Basque, A Language Isolate

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Peggy. I’m from Idaho, and I had a question about the Basque language.

Okay.

I have a brother-in-law who is Basque, and I have been kind of drug into the whole Basque culture around Idaho.

And Idaho has a very large Basque community.

And so I found it pretty fascinating that the language is considered quite ancient and is not related to any of the countries around them in Spain and in France.

So I wonder what your take was on it.

Well, that’s the best nutshell description I’ve heard of Basque in a while.

That’s pretty much it.

It’s what’s known as a language isolate.

Do you know this expression?

Yes, I’ve looked that up.

Yeah.

Gotcha.

So a language isolate is one that is not connected directly to the languages around it.

And it is believed that Basque predates the Indo-European languages.

That is, it was a language spoken before the people who brought all the Indo-European languages into Europe before they arrived.

And we know a little bit about its history because there are a few inscriptions on grave sites.

A lot of the place names give us clues to it.

But the strong evidence is that it is not directly connected to any of the Romance languages, although it did borrow from Latin.

It’s not connected to any of the Germanic languages, although there may be a few words that have traveled from the Germanic languages into French and then into Basque and things like that.

And so it’s a very interesting thing.

It is spoken by about 700,000 people, give or take, although almost all the speakers are bilingual.

And there are numerous dialects of it.

I think there are four major dialects of Basque.

And it’s just a very interesting curiosity, this remnants of another time, and not much is known about it and where it comes from.

Although it’s heavily studied because it’s so interesting and so unconnected to the languages around it.

Is it connected to the Celts at all? Because I heard that the people were somehow connected with the Celts, maybe the Welsh and Irish.

There are some people who have tried to propose that theory, but it doesn’t withstand scrutiny.

Some people have looked at genetic similarities between certain bodies of people and think that they found something.

Again, generally it falls apart.

There are superficial similarities between all languages in the world.

And what you need is a consistent similarity across multiple features of the language.

For example, we would expect the verbs.

If one verb is similar between languages, we would expect many of the verbs to be similar between the languages.

If there’s one word for, say, a relationship term like father or mother, we would expect many other relationship terms to be the same.

And it’s just not the case.

So I believe the evidence is clear.

There is no connection to Welsh.

There is no connection to the Celtic languages.

It’s not related to Cornish.

It’s not related to other languages spoken in France that aren’t French and so forth.

Wow.

Yeah, it is a very interesting, very interesting language.

And the Basque people themselves, I think, are very interesting with their origins.

And wasn’t there a time, too, when whoever was ruling in Spain had barred the people from speaking Basque?

Yeah, that’s a really common story across cultures.

It’s not just Spain.

But even in France, some of their regional languages were stomped out by this French need to establish a nation state with a French identity that was built upon the language and centered upon French as the common language.

So dialects spoken in Brittany are all but gone.

It’s unfortunate.

But it happened in the United States as well, and Canada, and Australia, and China.

It just happens pretty much anywhere where a nation sees its identity as being firmly attached to one language.

They almost always put in a program of stomping out the other languages.

I hear Basque food is really good, too.

Have your relatives treated you to any?

Oh, yes.

They have.

My sister has become quite the best cook.

Oh, really?

Boise has what they call a Basque block, and they have a cultural center, too.

But there are many Basque bars and restaurants in the Boise area that are preserving the heritage foods as well.

So, yeah, it’s pretty interesting.

Yeah.

Well, Peggy, thank you for telling us about all that.

We appreciate your calling.

Well, yeah.

Well, thank you for having me on the air.

My pleasure.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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