Fun fact, the city Boise Idaho where i used to live has the largest Basque population outside of Spain. There’s a Basque Quarter near downtown and plenty of Basque restaurants and flags.
@@Benefartamemiahaha, smarty-pants! 😝... I'm sure they meant, "outside of Euskal Herria" ("País de Vasco"/"Pays du Basque"), not just Spain. I can affirm, there are a lot of Basque folks in Idaho and Nevada, and that's a fact! They have bumps on the backs of their heads, and many of them have a rare blood type (I forget what kind)... They love garlic and Jai Alai and wine and Baby Jesus, and the women are especially strong; I swear, they have thicker skulls and bones then other Europeans, and they live to be REALLY old.
The fun thing about Basque is that it's making a come back. There are more basque speakers today than there were 50 years ago as recent reforms have standardized the language to make it easier for young people to learn it. In the past, it wasn't a single unified language, but a collection of dialects not unlike other minority languages.
Also worth mentioning that those 50 years roughly coincide with the end of fascist rule in Spain that saw the violent suppression of not only political opposition but regional cultures and languages. Let’s not forget that it was Basque separatists who singlehandedly ended Franco’s line of succession.
Oh, so they finally managed to unify the language? The last update I had was that they're trying, but just can't come to a solution because Basque dialects are so different that every standard would be vastly different to some dialects, meaning that some people were always angry about every suggestion.
@@Besthinktwice Wikipedia says the opposite. The article "Standard Basque" says: Research by the Euskaltzaindia shows that Basque is growing most in the areas where euskara batua has been introduced and taught in preference of local dialects.
My parents had a basque children's book that they "read" to me when I was a kid. Turns out they just made up a new story each time based on the pictures.
Basque isn't just difficult because it's not related to French or Spanish (or any Indo-European language), but because of its grammar: nouns don't have gender, but the second person has masculine/feminine distinctions (for informal speech); it uses auxiliary verbs which mark one or two or three arguments, and few verbs conjugate synthetically; its noun case system is as detailed as Hungarian (an unrelated language with 25+ cases); it has a feature called "ergativity" which means that it marks the subject of direct object verbs differently from the subject of indirect object or no object verbs. At least if you can pronounce Castillian Spanish or Aranés or Catalan, you can do okay pronouncing Basque as their sounds are similar. But it's truly a wonderful and intriguing language, and I'm glad it's survived and is starting to be resurgent.
One thing I'd like to know is why the pronunciation is so similar to Spanish. Has it always been this way? I went to Guernica and in the museum I saw a video of this amazing 100 year old lady who spoke a basque dialect. It sounded a little bit like Spanish, but not as much as when the younger generations speak it. Has the standardization process involved the pronunciation as well? Was it just my impression?
Basque it is not odd at all because of its structure. It is just an agglutinative language, such as the unrelated Japanese, Suomi or Hungarian. What makes it special is that it is among the few non indoeuropean languages within europe, and the presumed aged of its ancestor, which is believed to predate all living European languages. Regarding the Ergative, Navajo also posses it, and many other interesting features absent on Basque. The vowel ser is just the same as in Spanish, so pretty reduced and easy to master. Hungarian is way more challenging with so many phonemes. Verb conjugation could be considered infinite, as there are so many different variants among dialects or even particle placement alteration, which also occurs with nouns.
I speak Basque and it is my native language. The fun thing about basque and a reason why it is so hard to learn is that cities that are even 5km apart have different words for the same things. And before Basque was unified (relatively lately) basque were around 7 versions of the same language in a very small space. This is part of the reason I have labeled it the freestyle language.
@AlazarWanderer I don't really know the meaning of Eusk but I have a theory. We call our language Euskera where "era" means "the way to do" it makes sense for Eusk to mean something because Euskal Herria is what we call the basque country. With this though, I could have found a pattern. For Spanish we use Gaztelera where the "era" is visible here as well but the begining is for how we call the Spanish language which comes from the name of the Spanish region castilla and maybe the word castellano (another Spanish word for referring to the language Spanish). By this logic if we follow the pattern maybe Eusk is just the name our ancestors used to call the place they lived in. It must have a meaning as well as castilla has in Spanish (similar to the word Castillo which means castle) but I couldn't find one and I wasn't taught about it.
@AlazarWanderer Yes I am. Era can be used alone as well. For example saying "Era honetara egingo dut" whch means "I'm going to do it this way" is correct. There are other ways to say this as well like "Horrela egingo dut" but both are correct to say or at least I've heard both of them being used. Btw, if you are curious and want to look up words in Euskera you can in elhuyar hiztegia and if you want to translate sentences the best translator is the neuronal translator in the page Euskadi .eus
That's the sort of thing that happened with Native American languages, & is mostly because the speakers of so many different dialects across a wide region got shoved together in one, little, tiny area.
Bai, ere hemen Kroazian gu daukagu oso asko dialekti, bakoitza isola dauka bost dialeki bainan gu denok hitz egin dugu standard kroaziara. Gora gore hitzakunak.
Egia da hori, behin joan ginen lagun batzuekin Dinamarkara oporrak igarotzera eta ez genuen nahi beste Espaniatarrekin topo egitea, horregatik Euskeraz hasi ginen hitzegiten (Euskara zatar bat, 3 urte edo daramagulako erabili gabe, batxilleratoa eta ikastola izanda Euskara hitzegiteko lekua eta) eta beste bikote batekin topo egin genuen, Gipuzkoakoak ziren. Vascos por el mundo-tan bezala sentitu ginen jsjsjs
The majority of languages are like this. There are thousands of languages but outside of the top 50, or definitely the top 100, there are very few speakers.
I love to use Basque and Finnish as examples of language isolates & how to explain language families. Basque has influences on Spanish too like the surname Salazar.
Basque languages use to be much more widely spoken. In Roman times a large area of South-Western France was Basque. The Romans called the people Vascones from which we get the name Basque and also the name of the region Gascony.
Romans didn't invented that name. As they did with a lot of other tribes, they just latinized the name the locals named those people. They wer called basques way before the Romans, and yes basque or basque-like languages were most probably spoken on all the pyrenees, and Iberian or proto-iberian south from there, both languages may have been related.
The name was invented by the Celts, they call them "barscunes", that means "mountain people". The Romans came and latinized it, creating the word "vascones".
_Vascones_ were the inhabitants of present day Navarre (Spain), and that's where the term "Basque" comes from; meanwhile the area in the south of France were some Proto-Basque variant was spoken belonged to the _Aquitani,_ according to Roman descriptions. That's where the current French region of Aquitaine got its name from. Finally, the area of the Basque Country autonomous community in Spain was the territory of the _Varduli, Caristii_ and _Autrigones._ None of these names has been preserved until today but it is assumed that they were also speakers of Proto-Basque.
It would've been amazing if the story about the Devil learning Basque had been featured in "Lucifer": Lucifer explivitly states that he speaks every language (bc obviously, bc he's the Devil), so it would've been amazing if he'd said: "Well, except for Basque, that is."
@@szymonbaranowski8184, because he's the Devil. The Devil whispers in everyone's ear to make them sin. Also, in the show, being the warden of Hell, he has to be able to understand and talk to all his prisoners.
The funny thing about Euskera, is that Castillian is throughly influenced by it. So, the ancient language not only managed to not be overran by Latin, but also managed to shape the most widely spoken modern descendant of Latin.
Exactly! Modern Castilian phonology is believed to be an influence of Basque. Castilian evolved from Latin in the areas bordering the Basque speaking territories, and has a very similar phonetic inventory, especially regarding vowels.
One thing to note is that Basque used to be more widespread thousands of years ago. There's a lot of place names and documents that prove the presence of Basque in La Rioja and the Aragonese Pyrenees in the middle ages, and the name Val d'Aran, the occitan speaking, Northwestern region of Catalonia, is thought to come from the basque word Aran, meaning valley. Even more interesting, the Gascon dialect of occitan, spoken in the region south of the Garonne river (except from the places where Basque is still spoken), is the most divergent of all, and us thought to be so due to a previous Basque substrate, since many of their characteristics are explained from a basque influence and shared with other neighbors of basque, most proto basque lithic engravings have been found there, and the romans noted that the ppls inhabiting the region where different from their Celtic neighbours
Aranese and Castilian (Spanish) both share the loss of Latin F in many (not all) words....replacing F with H. Something that is theorized to be from Basque influences Filius Hilh Hijo
@@SəvAll of the Gascon (Aranese included) dialect changed F for H. Related with Bask/Wask/Guask? Perhaps? Castilian related to latinized basque/euskera? Sure! (Specially for birthplace).
@@jaumejoseoranies7948 interesting.....just listed Aranese as that's the only Gascon sub-dialect I have any knowledge of lol I know the other Occitan varieties use F though. 🤔🤔🤔
Even more to the east, we can finde the cerdanya comarca with plenty of basque placenames like Ur, Llo, Eina or even further east Nyer and Soanyes or even more to the east Bassegoda. We even can sustain coastal names like Estrac. Toponomy is enough to prove that basque and Iberian were the same language or very related so we can extend Basque into half of Spain and Gasconha
I tried learning Basque once. The thing I found the most challenging was this unique gimmick that is language possesses, which is the copular verb at the end of the sentence. Although copular verb exist in various Indian languages as well, the Basque copular verb is a lot more dense. A tiny word alone can carry the tense, the subject, the object, and yet, there's no simple formula for learning it. A sentence like "eman nion" means I have given it to him, where "eman" literally means to give, and "nion" denotes all the rest. I asked my Basque friends for help, and they have given me what they call the "Almighty chart" where all verb inflections are stored in a gargantuan chart 😂
Omg yes, conjugations are a nightmare and you always need the god chart or get used to hearing the verbs "right". Aditz taula is the nightmare of many Basque children xD
Hahaha native Basque here, I can confirm that the infamous verb table at the end of every Basque school textbook was a scary sight, but it was very helpful once you learnt to read it properly.
The word for right in Spanish "derecha" comes from Latin, but the word for left "izquierda" comes from Basque. I remember reading that the original Latin-derived word for left might have fallen out of use due to taboos about left-handedness.
I've long used "Lurra" as the name for the alternate-Earth that forms the background for some of my characters. It's the Basque word for "Earth." I chose it because it sounded a bit like "Terra" without actually being that. Was neat finding out why the language is such an outlier!
@@Ggdivhjkjl What is interesting about the moon, in Basque, the word is "Ilargi" which means "death+light" (Il+argi) , the ancient Basques knew that the moon was not a _source_ of light, but _reflecting_ the Sun's light. The modern word for "photo" is "Argazkia" which means "with light", just like the greek meaning (photos + graphé = drawing with light)
@@maozedong8370 Thanks. My story-writing times are a bit behind me, alas, but they were fun back in the days of the collaborative-fiction website The Nice and The Master Zen-Dao Meow forums and webcomic in particular. Sadly, both are long out of service.
