Basque language


Basque is the language spoken by the Basque people, who live in northern Spain and the adjoining area of southwestern France. The Standard Basque name for the language is euskara; other dialectal forms are euskera, eskuara and üskara. Although it is geographically entirely surrounded by Indo-European languages, it is believed to be a language isolate.

History and classification

The ancestors of Basques are among the ancient inhabitants of Europe, and their origins are still unknown as are the origins of their language itself. Many scholars have tried to link Basque to Etruscan, African languages, Caucasian languages and so on, but most scholars see Basque as a language isolate. It was spoken long before the Romans brought Latin to the Iberian Peninsula.

Geographic distribution

The region in which Basque is spoken is known as the Basque Country, or Euskal Herria in Basque.

Official status

Basque holds official language status in the Basque regions of Spain: the full Basque Country and some parts of Navarre. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the local charter of the Basque-colonized Ojacastro valley (Rioja) allowed the inhabitants to use Basque in legal processes.

Dialects

There are six main Basque dialects, comprising Bizkaian, Gipuzcoan, High Navarran, and Low Navarran (in Spain) and Labourdin and Souletin (in France). The dialect boundaries do not match political boundaries. One of the first scientific studies of Basque dialects, in particular the auxiliary verb forms, was made by Louis-Lucien Bonaparte (a nephew of Napoleon).

Derived languages

There is now a unified version of Euskara called Batua ("unified" in Basque), which is the language taught in schools. Batua is based largely on the Gipuzkoa regional dialect. In the 16th century, Basque sailors mixed Basque words with a European Atlantic pidgin in their contacts with Iceland. Several travelling professional groups of Castile used Basque words in their secret jargons: examples are the gacería, the mingaña and the Galician fala dos arxinas.

Grammar

Basque has some grammatical forms unusual in Europe, such as the ergative case, which forces the addition of a -k to the subject when it has a transitive verb. The auxiliary verb also reflects the number of the direct object, so the auxiliary verb can contain a lot of information (about the subject, the number of direct object, if it is singular or plural, and the indirect object). Among European languages, this system (inflection of the auxiliary) is only found in Basque and some Caucasian languages. For example, in the phrase: :''Martinek egunkariak erosten dizkit'' which means "Martin buys the newspapers for me", Martin-ek is the subject (more precisely, an ergative), so it has the -k ending. Egunkariak has an -ak ending which marks plural object (plural absolutive, to be exact). The verb is erosten dizkit, in which erosten is a kind of gerund ("buying") and the auxiliary dizkit indicates: Basque distinguishes between laminal sibilants ('''z''', tz) where friction occurs across the blade of the tongue (like in a French or English s), and apical sibilants ('''s''', ts) where friction occurs at the tip of the tongue (like in a Castilian s). It also features palatal sibilants ('''x''', tx), sounding like English sh and ch.
Palatal sounds (plosive: tt /c/, dd /J\\/; sibilant: x /S/, tx /tS/; nasal: ñ /J/; lateral: ll /L/) are typical of diminutives, which are used frequently in child language and motherese (mainly to show affection rather than size). E.g., 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 dialects of Basque exhibit a derived palatalization effect in which coronal onset consonants are changed into the palatal counterpart after the high, front vowel [i]. For example, the [n] in [egin] (to act) becomes a palatal [ñ] when the suffix -a is added, changing /egina/ to [egiña] (the action).
Letter j is pronounced as [j], [j\\], [J\\], [Z], [S] or [x] according to region ([x] is typical of the Spanish Basque Country). The vowel system is the same as Spanish for most speakers, namely /a, e, i, o, u/. It is thought that Spanish took this system from Basque. Speakers of the Souletin dialect also have a sixth, front rounded vowel, represented in writing by ü but represents /2/ much like a German ö, rather than a German ü or French u /y/.
Basque features great dialectal variation in stress, from a weak pitch-accent in the central dialects to a marked stress in some outer 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 (mainly plurals from other forms). E.g., basóà ("the forest", absolutive case) vs. básoà ("the glass", absolutive case; a borrowing from Spanish vaso); basóàk ("the forest", ergative case) vs. básoàk ("the glass", ergative case) vs. básoak ("the forests" or "the glasses", absolutive case). Given its great deal of variation among dialects, stress is not marked in the standard orthography and Euskaltzaindia only provides general recommendations for a standard placement of stress, basically to place a high-pitched weak stress (weaker than that of Spanish, let alone that of English) 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 which sets its sound apart from the prosodical patterns of Spanish (which tends to stress the second-to-last syllable). Euskaldunberris ("new Basque-speakers", i.e. second-language Basque-speakers) with Spanish as their first language tend to carry the prosodical patterns of Spanish into their pronunciation of Basque, giving rise to a much despised decaffeinated pronunciation; e.g., pronouncing nire ama ("my mom") as nire áma (- - ´ -), instead of as niré amà (- ´ - `).

Vocabulary

By contact with neighbouring peoples, Basque has borrowed words from Latin, Spanish, French, Gascon etc. Some studies claim that half of its words come from Latin, but phonetic evolution has made many of them appear nowadays as if they were native words, e.g. lore ("flower", from florem), gela ("room", from cellam).

Writing system

Basque is written using the Latin alphabet.

Phrases

Basic phrases

Advanced phrases

See also

Grammar

Dictionaries

References

Category:Isolated languages Category:Languages of France Category:Languages of Spain Category:Synthetic languages Category:Basque ca:Basc de:Baskische Sprache als:Baskisch et:Baski keel es:Euskera eo:Eŭska lingvo eu:Euskara fr:Basque nl:Baskisch ja:バスク語 pl:Język baskijski pt:Basco ro:Limba bască fi:Baskin kieli sv:Baskiska zh:巴斯克語

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