Basque - A Language of Mystery

Hello everyone, welcome to the LangFocus channel. My name is Paul. Yes, it's true, today the LangFocus channel reached 50,000 followers. It's a big day for me when I started the Channel, my goal was to have 50,000 followers. What seemed like a dream has now become a reality. We'll see how far I go. For now I have achieved my initial goal. It's really great for me, thanks for your help. Let's talk about today's topic. Let's imagine that there is a European

language

, surrounded by unrelated

language

s. There is such a language. That language is Basque. Basque? Basque is an isolated language.

It means that it has no relation to another language. It is found in Europe, but it is not an Indo-European language. He constitutes his family. It is a very different language if we compare it with Indo-European. The Basques of the Basque Country are Basque speakers. The Basque Country is a country between France and Spain, west of the Pyrenees. Not all Basque citizens speak Basque. Basque is spoken by 27% of citizens. A total of 714,135 Basque speakers out of a population of 2,648,998 inhabitants. 663,000 within the Spanish state and 51,100 in the French state. It is the official language of the Basque Country and Navarra.

It has no official status in France. The origin of Basque is a

mystery

. As I said before, it is an isolated language. It is believed that it was the last language before the arrival of the Indo-European languages. Pre-Indo-European languages ​​exist in the Caucasus, but Basque is the only one in Western Europe. It is proven that Basque comes from Aquitaine. Aquitaine was the ancient language spoken in the Pyrenees. The relationship between Aquitaine and Ibérica has been found. Some people think they are related. All of these relationships are possible because they were geographically close. It would be an influence between them.

The truth is that we do not know. Some linguists maintain that Thomas Aquinas was part of a larger language family. Within that family were the Basque languages. This family spread across most of Europe when the Indo-European languages ​​arrived. But I repeat: we do not know. Others say that there is a relationship between Basque and other pre-Indo-European languages. Among them are the Caucasian languages. That's right, we don't know! One thing we know is that the Basques are descendants of ancient farmers. They were isolated for thousands of years. It was probably because the Basque Country is mountainous. The lack of interesting resources would also have contributed to the lack of invasion.

This isolation would probably have helped their language survive and develop into today's Basque. It is clear that Latin also had an influence. And that other romances also had influence throughout the centuries. But Basque has not disappeared, as other languages ​​have. Basque was the unified language in the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages it was divided into dialects, due to the administrative and political division. Although they have been ruled by foreign regimes for centuries, the Basques remained isolated. The language was also isolated. When Francisco Franco took power in Spain in 1939, the use of Basque was severely punished.

Franco wanted to integrate all of Spain into Castilian culture. It was forbidden to speak Basque in schools and in public. He was banned from the media and public services. This caused a notable loss of speakers. This is the main reason why today only 27% of Basque citizens speak. In the 1960s this prohibition was changed. Schools were allowed to learn Basque. It began to be used again in education and the publishing industry. This facilitated the creation of a united Basque language. Euskaltzaindia created United Basque. The goal was to make it an easy-to-understand model for speakers who used dialects.

There are five dialects: Biscayan or Western, Guipuzcoan or Central, Nafar-Lapur, Navarrese and Zubero in France. These dialects belong to the territories of the Basque Country, but do not correspond 100% to the current ones. Depending on the distance, the ability to understand between dialects varies. It is more difficult to understand each other between specific dialects. This is where the united Basque has its place. What is Basque like? Her vocabulary has been influenced by her romances. But if we look at the structure, it has no relation to the Romance or Indo-European languages. Basque has 12 grammatical cases. This is not at all unusual among Indo-European languages.

But it has a case called "Ergative". This means that there is a special form of the noun when it is a subject and has a transitive verb. It means that it has a direct object. That ergative adds a "k" to the name. In addition to the ergative, it also has the absolutive; It is for non-transitive verbs. It means that it has no direct object. In that case there is no ending at the end of the name. Let's look at some phrases. This means: "the child has fallen in the street." If we analyze the phrase word by word, we can see the different structure of Basque.

The article is finally here. In the next word the article "a" is where the "n" is. Crazy means an action that happened. The auxiliary verb comes after the main verb. As you can see, Basque is completely different from the Indo-European languages. It is also different from the languages ​​I have studied. But it seems quite logical and systematic. It would be a shame to lose such a different and unique language. Basque is the language that connects us with the ancient history of Europe. Although the number of Basque speakers has decreased in recent centuries, many efforts are made to strengthen and expand the language in Spain (?).

Let's see if they continue with that strength in France as well. Thanks for watching the LangFocus channel. And I want to thank my Patreon followers. You are awesome, I love you. Thanks also to everyone who helps me in other ways. For those of you who create subtitles or do other work. Don't forget our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages. I'm there too and it's a good opportunity to be with you. I post new information there. Thanks for looking and have a nice day.