I am a toponomyst in my free time. The basque language once extended from the entire pyrinees. There are areas of catalonia entirely settled with basque named towns. Even the country of Andorra comes from basque: composed by Andi- (flourishing, fulfilling, expanding) and -iturria (source of water, fountain), so basically named after thermal waters. There is a constant fashion to deny that iberian oanguage and basque were the same or very related, maybe they want to avoid certain ideas like basque being the foundation of spain. But there are just too mqny evidences. The greeks named iberia after the Ebrus river, a name that heard in its delta by the locals, the iberians. In basque the word for rives is "ibai". Even the tartessos were probably very closely related, or at least they coexisted with basco-iberian colonies (impossible as the iberians lived with a tribal lifestyle)
This need to be better known. And from my time in history (although I moved to philosophy as an academic), basque being the foundation of Spain is not as far fetched as it seems, for a lot more reasons than "just" linguistics and toponyms.
There's a hypothesis that says Ebro comes from "ibai+bero" (river+hot/warm), because at one point during the Ice Age it was the only river around that wasn't frozen.
19th century nationalism and 20th century wars have introduced many taboos in Europe. Here are some things we don't talk about: Czechia and western Poland have been built on German laws. Austria is very Slavic, but so is Bavaria. Greece isn't genetically different from the Balkans *at all*. Alsace and Lorraine are more German than French. Ukraine leans towards Europe rather than Russia due to the former Polish administration (occupation?).
France officially doesn't recognise Euskara, or any other indigenous language except French. It's the only country in Europe which refuses to recognise any minority language.
@@fritoss3437 Ikastolak do exist in France, but they do _not_ get any state support. There is more financial support coming from the Euskadi (the Basque Autonomous Region) government across the border, as well as funding provided by local organizations and communities themselves.
Honestly, I doubt they'd have any idea what they were hearing, and so wouldn't care unless they were anti-immigrant in general. The anti-Spanish thing has more to do with Americans not wanting to admit that their country is heavily influenced by Hispanic languages and culture and less to do with not understanding the language. Although now that I've typed that - the number of stories about people overhearing Deneh and demanding the "mexican" go "back where they came from" makes me suspect our hypothetical angry American would just assume Basque was Spanish...
@@perceivedvelocity9914 Not speaking for the OP, but for my part I didn't mean to imply that *all* or even *most* Americans have an issue with Spanish. That said, I have personal experience with the fact that *some* Americans are in denial about how their country is functionally bilingual, and lash out angrily when confronted with that fact.
As a child my grandmother and my dad used to speak to me in Euskera but unfortunately they both passed away when I was very young and my mother never used the language so I forgot all I knew. A few months ago I went to my ancestral village in Tuyo, Álava, and what a treat it was; I met some family members and the most emotive moment when I went to the small cemetery i and could read on the stones names long forgotten. I found my grandpa and an uncle who carried my same name. I stayed therefor a while taking to them and feeling them around me. A beautiful memory that will stay with me forever.
@@panterauntera77771 interest it i didn’t know that , I have met many people with the last name and one of them told me it a Basque last name , I don’t know since all my Basque last names on my family tree are extremely rare and I don’t have any Vasquez on my family tree there’s only one is by marriage not blood related. Thanks for the info , you always learn new things .
@@DeReAntiquait actually list accomplishments by Basques , history and even food recipes. Did you know two of the ships that were used by Colombo to “discover “ America were actually built by Basques , they also haunted whales almost to extinction and many of the people who started the Independence movement in Latin American from Spain were of Basque decent.
@@DeReAntiqua I read you other comments , you called this video nonsense when he stated many things that been researched . Just because you weren’t aware or didn’t know many things about Basques doesn’t make them nonsense or untrue, I have met many people who don’t even know what a Basque is or where is located when in reality if you think about they were the original Iberians . Many historians believe they the Basques been in the Iberian peninsula for more than 9000 years .
Another fun fact: Spain is one of the countries with most blood donors in the world, and the Basque Country's public healthcare is one of the best among the autonomous communities
There is a theory talking about the native Japanese, the Ainu and their possible relation with the basques, idk how probable is that but I found the connection very interesting
My wife is Basque and grew up in Vitoria, the capital of the Basque Country, her grandfather is one of those monoglots. I can speak Spanish and English but don't understand or even attempt to understand Euskara. Such a unique and amazing culture. I loved spending many months there! Gora Euskal Herria Askatuta!
"Handi" is actually "big" , Handia is "the big" the -a at the end represents "the". "mutil" = boy , "mutila" = the boy; "argi" = light , "argia" = the light, etc. Just one of the errors the video producer has made.
I went on exchange in Donostia (San Sebastián), and my host father primarily spoke Basque. He and I spoke about the same amount of Spanish, and had a really fun time because of it - sometimes we could have conversations in incoherent Spanish that the two of us understood but completely confused his wife.
According to Antonio Tovar, the name could have been from an exonym of entirely Proto-Indo-European origin given to the Basques by earlier Indo-Europeans inhabiting Basque country, based on the name "ba(r)scunes" found inscribed on coins matching the territory and period. The name would have been comprised of: - the root Proto-Indo-European *bʰers- (“tip, point, top”) - the suffix *kon- - the consonant stem suffix *-es indicating the name as a nominative plural Thus, the name would have meant something like "the high (proud) people."
As an afficionate i dislike the theory. Not only because it is using reverse analysis which very rarely will give a correct origin but also because it casually brings up the sentimental component. In fact, Vasco and Eusko are not that different, this is a popular theory. But the thing is that the original form of the castilian word Vasco is Vascón, visibly the same name as the Gascon people of Occitania. In my opinion Vascón and Gascon names must come from the bame of a city because of that -o(n) ending, same as Tarraco(n), Barkeno(n), Baetulo(n), Ieso(n), Berdun, Irurtzun, Irun, Baio(n) or even we could incloude Cascasso(n) and Narbo(n). Just like Armenia was naned after Armanvir. Another theory i like is thinking that Basque is an exonym a nearby tribe gave them. Basque can be related to the word Baso- meaning precipice, steep, but also forestry. It might come from a navarrese or aquitanian tribe (both basque) to the tribe thay inhabitated in the boarther of theese two, in foresty steeps
@@unanecin fact, "The ones from the forest" in modern Basque would be "Basokoak" which sounds quite similar to "Basque" even though the older version of both words would certainly sound quite different to their modern counterparts.
@@thequantumcat184 baso has been attested as unaltered for at least a couple millenia. Basque is a very stable language. Basque used to reduce many vowels when combining words, Baso would probably be reduced as Bas-, and Baskoak is a great word to start with. Still i don't know what the component -koak means (?)
basque here! even the language can be a bit “hard” for us sometimes, since there are a lot of “rules” and charts you have to learn to speak it correctly. you can search “nor-nori-nork taulak” ( I don’t even know how to translate it but imagine if you had to learn more than 30 different ways to say “x gave y to z” ) and soon you’ll see an enormous one and that there are more things ( nor-nori, nor-nork… ) that are also required to speak the language correctly
I like that story about the devil which also implies that the Basque people have not been corrupted as other people. Funny to have a folk-tale that is a joke about how difficult your language is, but also implies you are an exceptionally good people.
i happen to know many people of Basque origin, and I can tell they're loyal, stoic, hard-working, good-humoured, resilient, and a lot more... Maybe the legend's right ; D
In a library I worked in there was an old Spanish book, a Basque grammar, called "El impossible vencido. Arte de la lengua bascongada" (sic) by Manuel de Larramendi. The title means: "The impossible (thing) defeated. Art of the basque language."
I came to know about the Basque people and Euskera when I'm researching Filipino Geneology and migration. I found out that there are prominent Filipinos of Basque origin here in The Philippines, what made them stand out for me is their names: Ayala, Aboitiz, Elizalde, Ynchausti, Aranetas, etc. These folks speaks in Filipino, English, and Spanish, not sure if they still speak Euskera though. And still are, of course, Filipinos despite their origin. However, some of these clans, specifically the Ynchausti became a bridge between Filipinos and the Basque People encouraging cultural exchanges and promoting the teaching of Basque History and university exchanges in The Philippines. Jai-alai, a basque sport was also once played in The Philippines. I don't know if there are still players of Jai-alai in The Philippines though as it's not that famous. It's just interesting as I suppose most Basque immigrants came to the Americas and not in Asia. And that most Filipinos probably don't know about them because most people here just clump everyone into one, Spaniards.
omg not trying to sound like a meddler, but something similar happened to me jajsjdj, but in my case i’m from the north side of México and i found out my accent, culture and vocabulary is heavily influenced by Euskera and Basque culture, i never thought filipino culture had basque influences as well considering the geographic distance, the more you know
You also have Basque names in your geography such as Legazpi City , Urdaneta, Gonzaga, and other places. It was Elcano who completed Magellan's voyage , a Basque navigator. There is more Basque influence in the Philippines than meets the eye.
@@rottengal no worries! That's very interesting! Post-colonial nations like Mexico and The Philippines have interesting culture. Basque influences is just one of them. And upon digging deeper, I found out more Basque influences. 😂 And here's the interesting thing since you are Mexican, there are Filipinos of native american origin as well mostly from Mexican Tlaxcalan migrants brought by the conquistadores during the conquest of the islands. And vice versa, there are many Mexicans with filipino origin from Acapulco to Guerrero if I'm not mistaken due to the Galleon trade. Today, Mexican influence can be seen and heard here. We have so many Nahuatl loan words such as palenque, tiangue, sayote, atsuete and even our term for mother and father, "nanay" and "tatay" are from Nahuatl. We also eat Tamale but made with rice masa and covered with Banana leaves instead of corn husks and corn masa. In exchange, Filipinos brought mango, tuba, manton de manila, coconut distilling, etc. It's very interesting to say the least. 😂
@@hijodelsoldeoriente so that explains the native american i found in my ancestry report! (I’m filipino My family has lived in the philippines for like forever, and the only non filipino ancestry we know of are spanish and chinese). I was sooo confused, wondering how the heck that got there lol. Fascinating! Thanks for the info ☺️ My brother found out that his native american blood was specifically amazonian though, would you know anything about that?
I'm an admirer of the amazing Mondragon workers' cooperative in Basque county. It is the largest successful workers' cooperative in the world. -Dave from Chicago, USA
What happened to a lot of research done about 30-40 years ago connecting Basque language to Georgian (Kartuli)? Georgia also used to be called Iberia (Eastern part of it, see the map of Roman empire just above Armenia at 6:47), so two Iberian languages were showing some semblance, some common words (roots), etc.
Vasco is one of the most common origins for uruguayans. There is a neighborhood in Montevideo called Euskalherria. “Porfiado como Vasco” and “aclarando dijo un Vasco mientras le echaba agua a la leche” are 2 common phrases en Uruguay.
