that in most dialects palatalises their sound into and, even if these are not written. Hence, Ikurriña can also be written Ikurrina without changing the sound, whereas the proper name Ainhoa requires the mute h to break the palatalisation of the n.
H is mute in most regions, but it is pronounced in many places in the northeast, the main reason for its existence in the Basque alphabet.
Its acceptance was a matter of contention during the standardisation process because the speakers of the most extended dialects had to learn where to place these h's, silent for them.
In Sabino Arana's alphabet, digraphs and were replaced with ĺ and ŕ, respectively.
A typically Basque style of lettering is sometimes used for inscriptions.
It derives from the work of stone and wood carvers and is characterised by thick serifs.

Number system used by millers

Basque millers traditionally employed a separate number system of unknown origin. In this system the symbols are arranged either along a vertical line or horizontally. On the vertical line the single digits and fractions are usually off to one side, usually at the top. When used horizontally, the smallest units are usually on the right and the largest on the left.
The system is, as is the Basque system of counting in general, vigesimal. Although the system is in theory capable of indicating numbers above 100, most recorded examples do not go above 100 in general. Fractions are relatively common, especially.
The exact systems used vary from area to area but generally follow the same principle with 5 usually being a diagonal line or a curve off the vertical line. Units of ten are usually a horizontal line through the vertical. The twenties are based on a circle with intersecting lines. This system is no longer in general use but is occasionally employed for decorative purposes.

Examples

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

''Esklabu erremintaria''

General and descriptive grammars

General reviews of the theories