Euskera, Euskara, Basque, Vasco

No matter how you want to call it, the language is an unique language no matter how you want to cut it.

Here you have a mesmerizing essay about the language spoken by the Euskaldunak, the Basque people:

The Basque Language

by Dr. William A. Jacobsen, Jr.

The Basque language is apparently unrelated to the other present-day languages of Europe, most of which belong to the Indo-European family. As a consequence, its grammatical structure differs in a number of fundamental features, revealing to us strikingly original modes of organization. I will mention just three such points of difference.

First among them is the inclusion of the object pronoun in the verb, in addition to the subject pronoun. The older Indo-European languages, as represented for instance by Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, included the subject of the verb in the verb form itself. A modern language that continues this pattern is Spanish. A verb form such as tengo “I have” shows its first person singular subject by the suffix -o, making it unnecessary to add the independent pronoun yo “I”, which is reserved for the expression of extra emphasis. Similarly a word such as sabe “he knows” does not require the expression of a noun or pronoun subject, although one is commonly used to identify the actor, as in el hombre sabe “the man knows.”

Some modern Indo-European languages, such as English, French, and Russian, have gotten away from this pattern, in that they require the regular use of subject pronouns with verbs, even where these redundantly convey the same information as the verb endings (for example, the –s in he knows).

Basque is just like Spanish in this respect, so that the word daukat “I have it” signals its own subject by the suffix –t and renders unnecessary the use of the independent pronoun nik “I”. The situation with respect to the object of the verb is different, however. This Basque word daukat contains an indication of a third person object in its prefix d-, and it remains unchanged when a noun is used to identify the object. Thus “I have the bread” is ogia daukat. This is as though one said “I have it the bread”. Spanish is like English in this respect, saying lo tengo. “I have it”, but tengo el pan “I have the bread”, in which the object pronoun lo is dropped when the noun phrase el pan “the bread” is used.

A second fundamental point of difference is that the subject of an intransitive verb is equated in Basque with the object, rather than the subject, of a transitive verb. Thus in doa “he is going” the d- prefix indicates the third person subject (as opposed, for example, to noa “I am going”), but this d- is the same prefix that we have just seen in daukat indicting a third person object. It is as though we said in English “him is going”. Or, going at it from the other direction, as though, instead of “he sees me” we said “him see I”, or perhaps “by-him seen I”.

This lineup shows itself also in the case forms of the nouns, where one form, called the nominative, is used for the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of transitive verbs, whereas another form, called the ergative or active, is nominative form gizona “the man” in gizona doa “the man is going” and gizona ikusten det “I see the man” but the ergative form with a –k suffix in “I see the man” but the ergative form with a –k suffix in gizonak ikusten du “the man sees it”.

Let me more briefly describe a third feature, which is not actually uncommon in a world-wide perspective, although foreign to Indo-European languages. This is the use of a suffix at the end, instead of a subordinating word at the beginning to form subordinate clauses. Where English would use a word such as who, that, which, what, Basque most commonly uses a suffix –n on the verb. Thus from doa “he is going” can be derived doan gizona “the man who is going”.

Such thoroughgoing differences in structure between Basque and the neighboring French and Spanish have given rise to the Basque legend that the devil himself failed to learn this language, mastering after seven years of trying only the words bai “yes” and ez “no”. But from a scientific point of view these examples may serve to give some hint of the precious testimony afforded us by the Basque language of an ancient European world view which is now otherwise submerged.

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