I still find it fascinating / odd that Basque managed to survive extinction compared to other languages in Europe pre-PIE spread. Like, it shares some etymologies with other European languages, but that's more late-stage cross-influence than descendance. One thing it has on other minor languages is that, despite a smaller population of speakers in some cases, the resources to actually learn the language are far greater. Online translators are it or miss, but there's a dictionary and a grammar book to get start.
Although the video just barely mentions the Finn-Ugric languages but the same can be said about them too, like Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian and Saami (Lapp). Or even more so as they were in the epicentre of migration.
Some examples: Good morning: Egun on Good night: Gabon Hello: Kaixo Goodbye: Agur Opened: Zabalik Closed: Itxita Thank you: Eskerrik asko Please: Mesedez Yes Bai No: Ez Good: Ona Bad: Txarra
I thought Mongolian, Korean, and Japanese are thought to have common roots? I can say that Mongolian has the same sounds and tempo of Korean to a non linguist. Obviously different words (other than Mandarin loan words common to both). No idea about the structure. Japanese and Korean also share many similar “sounds.”
I remember learning about the Basque culture one day in middle school World History class, sort of like a bonus lesson on top of the main one we were learning that week. I remember we watched a video about it, where they showcased them singing some folk songs in the Basque language, as part of showcasing how their community is unique and pridefully tied to their history despite not having a country of their own. I'm French, and find it interesting how there's several diverse cultures near us, even within our own borders. I guess that's just typical for Europe as a whole, though.
There is a whole Basque community in the southwest of France, known as Pays Basque in French and just Iparralde "(the) North" in Basque. I encourage you to visit this region, it's a very beautiful and unique part of France that still fights to maintain its proud Basque culture in spite of the French centralist policies. Also, the most beautiful Basque dialect in my opinion is spoken in one of its deepest valleys, the Souletin (Xiberera in Basque) dialect.
To be clear, Basque is usually classified into its own Vasconian language tree. Ancient Iberian is sadly completely gone having been replaced by Latin language by the 2nd century AD. There are similarities between the numeral system but the depth of this relationship is greatly contentious.
Fun fact: the letter h used to be pronounced like the h in "her" in all basque dialects but it only survives in the easternmost ones nowadays and has become mute in the others.
Allistics get annoyed at the stupidest things. How can you be annoyed at someone’s voice inflection? This explains a lot though, yet another reason you guys think that autistic irregular voice inflections are “wrong”
@DiotimaMantinea-qm5yt Well I can't speak in general but only in my experience. The truth is that I practically had no idea about it until I started the subject at school because my whole environment was not exposed to it. Since I was having a hard time I needed extra help at home after school but yeah, I guess it depends on how you interpret the comment
@DiotimaMantinea-qm5yt I learned Spanish AND English at IKASTOLA (immersive basque schools). No I didn’t learn English from the streets haha I went to basque school from kindergarden until I was 16yo
Honestly, I'm disappointed about the part where you compare the age of Basque to other languages. If there's anything that learning about linguistics makes you realise is that languages have no age, and you can't really compare the age of modern languages to any other. All languages have older ancestors, and its form spoken at any single point in time is not the same as the spoken at any other point in time. In theory, modern Basque is just as different from the Proto Basque spoken 2000 years ago, as Spanish and Latin are. And Latin had a living ancestor at any point you can of in which Basque also had a living ancestor language. At best, you could say that some ancestor language of Basque has been spoken in western Europe, much, much before Latin or any ancestor of Latin.
@@DiotimaMantinea-ub6yr That sounds unexpected for an isolated language not seemingly much influenced by either French or Spanish surrounding it. Icelandic is sort of in the same boat and hasn't really changed all that much in a thousand years, even under Danish rule. Similarly, classical Arabic speakers can go back a fair bit before they really start having trouble understanding the meaning of texts. What made Basque so unstable - apart from the fact that it was only recently unified and has several dialects?
As for the part of basque being difficult to learn, i wanted to say that as a person born in the basque country myself, basque is not only difficult to learn because of unsimilarities with other languajes, but also because most young people here aren't that interested in speaking it and we're used to hear and speak spanish. Most of the time we use random words (for example, instead of using "mamá" or "madre" which are ways to say mom in spanish i use "ama" which is mom in basque) or mix spanish and basque (the way this is done depends on the person). This is in my opinion pretty sad since the basque languaje is basically a treasure that should be kept alive.
Yeah but it isn't often talked about how we learn the language forcefully since very little and without proper teachings, I know many friends who had trouble at school because they couldn't express themselves properly in Basque when writing exams or understand concepts properly. Many of them wrote their notes in Spanish to understand it better. It's pretty common for people around me to leave Euskera behind once you leave high school, the only thing about studying in Basque is the language title many jobs require
I love how the word he used to show how Basque is completely different from everything else sounds similar and can be arrived at with only a few common sound changes.
Fun fact: There's a decently sized Basque population in La Plata, near Buenos Aires. They even have their own organization for promoting Basque culture and Euskara It still baffles me how it can be easier to find resources in Buenos Aires to learn freaking Euskara than other languages, either native from Argentina (Quichua, Tehuelche, Mapuche, Guarani), european (Hungarian, italian languages (keep in mind the big italian diaspora here), greek), or asian (if its not mandarin, korean, or japanse, all i can say is GOOD LUCK.)
De hecho Quechua se estudia bastante casi al mismo nivel que Euskera. La diferencia es la reinvindicación que hacen los hablantes de euskera a nivel etnia/nacion es mucho mas diferente al del Quechua. El guarani no es bastante estudiado ya que todavia es muy hablado y palabras modernas de adoptan al diccionario. Es mas, el guaraní no tenia un abecedario moderno en si hasta hace unos cuantos años atras. Saludos
It seems to me that the word "handia" could have evolved from a common parent word it could have shared with "grand" and "grande". Considering how letters can become silent or change sounds as language evolves, such a parent word could alternatively have evolved into "grandia" or "hande".
English has only about twelve words from Welsh but Welsh has plenty from English, including the famous Welsh term car parc for any Welsh people allergic to k. Welsh also has about a thousand words borrowed from Latin including the days of the week. These imbalances are about power.
@@Joanna-il2ur I grew up with low german (or, as I like to call it, flat german... you'll get that if you know the language) and I've noticed that people who speak both low german and english invariably combine the two languages in varying degrees. Despite this, when low german speakers encountered electricity, they didn't come up with a new word for it or even borrow a word for it from another language. They just used their word for fire. My favorite low german version of an english term is shuck-ups for shocks (automotive suspension dampers).
Met a basque speaker today and was shocked to learn there's less than 1 million speakers in the world! Definitely would love to check out the basque area in Boise, ID!
Ergativity is what makes basque different and diffucult from european languages It is the only language in europe with ergativity, with ergativity already being a rare feature in languages and it being a very difficult concept for non-native speakers to get their head around
I think many Philippine Languages of the Philippines(for example Tagalog/Filipino)are also used partially/Fully an Ergative Cases in many of their Languages spread out through the Philippine Archipelago. Abstract: This dissertation explores the question of whether Tagalog, a language of the Philippines, is an ergative language. It is claimed that Tagalog is best characterized as neither accusative nor ergative but rather as a language that is a hybrid of these two language types. Tagalog's hybrid nature is neatly captured structurally within Principle and Parameters theory using VP internal subjects. In terms of Case, Tagalog not only has nominative-absolutive Case checking and ergative Case checking but it also makes extensive use of inherent accusative Case assignment. As a result, Tagalog has both a (NOM ACC) basic transitive sentence type, like accusative languages, and a (ERG ABS) basic transitive sentence type, like ergative languages. A specific structural analysis is given for these basic sentences under an Economy approach. This analysis is extended to account for complex sentences including sentences involving morphological causatives, conjunction reduction and raising.
Ergativity is neither that difficult nor rare worldwide. It's the complete lack of lexical similarity, as well as the overall radically different grammatical structure, that make it hard for speakers of standard average European to learn. Fixating on the ergativity is not productive.
i mainly ask myself about how difficult it was to manage to translate basque into other languages, if there are no relations betwenn any other language and basque it would be extremely difficult, ofcourse, you can still point at a rock or tree and say its name in your language, but it would be extremely difficult to translate and know the meaning more abstract concepts and words
Euskara (i.e. the language spoken by the Basque people) has a noticeable lack of sounds which Neanderthals would have been unable to pronounce due to their anatomy.
Yeah, that wasn't a great example, but just a look at Basque grammar also shows us it's not related to any IE language (it's ergative-absolutive and agglutinative)
G and H often change over time. Perfect example Polish and Czech where our Gs are their Hs. Grande / Handia - dropping R is not uncommon and then you have “ND” which is identical in both words. The ending vowels can change like in Grande / Grand.
There's actually a way to see where the "euskara" or "euskera" word comes from. The old basque praised the Sun, which they called (and still call) Eguzki. Therefore, we add the "-era" (way of doing) part to it and we get Euskera, which is in some sense "the way of the Sun". "Euskadi" comes from the same root, meaning the land of the Sun ("-adi" meaning "land of" kinda). Greetings from San Sebastian ;)
2:00 Maybe not the best example. It is actually conceivable how the Latin word "grandis" could evolve into "handia". I don't know if it did but the Basque language does include a few loan words from Latin/French/Spanish and this may be one of them.
The devil claim reminds me of the Anglo Saxon Life of St Guthlac. He was a prince who became a hermit. His Life says one night the farm he and his acolytes ran in the Fens of East Anglia was attacked by devils. They knew the attackers were devils because they spoke Welsh! The author was Felix of Burgundy, who may have heard the devil/basque comparison back home.
Fun fact, when you look a genetic history, Basque people all share Indo-European dna as much as any other people around. It's quite mysterious how it survived. Main theory says that during the Indo-European migration, the men died fighting and the women had children with the invaders. The mothers, taking care of their children, made them learn the language they spoke.
That would almost impossible with Basque people before modern day medicine since Basques have the highest O negative blood population in the world and getting pregnant by non O negative would cause miscarriages there’s a reason before modern day medicine many Basques only married other Basques .
Even weirder and more perplexing than the Basque language are the speech patterns of this narrator - the identical descending cadence of every sentence, the divebombing last word with an extra vowel at the end thrown in for reasons unclear. Not sure I've heard the like of it before.
@@diego_villena it's an affectation? didn't knew about that, i guess every single Portuguese speaker has that, because in our language it's very rare to have words that don't end in a vowel, so we tend to add vowels to the end of words a lot when trying to speak English, for example we would say "speaki" instead of "speak" and "don'ti" instead of "don't". Which is also something noticed in the stereotypical Italian accent (provenient from south Italian immigrants to the USA)
people who call basque "old" are exoticising it a bit. sure it comes from a family that was once widely spoken but now doesn't have any other surviving members, and that's interesting in itself, but basque has changed as much as any other language over time. if we call basque "old" then we might as well also call spanish or english old because they are surviving lineages of proto indoeuropean
Exactly. It would be closer to the truth say that all language in the world have the same age, than affirming that Basque language is the oldest Europe, simply because yes.
