Basque language | History, Grammar & Dialects (2024)

Basque language, language isolate, the only remnant of the languages spoken in southwestern Europe before the region was Romanized in the 2nd through 1st century bce. The Basque language is predominantly used in an area comprising approximately 3,900 square miles (10,000 square kilometres) in Spain and France. There are also significant numbers of Basque speakers elsewhere in Europe and in the Americas. Although few statistics are available, the number of speakers, who are largely bilingual, was estimated in the early 21st century to be approaching one million.

In Spain the Basque country comprises the province of Guipúzcoa, parts of Vizcaya (Biscay) and Navarra (Navarre), and a corner of Álava. The French Basque country is centred in the western region of the département of Pyrénées-Atlantiques. The Basques derived their self-name, Euskaldunak, from Euskara, the ethnonym for the language.

The Basque language attained official status for a short period (1936–37) during the Spanish Civil War. In 1978, Basque and Castilian Spanish became the official languages of the autonomous Basque Country of Spain.

Origins and classification

The 19th-century philologist Louis-Lucien Bonaparte discerned eight modern dialects of Basque. Dialectal division is not strong enough to mask the common origin of these speech forms or to totally preclude mutual understanding.

The German philologist Hugo Schuchardt (1842–1927) posited a genetic connection between Basque, Iberian (the long-extinct language of the ancient inscriptions of eastern Spain and of the Mediterranean coast of France), and the Afro-Asiatic languages. Despite amazing coincidences in phonology, Basque has so far contributed little to the understanding of the Iberian texts. This suggests that the similarity in sound systems may have resulted from close contact between Basques and Iberians and not from a genetic linguistic relationship. Somewhat similarly, studies after Schuchardt’s have not found common linguistic characteristics between Basque and the Afro-Asiatic languages. Some common features, however, do suggest a relationship between Basque and the Caucasian languages.

History of the language

At the beginning of the Common Era, dialects of Euskarian (Basque) stock were probably spoken north and south of the Pyrenees and as far east as the Aran Valley in northeastern Spain. It is likely that only the disruption of Roman administration in these regions saved the Basque dialects from being completely overcome by Latin. It is also likely that the Basque tongue, which had a firm foothold in the country that then began to be called Vasconia, experienced a substantial expansion toward the southwest, which carried it to the Rioja Alta (High Rioja) region in Old Castile and near Burgos.

The more eastern Basque dialects, separated from the main area by speakers of Romance languages, were less fortunate. During the Middle Ages, as the language of a population more rural than urban, Basque could not hold the field as a written language against Latin and its successors, Navarrese Romance and, to a certain extent, Occitan (the langue d’Oc, also called Provençal), in the kingdom of Navarre. Since the 10th century ce, Basque has slowly but steadily lost ground to Castilian Spanish; in the north, however, where French is a more modern rival, the extent of the Basque-speaking area is practically the same as it was in the 16th century.

Latin inscriptions from the Roman period, found mostly in southwestern France, record a handful of proper names of unmistakable Basque etymology. From 1000 ce on, records consisting chiefly of proper names but also of Basque phrases and sentences grow more numerous and reliable. The first printed Basque book, dating from 1545, began an uninterrupted written tradition. Basque literature was neither abundant nor varied until the 20th century.

Since the early 1800s, and especially in industrial centres, Basque has had to fight for survival. This has been the case in the heart of the Basque-speaking country as well as on the frontier of the Basque-speaking area. Intense efforts have been made to introduce Basque as a vehicle of private primary education, and a written standard, Euskara Batua (“Unified Basque”), has found widespread—albeit not universal—acceptance.

Phonology

The sound pattern of Basque is, on the whole, similar to that of Spanish. The number of distinctive sounds is relatively low compared with other languages. Combinations of sound (e.g., consonant clusters) are subject to severe constraints. It can confidently be asserted that certain types of consonant clusters, such as tr, pl, dr, and bl, were unknown about two millennia ago. The common sound system underlying the systems of the present Basque dialects has five (pure) vowels and two series of stopped consonants—one voiced (without complete stoppage in many contexts), represented by b, d, g, and the other voiceless, represented by p, t, k. Nasal sounds include m, n, and palatal ñ, similar to the sound indicated by ny in the English word canyon. In this respect, as in others, Basque orthography coincides with the Spanish norm. There are two varieties of l, the common lateral l and a palatal variety, ll, as in Spanish, that sounds similar to the lli in million (as l + y). The Basque r, made by a single tap of the tongue against the roof of the mouth, contrasts with a rolled or trilled r, written rr.

Two phonological features are worthy of special attention. Sibilants (sounds made by forcing air through a small closure between the tongue and the hard palate) that are made with the middle or back of the tongue (fricatives and affricates) are distinct from the apical sibilants, produced with the tip of the tongue. A fricative is a sound, such as English f or s, produced with friction and, hence, without complete stoppage in the vocal tract; an affricate is a sound, such as the ch in church or the dg in judge, that begins as a stop and ends as a fricative, with incomplete stoppage. Thus, the letter z in Basque symbolizes the predorsal fricative, and tz, the predorsal affricate sound; s and ts represent the apical fricative (similar to Castilian Spanish s) and affricate, respectively.

In addition to these hissing sibilants, Basque also includes two so-called hushing sibilants, written as x and tx; they are like the English sh and ch. The x and tx sounds, along with the palatal sounds written as ll and ñ, are often used to express diminutive or endearing meanings in comparison with their nonpalatal counterparts—e.g., hezur ‘bone’ and hexur ‘little bone’ (fish bone, for example); sagu ‘mouse’ and xagu ‘little mouse.’

The phonology of some Basque dialects may be more complex than that presented in the preceding paragraph. In the easternmost Souletin region the dialect has acquired, by internal development or by contact with other languages, a sixth oral vowel—rounded e or i—and nasal vowels, voiced sibilants, and voiceless aspirated stops. The aspiration accompanying stop consonants consists of a small puff of air. At the beginning of a word and between vowels, there is also an aspirated h, which was once common but has become peculiar to the northern dialects. It has also been retained in the proposed standard form of Basque.