@@UNKNOWN666studios you are just repeating words you heard, but you don't think at all. Languages are like water, with time, they change, they mutate and flow, they are not static. When a language is static, it dies. Is very easy to say today, "oh look, this is the English language". But if you go back in time, was the English language 50 years ago the same as now? And 100 years ago? Was still the same English language? What about 500 years ago? Is it still the same language? And we can keep going back until we reach some kind of protoindoeuropean without ever finding the exact limit were our English language stops being English. That's because is the same language that mutated and changed with time. So take 5 minute and try to think for yourself instead of repeating the very dumb ideas most of the people repeat, like sheep. Beee beeee beeee beeee
Well, it has had much less of a shift in pronunciation than English. Go ahead and try reading some middle English, then try some Old English. It would be much easier for someone in modern times and someone from 1000 years ago to understand each other in Basque compared to English. Just like it would be easier for two people who spoke Greek a thousand years apart.. Some languages undergo a major shift, and others are much less resistant to change. The Hand of Irrulegui is just one example of how they are able to see that even when using an ancient Iberian script, they are still able to understand words that are commonly used in modern times (ie. Zoriontsu = Happy) (which itself comes from the good fortune of seeing birds...)
Albanian is part of an extinct branch of indoeuropean languages known as the 'Balkan languages' (Dacian, Thracian, Messapian, etc...), Albanian is allegedly a direct descendant of Illyrian
Was grand/grande vs handia really the best example to use? The H and French GR sounds both come from just about the same place in the mouth with the only difference in the tongue so it would be extremely easy to draw a line between the two, and the rest of the word is essentially the same. Not presuming to say that linguists are wrong about Basque being unique (it very clearly is), just that I kinda question your choice to pick this one particular word that, by coincidence, could be demonstrating an exception to it (lmao)
@@S3Kglitches True... tbh, I'm not sure how much I really trust a video about linguistics when it's being made by someone who hasn't even heard of dental fricatives
I know it's just example and professional linguists are smarter than I, but I quickly thought well grande to handia is the gr- turning to gh- then h- and the e sound turning to dipthong
@@Echo_-tx9veNot quite. It is silent except for a few speakers in the french basque country, where 'hasperena' is used; the h is pronounced with an inhaling sound (I was taught that it was something like that). It is present because it was previously used in some form of literary basque previous to normalization (Labortine). Additionally, 'kh' also exists but not in modern written basque. (I'm writing all of this from memory I might be completely wrong on some of the details)
2:02 as a basque, I wouldn't say that grand and handia sound completely differently. Both have the "and" part in common (so more than half the letters). It always made sense in my mind that there is a common origin for this words. I guess it might just be a coincidence.
Any chance you could add Basque subtitles to this video, on the off-chance a mono-Euskara speaker comes across it? Because THAT would be wild in itself.
5:50 the basque language was spoken in a larger area in the ancient times than it is today, around the are between the Ebro river and the cites of Bordeaux and Toulouse
Fun fact: Spanish doesn't have a /v/ sound due to Basque's influence. Also, the Spanish word for "left" (as opposed to right) is "izquierda", which comes from Basque "ezkerra". Another fun fact, albeit disconnected from the main topic: did you know that the Spanish word for "dog", which is "perro", has an unknown origin?
As many things (and they are a lot) that are the case in Spanish by influence of basque, that's not one of them. Spanish does have a plosive /b/ and a fricative /v/. It's just very subtle and lost in some accents, but not all, and in any case very recent.
Handia might not be the best word to choose if you're claiming that basque is unrelated to the latin based languages around it. Its only 2 common shifts from being extremely similar. Dropping the r and shifting a G to an H. Grandia, Gandia, Handia.
Cool video! How much influence do pre-Indo-European languages have on the later languages of Europe? Probably mainly in place-names, I would assume. Also, you tend to add an unstressed shwa at the end of many words, but not consistently. What’s the linguistics behind that?
Fortunately Basque language area is split between Spain and France. İf it were entirely within France, its fate would probably be like Breton and Occitan today.
As a Basque, I never heard that lenged about the Devil. But i'll tell you this one, which was told for ages. When two basque speakers from different dialects met, they would try to ve as brief possible or speak in Spanish, since any strain of Basque sounding different from the own one was deemed the work of the Devil! ( True Story, BTW. Not a legend at all. )
Idk if a bad choice but grande and Handia are super similar and even sound similar it’s a soft start with AND in the middle and a vowel ending all we need to do is switch the H for G and it’s basically Grande
Do you speak Basque?
no :(((((((((
Ez, ez dut
No ... Not yet but I've been contemplating of learning it.
Baiii
No
Fun fact, the city Boise Idaho where i used to live has the largest Basque population outside of Spain. There’s a Basque Quarter near downtown and plenty of Basque restaurants and flags.
I'm in northern Nevada... Lots of Bascos here too; you can actually study Euskara at UNR!
Came here to say this!
I think france has the biggest basque population after spain
@@Benefartamemiahaha, smarty-pants! 😝... I'm sure they meant, "outside of Euskal Herria" ("País de Vasco"/"Pays du Basque"), not just Spain.
I can affirm, there are a lot of Basque folks in Idaho and Nevada, and that's a fact! They have bumps on the backs of their heads, and many of them have a rare blood type (I forget what kind)... They love garlic and Jai Alai and wine and Baby Jesus, and the women are especially strong; I swear, they have thicker skulls and bones then other Europeans, and they live to be REALLY old.
@@giuseppelogiurato5718 he said outside of spain, coglione
The fun thing about Basque is that it's making a come back. There are more basque speakers today than there were 50 years ago as recent reforms have standardized the language to make it easier for young people to learn it. In the past, it wasn't a single unified language, but a collection of dialects not unlike other minority languages.
In the past it was ilegalizated by franco, when he died the lenguage slowly came back
Also worth mentioning that those 50 years roughly coincide with the end of fascist rule in Spain that saw the violent suppression of not only political opposition but regional cultures and languages. Let’s not forget that it was Basque separatists who singlehandedly ended Franco’s line of succession.
Oh, so they finally managed to unify the language? The last update I had was that they're trying, but just can't come to a solution because Basque dialects are so different that every standard would be vastly different to some dialects, meaning that some people were always angry about every suggestion.
On the other hand Native Galician speakers are decreasing tremendously
@@Besthinktwice Wikipedia says the opposite. The article "Standard Basque" says:
Research by the Euskaltzaindia shows that Basque is growing most in the areas where euskara batua has been introduced and taught in preference of local dialects.
My parents had a basque children's book that they "read" to me when I was a kid. Turns out they just made up a new story each time based on the pictures.
Thats genuinely hilarious
that sounds like such a Basque thing to do lmao
That's straight up adorable.
Were they Satanists?
@@zimrielthis is sarcasm right?
Basque isn't just difficult because it's not related to French or Spanish (or any Indo-European language), but because of its grammar: nouns don't have gender, but the second person has masculine/feminine distinctions (for informal speech); it uses auxiliary verbs which mark one or two or three arguments, and few verbs conjugate synthetically; its noun case system is as detailed as Hungarian (an unrelated language with 25+ cases); it has a feature called "ergativity" which means that it marks the subject of direct object verbs differently from the subject of indirect object or no object verbs.
At least if you can pronounce Castillian Spanish or Aranés or Catalan, you can do okay pronouncing Basque as their sounds are similar.
But it's truly a wonderful and intriguing language, and I'm glad it's survived and is starting to be resurgent.
@@explorationstlTrue, it has eighteen (I counted them.)
@@Desmaad It doesn't even have eighteen. Something like four genuine cases and the rest are just postpositions with vowel harmony.
One thing I'd like to know is why the pronunciation is so similar to Spanish. Has it always been this way? I went to Guernica and in the museum I saw a video of this amazing 100 year old lady who spoke a basque dialect. It sounded a little bit like Spanish, but not as much as when the younger generations speak it. Has the standardization process involved the pronunciation as well? Was it just my impression?
@@giuliaanichini7667 There have been hypotheses about how Basque may have influenced the pronunciation of Spanish rather than the other way around.
Basque it is not odd at all because of its structure.
It is just an agglutinative language, such as the unrelated Japanese, Suomi or Hungarian.
What makes it special is that it is among the few non indoeuropean languages within europe, and the presumed aged of its ancestor, which is believed to predate all living European languages.
Regarding the Ergative, Navajo also posses it, and many other interesting features absent on Basque.
The vowel ser is just the same as in Spanish, so pretty reduced and easy to master.
Hungarian is way more challenging with so many phonemes.
Verb conjugation could be considered infinite, as there are so many different variants among dialects or even particle placement alteration, which also occurs with nouns.
I speak Basque and it is my native language. The fun thing about basque and a reason why it is so hard to learn is that cities that are even 5km apart have different words for the same things. And before Basque was unified (relatively lately) basque were around 7 versions of the same language in a very small space. This is part of the reason I have labeled it the freestyle language.
@AlazarWanderer I don't really know the meaning of Eusk but I have a theory. We call our language Euskera where "era" means "the way to do" it makes sense for Eusk to mean something because Euskal Herria is what we call the basque country. With this though, I could have found a pattern.
For Spanish we use Gaztelera where the "era" is visible here as well but the begining is for how we call the Spanish language which comes from the name of the Spanish region castilla and maybe the word castellano (another Spanish word for referring to the language Spanish).
By this logic if we follow the pattern maybe Eusk is just the name our ancestors used to call the place they lived in. It must have a meaning as well as castilla has in Spanish (similar to the word Castillo which means castle) but I couldn't find one and I wasn't taught about it.
@AlazarWanderer Yes I am. Era can be used alone as well. For example saying "Era honetara egingo dut" whch means "I'm going to do it this way" is correct. There are other ways to say this as well like "Horrela egingo dut" but both are correct to say or at least I've heard both of them being used.
Btw, if you are curious and want to look up words in Euskera you can in elhuyar hiztegia and if you want to translate sentences the best translator is the neuronal translator in the page Euskadi .eus
That's the sort of thing that happened with Native American languages, & is mostly because the speakers of so many different dialects across a wide region got shoved together in one, little, tiny area.
Bai, ere hemen Kroazian gu daukagu oso asko dialekti, bakoitza isola dauka bost dialeki bainan gu denok hitz egin dugu standard kroaziara.
Gora gore hitzakunak.
@@thegoat9219Bai bainan hitz eskuz antzekoa da bezalkoholnih hitz euskal.
Make Basque-Icelandic pidgin great again!
Also Basque-Algonquian
@@jamespyle777Basque-Iroquois will rise again
Ís-kara?
Is that a pidgin spoken by cod fishers in the north Atlantic sea? I never knew they liked each other enough to share fishing boats...
@crnel maybe like is not the best word. There was a law in iceland until few months ago that allow you to kill a basque if you wanted to
The fact we are able to speak our language in any place of the world and be sure of nobody understanding it is priceless!
Egia da hori, behin joan ginen lagun batzuekin Dinamarkara oporrak igarotzera eta ez genuen nahi beste Espaniatarrekin topo egitea, horregatik Euskeraz hasi ginen hitzegiten (Euskara zatar bat, 3 urte edo daramagulako erabili gabe, batxilleratoa eta ikastola izanda Euskara hitzegiteko lekua eta) eta beste bikote batekin topo egin genuen, Gipuzkoakoak ziren. Vascos por el mundo-tan bezala sentitu ginen jsjsjs
The majority of languages are like this. There are thousands of languages but outside of the top 50, or definitely the top 100, there are very few speakers.
Ez ni kroaziako naiz bainan ni badakit zure hitzakunak
Don't feel like a special snowflake. Plenty of languages have this ability. And location is also very important.
gora ETA
I love to use Basque and Finnish as examples of language isolates & how to explain language families. Basque has influences on Spanish too like the surname Salazar.
So all Slytherins are Basque?
Sancho/Sanchez is an originally Basque name, too
And all those names like Echeverría/Etxeverría, Jáuregui and Aristegui
As Patrick mentioned, Finnish is related to Estonian (and much more distantly, Hungarian). Basque is more of a true isolate.
Finnish is not an isolate
Basque languages use to be much more widely spoken. In Roman times a large area of South-Western France was Basque. The Romans called the people Vascones from which we get the name Basque and also the name of the region Gascony.
Romans didn't invented that name. As they did with a lot of other tribes, they just latinized the name the locals named those people. They wer called basques way before the Romans, and yes basque or basque-like languages were most probably spoken on all the pyrenees, and Iberian or proto-iberian south from there, both languages may have been related.
The name was invented by the Celts, they call them "barscunes", that means "mountain people". The Romans came and latinized it, creating the word "vascones".
The Romans called the whole region "Aquitania" and understood that they did not speak any Gaulish there.
_Vascones_ were the inhabitants of present day Navarre (Spain), and that's where the term "Basque" comes from; meanwhile the area in the south of France were some Proto-Basque variant was spoken belonged to the _Aquitani,_ according to Roman descriptions. That's where the current French region of Aquitaine got its name from.
Finally, the area of the Basque Country autonomous community in Spain was the territory of the _Varduli, Caristii_ and _Autrigones._ None of these names has been preserved until today but it is assumed that they were also speakers of Proto-Basque.
Laid a roman language as Romans are Italian its not a spainish language basque of 3 % population in France basque the irish are
It would've been amazing if the story about the Devil learning Basque had been featured in "Lucifer": Lucifer explivitly states that he speaks every language (bc obviously, bc he's the Devil), so it would've been amazing if he'd said: "Well, except for Basque, that is."
why would he speak every language?
why even needing to know languages not just read raw thoughts?
@@szymonbaranowski8184, because he's the Devil. The Devil whispers in everyone's ear to make them sin. Also, in the show, being the warden of Hell, he has to be able to understand and talk to all his prisoners.
I wonder if the dark lord ever took the time to learn Elamite.
😂😂😂😂 that's funny 😂😂😂
Don't worry, he learned Basque just to prove you wrong.
The funny thing about Euskera, is that Castillian is throughly influenced by it. So, the ancient language not only managed to not be overran by Latin, but also managed to shape the most widely spoken modern descendant of Latin.
Exactly! Modern Castilian phonology is believed to be an influence of Basque. Castilian evolved from Latin in the areas bordering the Basque speaking territories, and has a very similar phonetic inventory, especially regarding vowels.
any examples?
@@thatguyfromthere1168 izquierda, chamarra, mochila, and so many surnames like Echeverría, García, Ochoa
@@thatguyfromthere1168 Akelarre
Chatarra
One thing to note is that Basque used to be more widespread thousands of years ago. There's a lot of place names and documents that prove the presence of Basque in La Rioja and the Aragonese Pyrenees in the middle ages, and the name Val d'Aran, the occitan speaking, Northwestern region of Catalonia, is thought to come from the basque word Aran, meaning valley.
Even more interesting, the Gascon dialect of occitan, spoken in the region south of the Garonne river (except from the places where Basque is still spoken), is the most divergent of all, and us thought to be so due to a previous Basque substrate, since many of their characteristics are explained from a basque influence and shared with other neighbors of basque, most proto basque lithic engravings have been found there, and the romans noted that the ppls inhabiting the region where different from their Celtic neighbours
Aranese and Castilian (Spanish) both share the loss of Latin F in many (not all) words....replacing F with H. Something that is theorized to be from Basque influences
Filius
Hilh
Hijo
@@SəvAll of the Gascon (Aranese included) dialect changed F for H. Related with Bask/Wask/Guask? Perhaps? Castilian related to latinized basque/euskera? Sure! (Specially for birthplace).
@@jaumejoseoranies7948 interesting.....just listed Aranese as that's the only Gascon sub-dialect I have any knowledge of lol
I know the other Occitan varieties use F though.
🤔🤔🤔
Even more to the east, we can finde the cerdanya comarca with plenty of basque placenames like Ur, Llo, Eina or even further east Nyer and Soanyes or even more to the east Bassegoda. We even can sustain coastal names like Estrac. Toponomy is enough to prove that basque and Iberian were the same language or very related so we can extend Basque into half of Spain and Gasconha
Wait... So it's the "Valley of Valley"?
I tried learning Basque once. The thing I found the most challenging was this unique gimmick that is language possesses, which is the copular verb at the end of the sentence. Although copular verb exist in various Indian languages as well, the Basque copular verb is a lot more dense. A tiny word alone can carry the tense, the subject, the object, and yet, there's no simple formula for learning it. A sentence like "eman nion" means I have given it to him, where "eman" literally means to give, and "nion" denotes all the rest. I asked my Basque friends for help, and they have given me what they call the "Almighty chart" where all verb inflections are stored in a gargantuan chart 😂
Omg yes, conjugations are a nightmare and you always need the god chart or get used to hearing the verbs "right". Aditz taula is the nightmare of many Basque children xD
The DREADED Nor-Nori-Nork table!
That's actually a very good explanation of Basque conjugation system.
Hahaha native Basque here, I can confirm that the infamous verb table at the end of every Basque school textbook was a scary sight, but it was very helpful once you learnt to read it properly.
Periodic table of verbs
Fun fact: Basque is so old that the names of several tools derive from the word for STONE/ROCK. Think about that for a moment.
I always thought it would be awesome to discover that Basque was actually a surviving Neanderthal language but that seems extremely unlikely 😞
@@ImperialAtlantisI have heard that Neanderthals couldnt really speak.
@@panzrok8701homo erectus was able to talk. Neanderthals we’re smarter than modern humans so they definitely could speak
@@panzrok8701Neanderthals almost certainly could speak. They just couldn’t pronounce every vowel modern humans can.
@@kellydalstok8900 I don't suppose there's any suspiciously missing vowels in Basque
I've heard someone say: "The mystery about Basque is not its origins, but its survival."
The word for right in Spanish "derecha" comes from Latin, but the word for left "izquierda" comes from Basque. I remember reading that the original Latin-derived word for left might have fallen out of use due to taboos about left-handedness.
do they still use number 13 or is it different from others?
The original word for left in spanish was siniestra. Its Not used to mean left anymore but its still used for Other meanings
@@szymonbaranowski8184 13 in Spanish is trece, which still comes from the Latin word for 13, tredecim.
like italian sinistra@@guillep6639
a diestra y siniestra@@guillep6639
I've long used "Lurra" as the name for the alternate-Earth that forms the background for some of my characters. It's the Basque word for "Earth." I chose it because it sounded a bit like "Terra" without actually being that. Was neat finding out why the language is such an outlier!
Writing a story huh? Sounds interesting already.
It also sounds like Luna.
Does how I named my dog, he's brown
@@Ggdivhjkjl What is interesting about the moon, in Basque, the word is "Ilargi" which means "death+light" (Il+argi) , the ancient Basques knew that the moon was not a _source_ of light, but _reflecting_ the Sun's light. The modern word for "photo" is "Argazkia" which means "with light", just like the greek meaning (photos + graphé = drawing with light)
@@maozedong8370 Thanks. My story-writing times are a bit behind me, alas, but they were fun back in the days of the collaborative-fiction website The Nice and The Master Zen-Dao Meow forums and webcomic in particular. Sadly, both are long out of service.
I am a toponomyst in my free time. The basque language once extended from the entire pyrinees. There are areas of catalonia entirely settled with basque named towns. Even the country of Andorra comes from basque: composed by Andi- (flourishing, fulfilling, expanding) and -iturria (source of water, fountain), so basically named after thermal waters. There is a constant fashion to deny that iberian oanguage and basque were the same or very related, maybe they want to avoid certain ideas like basque being the foundation of spain. But there are just too mqny evidences. The greeks named iberia after the Ebrus river, a name that heard in its delta by the locals, the iberians. In basque the word for rives is "ibai". Even the tartessos were probably very closely related, or at least they coexisted with basco-iberian colonies (impossible as the iberians lived with a tribal lifestyle)
"ibai"
Yeah. I don't think it has any connection to Indo-European languages. It must have been a hold-over from earlier migrations into Europe.
This need to be better known. And from my time in history (although I moved to philosophy as an academic), basque being the foundation of Spain is not as far fetched as it seems, for a lot more reasons than "just" linguistics and toponyms.
@AlazarWanderer can't tell if that's trolling or just dumb and confusing caucasian iberian from hispanic iberians
There's a hypothesis that says Ebro comes from "ibai+bero" (river+hot/warm), because at one point during the Ice Age it was the only river around that wasn't frozen.
19th century nationalism and 20th century wars have introduced many taboos in Europe.
Here are some things we don't talk about:
Czechia and western Poland have been built on German laws.
Austria is very Slavic, but so is Bavaria.
Greece isn't genetically different from the Balkans *at all*.
Alsace and Lorraine are more German than French.
Ukraine leans towards Europe rather than Russia due to the former Polish administration (occupation?).
France officially doesn't recognise Euskara, or any other indigenous language except French. It's the only country in Europe which refuses to recognise any minority language.
Not true. French is the sole official language, but regional languages are recognized.
Euskara school litteraly exist in France
@@fritoss3437 Ikastolak do exist in France, but they do _not_ get any state support. There is more financial support coming from the Euskadi (the Basque Autonomous Region) government across the border, as well as funding provided by local organizations and communities themselves.
Germany is equally racist not admitting any minorities existing there
Ah, one more reason for us to resent the french, I see. I'd add it to the list, but we ran out of paper a few decades ago. /j
If middle aged Americans get angry when they hear Hispanics speaking Spanish imagine how angry they would get at hearing Basque?
Honestly, I doubt they'd have any idea what they were hearing, and so wouldn't care unless they were anti-immigrant in general. The anti-Spanish thing has more to do with Americans not wanting to admit that their country is heavily influenced by Hispanic languages and culture and less to do with not understanding the language.
Although now that I've typed that - the number of stories about people overhearing Deneh and demanding the "mexican" go "back where they came from" makes me suspect our hypothetical angry American would just assume Basque was Spanish...
Bring back Basque-Icelandic Pidgin
Americans would be interested in hearing Basque not angered by it.
Americans do not hate hearing people speak Spanish. Stop repeating negative stereotypes that are "trust me bro" internet wisdom.
@@perceivedvelocity9914 Not speaking for the OP, but for my part I didn't mean to imply that *all* or even *most* Americans have an issue with Spanish. That said, I have personal experience with the fact that *some* Americans are in denial about how their country is functionally bilingual, and lash out angrily when confronted with that fact.
As a child my grandmother and my dad used to speak to me in Euskera but unfortunately they both passed away when I was very young and my mother never used the language so I forgot all I knew. A few months ago I went to my ancestral village in Tuyo, Álava, and what a treat it was; I met some family members and the most emotive moment when I went to the small cemetery i and could read on the stones names long forgotten. I found my grandpa and an uncle who carried my same name. I stayed therefor a while taking to them and feeling them around me. A beautiful memory that will stay with me forever.
Ahora me entero de que Álava tiene un pueblo llamado Tuyo. Que pena que estemos todos centralizados en Vitoria...
I am still floored by how many people never put together that the surname Vasquez is OBVIOUSLY coming from Basquez
Actually the last name is extremely common and is the same with Gonzales which is one of the most common last name in Spain both have Basque roots .
Vásquez is Galician.
@@panterauntera77771 interest it i didn’t know that , I have met many people with the last name and one of them told me it a Basque last name , I don’t know since all my Basque last names on my family tree are extremely rare and I don’t have any Vasquez on my family tree there’s only one is by marriage not blood related. Thanks for the info , you always learn new things .
Garcia is also a Spanish last name with Basque roots. Now the most common Spanish surname. Comes from Gaztea (the young man/youth)
@@christopheroates5674 you are correct I mistook Garcia with Gonzales .
For those wanting to do a bit more of a deep dive, the book “The basque history of the world” by Mark Kurlansky is a great read.
@@DeReAntiquait actually list accomplishments by Basques , history and even food recipes. Did you know two of the ships that were used by Colombo to “discover “ America were actually built by Basques , they also haunted whales almost to extinction and many of the people who started the Independence movement in Latin American from Spain were of Basque decent.
@@DeReAntiqua I read you other comments , you called this video nonsense when he stated many things that been researched . Just because you weren’t aware or didn’t know many things about Basques doesn’t make them nonsense or untrue, I have met many people who don’t even know what a Basque is or where is located when in reality if you think about they were the original Iberians . Many historians believe they the Basques been in the Iberian peninsula for more than 9000 years .
@@DeReAntiquayou are impolite and overbearing
if I would see you in person you would be slapped immediately to teach you some culture
Fun fact: the Basque people have one of the biggest populations with RH negative blood, together with the northern African Amazigh and Irish people.
You are forgetting the Japanese people, they also have a high percentage of O negative blood . I believe they are second and Basques are number 1.
Another fun fact: Spain is one of the countries with most blood donors in the world, and the Basque Country's public healthcare is one of the best among the autonomous communities
There is a theory talking about the native Japanese, the Ainu and their possible relation with the basques, idk how probable is that but I found the connection very interesting
@@PossibleBat What kind of connection do they have?
My wife is Basque and grew up in Vitoria, the capital of the Basque Country, her grandfather is one of those monoglots. I can speak Spanish and English but don't understand or even attempt to understand Euskara. Such a unique and amazing culture. I loved spending many months there! Gora Euskal Herria Askatuta!
You don't need to shout as ETA at the end. ETA is a terrorist group.
Handia actually still sounds somewhat like Grand or Grande.
Yeah more than sounds like it, it shares the AND in the middle, but there are definitely better examples he could've used.
He could've used the word for small which is very different to words like petit or pequeño, since the word is txikia
Txikia sounds somewhat like spanish ''chico" which means ''lil boy, guy, small, tiny, not woth very much..." So i is not the best example either
yeah I was thinking that, it even has the ND
"Handi" is actually "big" , Handia is "the big" the -a at the end represents "the". "mutil" = boy , "mutila" = the boy; "argi" = light , "argia" = the light, etc. Just one of the errors the video producer has made.
I went on exchange in Donostia (San Sebastián), and my host father primarily spoke Basque. He and I spoke about the same amount of Spanish, and had a really fun time because of it - sometimes we could have conversations in incoherent Spanish that the two of us understood but completely confused his wife.
why his wife didn't learn own husband's tongue lol
@@szymonbaranowski8184 she spoke basque. She didn’t understand his Spanish.
Really hard to believe that someone from Donostia didn't speak Spanish well.
According to Antonio Tovar, the name could have been from an exonym of entirely Proto-Indo-European origin given to the Basques by earlier Indo-Europeans inhabiting Basque country, based on the name "ba(r)scunes" found inscribed on coins matching the territory and period. The name would have been comprised of:
- the root Proto-Indo-European *bʰers- (“tip, point, top”)
- the suffix *kon-
- the consonant stem suffix *-es indicating the name as a nominative plural
Thus, the name would have meant something like "the high (proud) people."
As an afficionate i dislike the theory. Not only because it is using reverse analysis which very rarely will give a correct origin but also because it casually brings up the sentimental component.
In fact, Vasco and Eusko are not that different, this is a popular theory. But the thing is that the original form of the castilian word Vasco is Vascón, visibly the same name as the Gascon people of Occitania.
In my opinion Vascón and Gascon names must come from the bame of a city because of that -o(n) ending, same as Tarraco(n), Barkeno(n), Baetulo(n), Ieso(n), Berdun, Irurtzun, Irun, Baio(n) or even we could incloude Cascasso(n) and Narbo(n).
Just like Armenia was naned after Armanvir.
Another theory i like is thinking that Basque is an exonym a nearby tribe gave them. Basque can be related to the word Baso- meaning precipice, steep, but also forestry. It might come from a navarrese or aquitanian tribe (both basque) to the tribe thay inhabitated in the boarther of theese two, in foresty steeps
The mountains * people 🤦♂️
@@unanecin fact, "The ones from the forest" in modern Basque would be "Basokoak" which sounds quite similar to "Basque" even though the older version of both words would certainly sound quite different to their modern counterparts.
The Highlanders?
@@thequantumcat184 baso has been attested as unaltered for at least a couple millenia. Basque is a very stable language. Basque used to reduce many vowels when combining words, Baso would probably be reduced as Bas-, and Baskoak is a great word to start with. Still i don't know what the component -koak means (?)
basque here! even the language can be a bit “hard” for us sometimes, since there are a lot of “rules” and charts you have to learn to speak it correctly. you can search “nor-nori-nork taulak” ( I don’t even know how to translate it but imagine if you had to learn more than 30 different ways to say “x gave y to z” ) and soon you’ll see an enormous one and that there are more things ( nor-nori, nor-nork… ) that are also required to speak the language correctly
I like that story about the devil which also implies that the Basque people have not been corrupted as other people. Funny to have a folk-tale that is a joke about how difficult your language is, but also implies you are an exceptionally good people.
i happen to know many people of Basque origin, and I can tell they're loyal, stoic, hard-working, good-humoured, resilient, and a lot more... Maybe the legend's right ; D
Greatest language in Europe!
Basque in it's Glory!
In a library I worked in there was an old Spanish book, a Basque grammar, called "El impossible vencido. Arte de la lengua bascongada" (sic) by Manuel de Larramendi. The title means: "The impossible (thing) defeated. Art of the basque language."
I came to know about the Basque people and Euskera when I'm researching Filipino Geneology and migration.
I found out that there are prominent Filipinos of Basque origin here in The Philippines, what made them stand out for me is their names: Ayala, Aboitiz, Elizalde, Ynchausti, Aranetas, etc.
These folks speaks in Filipino, English, and Spanish, not sure if they still speak Euskera though. And still are, of course, Filipinos despite their origin. However, some of these clans, specifically the Ynchausti became a bridge between Filipinos and the Basque People encouraging cultural exchanges and promoting the teaching of Basque History and university exchanges in The Philippines.
Jai-alai, a basque sport was also once played in The Philippines. I don't know if there are still players of Jai-alai in The Philippines though as it's not that famous.
It's just interesting as I suppose most Basque immigrants came to the Americas and not in Asia. And that most Filipinos probably don't know about them because most people here just clump everyone into one, Spaniards.
Interesting
omg not trying to sound like a meddler, but something similar happened to me jajsjdj, but in my case i’m from the north side of México and i found out my accent, culture and vocabulary is heavily influenced by Euskera and Basque culture, i never thought filipino culture had basque influences as well considering the geographic distance, the more you know
You also have Basque names in your geography such as Legazpi City , Urdaneta, Gonzaga, and other places. It was Elcano who completed Magellan's voyage , a Basque navigator. There is more Basque influence in the Philippines than meets the eye.
@@rottengal no worries! That's very interesting! Post-colonial nations like Mexico and The Philippines have interesting culture. Basque influences is just one of them. And upon digging deeper, I found out more Basque influences. 😂
And here's the interesting thing since you are Mexican, there are Filipinos of native american origin as well mostly from Mexican Tlaxcalan migrants brought by the conquistadores during the conquest of the islands. And vice versa, there are many Mexicans with filipino origin from Acapulco to Guerrero if I'm not mistaken due to the Galleon trade.
Today, Mexican influence can be seen and heard here. We have so many Nahuatl loan words such as palenque, tiangue, sayote, atsuete and even our term for mother and father, "nanay" and "tatay" are from Nahuatl. We also eat Tamale but made with rice masa and covered with Banana leaves instead of corn husks and corn masa. In exchange, Filipinos brought mango, tuba, manton de manila, coconut distilling, etc.
It's very interesting to say the least. 😂
@@hijodelsoldeoriente so that explains the native american i found in my ancestry report! (I’m filipino My family has lived in the philippines for like forever, and the only non filipino ancestry we know of are spanish and chinese). I was sooo confused, wondering how the heck that got there lol. Fascinating! Thanks for the info ☺️ My brother found out that his native american blood was specifically amazonian though, would you know anything about that?
I'm an admirer of the amazing Mondragon workers' cooperative in Basque county. It is the largest successful workers' cooperative in the world.
-Dave from Chicago, USA
What happened to a lot of research done about 30-40 years ago connecting Basque language to Georgian (Kartuli)? Georgia also used to be called Iberia (Eastern part of it, see the map of Roman empire just above Armenia at 6:47), so two Iberian languages were showing some semblance, some common words (roots), etc.
Ending every sentence with "-uh" is pretty wild too
The pronunciation of "." is now just a schwa
Vasco is one of the most common origins for uruguayans. There is a neighborhood in Montevideo called Euskalherria. “Porfiado como Vasco” and “aclarando dijo un Vasco mientras le echaba agua a la leche” are 2 common phrases en Uruguay.
I still find it fascinating / odd that Basque managed to survive extinction compared to other languages in Europe pre-PIE spread.
Like, it shares some etymologies with other European languages, but that's more late-stage cross-influence than descendance.
One thing it has on other minor languages is that, despite a smaller population of speakers in some cases, the resources to actually learn the language are far greater.
Online translators are it or miss, but there's a dictionary and a grammar book to get start.
Although the video just barely mentions the Finn-Ugric languages but the same can be said about them too, like Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian and Saami (Lapp). Or even more so as they were in the epicentre of migration.
Some examples:
Good morning: Egun on
Good night: Gabon
Hello: Kaixo
Goodbye: Agur
Opened: Zabalik
Closed: Itxita
Thank you: Eskerrik asko
Please: Mesedez
Yes Bai
No: Ez
Good: Ona
Bad: Txarra
Ah, the lonely language isolates. It’s interesting to see language isolates that aren’t Japanese or Korean
Japanese isn't. It has several sisters. Koreanic arguably has Jeju as well.
@@rvat2003What relatives does Japonic have other than Ryukyuan? Ainu is an isolate, as is the nearby Nivkh. Genuinely curious
@@baku_m_salti3128 "Ryukyuan" isn't one language. The term denotes about 10 Japonic languages.
@@rvat2003interesting view about koreanic and Jeju-eo
I thought Mongolian, Korean, and Japanese are thought to have common roots? I can say that Mongolian has the same sounds and tempo of Korean to a non linguist. Obviously different words (other than Mandarin loan words common to both). No idea about the structure. Japanese and Korean also share many similar “sounds.”
I remember learning about the Basque culture one day in middle school World History class, sort of like a bonus lesson on top of the main one we were learning that week. I remember we watched a video about it, where they showcased them singing some folk songs in the Basque language, as part of showcasing how their community is unique and pridefully tied to their history despite not having a country of their own.
I'm French, and find it interesting how there's several diverse cultures near us, even within our own borders. I guess that's just typical for Europe as a whole, though.
There is a whole Basque community in the southwest of France, known as Pays Basque in French and just Iparralde "(the) North" in Basque.
I encourage you to visit this region, it's a very beautiful and unique part of France that still fights to maintain its proud Basque culture in spite of the French centralist policies. Also, the most beautiful Basque dialect in my opinion is spoken in one of its deepest valleys, the Souletin (Xiberera in Basque) dialect.
To be clear, Basque is usually classified into its own Vasconian language tree. Ancient Iberian is sadly completely gone having been replaced by Latin language by the 2nd century AD. There are similarities between the numeral system but the depth of this relationship is greatly contentious.
Fun fact: the letter h used to be pronounced like the h in "her" in all basque dialects but it only survives in the easternmost ones nowadays and has become mute in the others.
he says “uh” at the end of so many words
The "a" in the final of a word means "the" in singular normally, but some words end in that "a"...
Wouldn't be surprised if whatever the Neanderthals spoke evolved into Basque today.
Thanks!
i think it's hilarious how every word that ends in -ed, you end like "unsolved(uh)"
Ending every sentence with the same tone is either the most irritating or most brilliant affectation. I can’t decide which.
very annoying
Allistics get annoyed at the stupidest things. How can you be annoyed at someone’s voice inflection? This explains a lot though, yet another reason you guys think that autistic irregular voice inflections are “wrong”
You could have chosen a better example. Handia actually sounds a lot like Grande and Grand.
yeah I was thinking that, it even has the ND
Ah yes, because G=H. Genius comment. Or shall I say henius comment.
A professional linguist, I assume?
I agree
@@BionicPig95Try saying G without using your tongue
@@BionicPig95 You clearly don't know a lot about linguistics. Do a google search for Gheada why don't you.
Hi! I was a basque monoglot until I started primary school where I was introduced to spanish,english and french as subjects, therefore learning them
@DiotimaMantinea-qm5yt Why?
@DiotimaMantinea-qm5yt Well I can't speak in general but only in my experience. The truth is that I practically had no idea about it until I started the subject at school because my whole environment was not exposed to it. Since I was having a hard time I needed extra help at home after school but yeah, I guess it depends on how you interpret the comment
@DiotimaMantinea-qm5yt I learned Spanish AND English at IKASTOLA (immersive basque schools). No I didn’t learn English from the streets haha I went to basque school from kindergarden until I was 16yo
Basque is such a neat language, I wish there was a duolingo course for it or something
Duolingo developers would actually end up killing themselves trying to do such a thing. Trust me, I'm Basque and also a dev
Cool it on the last syllable.
Basque is like that cousin you barely talk to but when you do talk to him you have a lot of fun.
Honestly, I'm disappointed about the part where you compare the age of Basque to other languages.
If there's anything that learning about linguistics makes you realise is that languages have no age, and you can't really compare the age of modern languages to any other.
All languages have older ancestors, and its form spoken at any single point in time is not the same as the spoken at any other point in time.
In theory, modern Basque is just as different from the Proto Basque spoken 2000 years ago, as Spanish and Latin are. And Latin had a living ancestor at any point you can of in which Basque also had a living ancestor language.
At best, you could say that some ancestor language of Basque has been spoken in western Europe, much, much before Latin or any ancestor of Latin.
@@DiotimaMantinea-ub6yr That sounds unexpected for an isolated language not seemingly much influenced by either French or Spanish surrounding it. Icelandic is sort of in the same boat and hasn't really changed all that much in a thousand years, even under Danish rule. Similarly, classical Arabic speakers can go back a fair bit before they really start having trouble understanding the meaning of texts. What made Basque so unstable - apart from the fact that it was only recently unified and has several dialects?
Been wanting to see this for a long time.... Thank you for finally getting around to making it!!
As for the part of basque being difficult to learn, i wanted to say that as a person born in the basque country myself, basque is not only difficult to learn because of unsimilarities with other languajes, but also because most young people here aren't that interested in speaking it and we're used to hear and speak spanish. Most of the time we use random words (for example, instead of using "mamá" or "madre" which are ways to say mom in spanish i use "ama" which is mom in basque) or mix spanish and basque (the way this is done depends on the person). This is in my opinion pretty sad since the basque languaje is basically a treasure that should be kept alive.
Yeah but it isn't often talked about how we learn the language forcefully since very little and without proper teachings, I know many friends who had trouble at school because they couldn't express themselves properly in Basque when writing exams or understand concepts properly. Many of them wrote their notes in Spanish to understand it better. It's pretty common for people around me to leave Euskera behind once you leave high school, the only thing about studying in Basque is the language title many jobs require
I love how the word he used to show how Basque is completely different from everything else sounds similar and can be arrived at with only a few common sound changes.
"Basque is spoken by the Basque people in the Basque Country."
Makes perfect sense.
Fun fact:
There's a decently sized Basque population in La Plata, near Buenos Aires. They even have their own organization for promoting Basque culture and Euskara
It still baffles me how it can be easier to find resources in Buenos Aires to learn freaking Euskara than other languages, either native from Argentina (Quichua, Tehuelche, Mapuche, Guarani), european (Hungarian, italian languages (keep in mind the big italian diaspora here), greek), or asian (if its not mandarin, korean, or japanse, all i can say is GOOD LUCK.)
De hecho Quechua se estudia bastante casi al mismo nivel que Euskera. La diferencia es la reinvindicación que hacen los hablantes de euskera a nivel etnia/nacion es mucho mas diferente al del Quechua.
El guarani no es bastante estudiado ya que todavia es muy hablado y palabras modernas de adoptan al diccionario. Es mas, el guaraní no tenia un abecedario moderno en si hasta hace unos cuantos años atras.
Saludos
It seems to me that the word "handia" could have evolved from a common parent word it could have shared with "grand" and "grande". Considering how letters can become silent or change sounds as language evolves, such a parent word could alternatively have evolved into "grandia" or "hande".
English has only about twelve words from Welsh but Welsh has plenty from English, including the famous Welsh term car parc for any Welsh people allergic to k. Welsh also has about a thousand words borrowed from Latin including the days of the week. These imbalances are about power.
@@Joanna-il2ur I grew up with low german (or, as I like to call it, flat german... you'll get that if you know the language) and I've noticed that people who speak both low german and english invariably combine the two languages in varying degrees. Despite this, when low german speakers encountered electricity, they didn't come up with a new word for it or even borrow a word for it from another language. They just used their word for fire. My favorite low german version of an english term is shuck-ups for shocks (automotive suspension dampers).
@@Where_is_Waldo Plattdeutsch
But there's also simple words like eguzkia or ilargia that are totally different from sol or luna
Met a basque speaker today and was shocked to learn there's less than 1 million speakers in the world! Definitely would love to check out the basque area in Boise, ID!
Is an AI voice reading this script? There are very odd inflections at the ends of phrases.
Pretty sure it’s a real person, he just has an extremely odd way of speaking
Hello, just a note: The word fuero is spanish. In basque we say "Foru" or "Foruak" in plural.
Ergativity is what makes basque different and diffucult from european languages
It is the only language in europe with ergativity, with ergativity already being a rare feature in languages and it being a very difficult concept for non-native speakers to get their head around
Georgian and Kurdish would be the closest geographical languages which also use the Ergative case.
@@christopheroates5674 You think so?
I guess all we have to compare it to are the languages (and lineages) that didn't go extinct.
I think many Philippine Languages of the Philippines(for example Tagalog/Filipino)are also used partially/Fully an Ergative Cases in many of their Languages spread out through the Philippine Archipelago.
Abstract:
This dissertation explores the question of whether Tagalog, a language of the Philippines, is an ergative language. It is claimed that Tagalog is best characterized as neither accusative nor ergative but rather as a language that is a hybrid of these two language types. Tagalog's hybrid nature is neatly captured structurally within Principle and Parameters theory using VP internal subjects. In terms of Case, Tagalog not only has nominative-absolutive Case checking and ergative Case checking but it also makes extensive use of inherent accusative Case assignment. As a result, Tagalog has both a (NOM ACC) basic transitive sentence type, like accusative languages, and a (ERG ABS) basic transitive sentence type, like ergative languages. A specific structural analysis is given for these basic sentences under an Economy approach. This analysis is extended to account for complex sentences including sentences involving morphological causatives, conjunction reduction and raising.
Ergativity is neither that difficult nor rare worldwide. It's the complete lack of lexical similarity, as well as the overall radically different grammatical structure, that make it hard for speakers of standard average European to learn. Fixating on the ergativity is not productive.
i mainly ask myself about how difficult it was to manage to translate basque into other languages, if there are no relations betwenn any other language and basque it would be extremely difficult, ofcourse, you can still point at a rock or tree and say its name in your language, but it would be extremely difficult to translate and know the meaning more abstract concepts and words
Just learn both language as a kid
It really does remind me of how we see the Finnish or Hungarian Language.
The terms they use are just completely different from what we're used to.
People grow up bilingual. It happens all the time.
@@LuJoTu ofcourse people do that, but i am still impressed about how diffrent it is and how difficult it is to learn
Euskara (i.e. the language spoken by the Basque people) has a noticeable lack of sounds which Neanderthals would have been unable to pronounce due to their anatomy.
What Franco sought to impose was Castilian - in Spain we have 4 languages: Castilian, Catalan, Gallego and Vasco
"handia" specifically DOES kinda sound like "grande". LMAO.
Yeah, that wasn't a great example, but just a look at Basque grammar also shows us it's not related to any IE language (it's ergative-absolutive and agglutinative)
G and H often change over time. Perfect example Polish and Czech where our Gs are their Hs. Grande / Handia - dropping R is not uncommon and then you have “ND” which is identical in both words. The ending vowels can change like in Grande / Grand.
There's actually a way to see where the "euskara" or "euskera" word comes from. The old basque praised the Sun, which they called (and still call) Eguzki. Therefore, we add the "-era" (way of doing) part to it and we get Euskera, which is in some sense "the way of the Sun". "Euskadi" comes from the same root, meaning the land of the Sun ("-adi" meaning "land of" kinda).
Greetings from San Sebastian ;)
okay the fact you said romance language and then kept italy out of it lmao
Fellow Deprogram fan, sup!
2:00 Maybe not the best example. It is actually conceivable how the Latin word "grandis" could evolve into "handia". I don't know if it did but the Basque language does include a few loan words from Latin/French/Spanish and this may be one of them.
Keep in mind also that before Spain was Roman, it had many Ibero-Celtic settlements.
The devil claim reminds me of the Anglo Saxon Life of St Guthlac. He was a prince who became a hermit. His Life says one night the farm he and his acolytes ran in the Fens of East Anglia was attacked by devils. They knew the attackers were devils because they spoke Welsh! The author was Felix of Burgundy, who may have heard the devil/basque comparison back home.
Fun fact, when you look a genetic history, Basque people all share Indo-European dna as much as any other people around. It's quite mysterious how it survived.
Main theory says that during the Indo-European migration, the men died fighting and the women had children with the invaders. The mothers, taking care of their children, made them learn the language they spoke.
That would almost impossible with Basque people before modern day medicine since Basques have the highest O negative blood population in the world and getting pregnant by non O negative would cause miscarriages there’s a reason before modern day medicine many Basques only married other Basques .
Even weirder and more perplexing than the Basque language are the speech patterns of this narrator - the identical descending cadence of every sentence, the divebombing last word with an extra vowel at the end thrown in for reasons unclear. Not sure I've heard the like of it before.
He is British, ever heard of different accents?
@@eduardopupuconthat’s not a British thing, that’s called extreme vocal fry and it is an affectation.
8:14 is the clearest example of appended vowels. “An enemy of god-uh”.
@@diego_villena there's no unified British accent, theres dozens of different English accents in Britain
@@diego_villena it's an affectation? didn't knew about that, i guess every single Portuguese speaker has that, because in our language it's very rare to have words that don't end in a vowel, so we tend to add vowels to the end of words a lot when trying to speak English, for example we would say "speaki" instead of "speak" and "don'ti" instead of "don't".
Which is also something noticed in the stereotypical Italian accent (provenient from south Italian immigrants to the USA)
people who call basque "old" are exoticising it a bit. sure it comes from a family that was once widely spoken but now doesn't have any other surviving members, and that's interesting in itself, but basque has changed as much as any other language over time. if we call basque "old" then we might as well also call spanish or english old because they are surviving lineages of proto indoeuropean
Exactly. It would be closer to the truth say that all language in the world have the same age, than affirming that Basque language is the oldest Europe, simply because yes.
or maybe it's old because it's just older than spanish, english, german etc...
Lol not all languages have the same age thus some are older than others 😂
@@UNKNOWN666studios you are just repeating words you heard, but you don't think at all. Languages are like water, with time, they change, they mutate and flow, they are not static. When a language is static, it dies.
Is very easy to say today, "oh look, this is the English language". But if you go back in time, was the English language 50 years ago the same as now? And 100 years ago? Was still the same English language? What about 500 years ago? Is it still the same language? And we can keep going back until we reach some kind of protoindoeuropean without ever finding the exact limit were our English language stops being English. That's because is the same language that mutated and changed with time.
So take 5 minute and try to think for yourself instead of repeating the very dumb ideas most of the people repeat, like sheep. Beee beeee beeee beeee
Well, it has had much less of a shift in pronunciation than English. Go ahead and try reading some middle English, then try some Old English. It would be much easier for someone in modern times and someone from 1000 years ago to understand each other in Basque compared to English. Just like it would be easier for two people who spoke Greek a thousand years apart.. Some languages undergo a major shift, and others are much less resistant to change. The Hand of Irrulegui is just one example of how they are able to see that even when using an ancient Iberian script, they are still able to understand words that are commonly used in modern times (ie. Zoriontsu = Happy) (which itself comes from the good fortune of seeing birds...)
At the end of every sentence my guy says he has a ahhhhh
This video is only two months old?? It feels like it's been here forever...
I love your video as a monoglot!
Albanian is part of an extinct branch of indoeuropean languages known as the 'Balkan languages' (Dacian, Thracian, Messapian, etc...), Albanian is allegedly a direct descendant of Illyrian
Probably the last surviving aboriginal European language
no such thing, no one is native when you go back far enough, this is likely anatolian farmer language who themselves are from anatolian
It's incredible what languages mythical characters can and can't learn
Was grand/grande vs handia really the best example to use? The H and French GR sounds both come from just about the same place in the mouth with the only difference in the tongue so it would be extremely easy to draw a line between the two, and the rest of the word is essentially the same. Not presuming to say that linguists are wrong about Basque being unique (it very clearly is), just that I kinda question your choice to pick this one particular word that, by coincidence, could be demonstrating an exception to it (lmao)
That's what I was thinking. I'm not really into linguistics, but even I could draw a few possible links between the words.
the video is amateurish in many other was as well
@@S3Kglitches True... tbh, I'm not sure how much I really trust a video about linguistics when it's being made by someone who hasn't even heard of dental fricatives
I know it's just example and professional linguists are smarter than I, but I quickly thought well grande to handia is the gr- turning to gh- then h- and the e sound turning to dipthong
H is silent in basque.
@@Echo_-tx9veNot quite. It is silent except for a few speakers in the french basque country, where 'hasperena' is used; the h is pronounced with an inhaling sound (I was taught that it was something like that). It is present because it was previously used in some form of literary basque previous to normalization (Labortine). Additionally, 'kh' also exists but not in modern written basque. (I'm writing all of this from memory I might be completely wrong on some of the details)
@@jwolternova1051 I wouldn't know because I learnt my basque from the other corner of the country. Very interesting though.
2:02 as a basque, I wouldn't say that grand and handia sound completely differently. Both have the "and" part in common (so more than half the letters). It always made sense in my mind that there is a common origin for this words. I guess it might just be a coincidence.
And the G sound turns into a H sound in a couple other languages, see Dutch and Ukrainian.
My mother's family spoke Euskara until franco came and they didn't teach her or my aunt, but I want to learn it so I can carry it on
Any chance you could add Basque subtitles to this video, on the off-chance a mono-Euskara speaker comes across it? Because THAT would be wild in itself.
we have, automatically traduced, a little bit strange, but is okey
5:50 the basque language was spoken in a larger area in the ancient times than it is today, around the are between the Ebro river and the cites of Bordeaux and Toulouse
It amuses me no end that a channel all about words and languages has used "theory" when "hypothesis" would have been more correct. :)
@@SamBeck6090 Well, yes, obviously, and the sentence is perfectly clear, but it's still funny as all get-out.
from a native euskara speaker, thank you for this wonderful video ☺
ez da ona, baina hasiera bat da.... 🙂
Chloe: so you're the devil and knows many languages?
Lucifer: yes, except Basque.. I spent 7 years for nothing
Who's Chloe?
@@ForeveryBloom A character from Lucifer
It's interesting you add an "-uh" at the end of all the words ending in hard consonants...
...like @ 2:03 with "big" and "language"
Fun fact: Spanish doesn't have a /v/ sound due to Basque's influence. Also, the Spanish word for "left" (as opposed to right) is "izquierda", which comes from Basque "ezkerra".
Another fun fact, albeit disconnected from the main topic: did you know that the Spanish word for "dog", which is "perro", has an unknown origin?
I like how the somewhat common Spanish name Echevarria is Basque for "New House"
As many things (and they are a lot) that are the case in Spanish by influence of basque, that's not one of them. Spanish does have a plosive /b/ and a fricative /v/. It's just very subtle and lost in some accents, but not all, and in any case very recent.
Handia might not be the best word to choose if you're claiming that basque is unrelated to the latin based languages around it. Its only 2 common shifts from being extremely similar. Dropping the r and shifting a G to an H. Grandia, Gandia, Handia.
Cool video! How much influence do pre-Indo-European languages have on the later languages of Europe? Probably mainly in place-names, I would assume.
Also, you tend to add an unstressed shwa at the end of many words, but not consistently. What’s the linguistics behind that?
I caught that too, didn't enjoy
Fortunately Basque language area is split between Spain and France.
İf it were entirely within France, its fate would probably be like Breton and Occitan today.
Breton is still spoken, is it not?
@@giuseppelogiurato5718
Outside of France mainly
I believe there’s still some Occitan speaker around very small minority but I’m glad the language still around is such a beautiful language.
@@giuseppelogiurato5718 Yea but its in decline compared to basque.
As a Basque, I never heard that lenged about the Devil.
But i'll tell you this one, which was told for ages.
When two basque speakers from different dialects met, they would try to ve as brief possible or speak in Spanish, since any strain of Basque sounding different from the own one was deemed the work of the Devil!
( True Story, BTW.
Not a legend at all. )
I doubt you are a Basque since the legend is well know and is also been written on books unless you are illiterate.
@@anaz5918
Getxotarra naiz.
Euskeraz hitz egiten badakit, bai.
Ea hau ulertzen baduzun:
Oa txopatik hartzera.
Basque is the language that has no words for phone and 100 words for goat.
As native basque speaker, i must say that there are not monoglots nowadays... We all are bilingual or in Spanish or in French
That's kinda sad man
Idk if a bad choice but grande and Handia are super similar and even sound similar it’s a soft start with AND in the middle and a vowel ending all we need to do is switch the H for G and it’s basically Grande