The Basque Language and Its Peculiarities - Essay Example

An endangered language. Basque in Spain. Basque is a region which straddles the north of Spain and the south of France about 100 miles (160 km) fromeast to west and 30 miles (50 km) from north to south. It is an ancient ethnic enclave with its own living language referred to as euskara. The language is spoken, at the most, by only about a million people, and there are six or seven distinct dialects and sub dialects. One of the dialects, the ‘Roncales, is already dead. … more than 600,000 people speak Basque in the seven historic Basque provinces: Lapurdi, Zuberoa, and Behenafarroa (in France) and Gipuzkoa, Bizcaia, Araba and Navarre (in Spain)’. There are an estimated ‘520,000 Basque speaking people in the Basque provinces in Spain, that is 25% of their total population’ (http://www.cd.sc.ehu.es/DOCS/book.SS-G/v2/Euskara.html ). This means that not everybody living in Basque country speak the language. During the 19th century there was a rapid decline in the use of euskara. Since then ‘Basque nationalism took the language as an identity sign’ … and have ‘taken the language to areas like Encartaciones and the Navarrese Ribera where it may never have been natively spoken in historic times’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language ). The dialects were first identified by Prince Louis Luciano Bonaparte, a nephew of the emperor, who wrote the Linguistic Charter (1883). In 2005 Koldo Zuazo, Basque Philology Professor at the University of Basque Country, published a new map of dialects labelling them ‘Western, Central, Navarrese-Lapurdian, and Zuberoan … The most widely-used standardized dialect is Batua (“unified” in Basque), which is the language taught in most schools and used by media and official papers. …The language has official status in those territories which are within the Basque Autonomous Community, where it is spoken and promoted heavily.’ (op. cit. ). The Basque country itself is referred to as euscal herria by its inhabitants. In an attempt to preserve their language and unique identity, they have been fighting for an independent state often resorting to violence (terrorism) attracting headlines in the world’s press. What is less well known generally, is the unique nature of the Basque language, Euskara, itself. It is one of the world’s rare language isolates. ‘A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or genetic) relationship with any other living languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common to any other language’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_isolate) . ‘Basque is the only language remaining of those spoken in south western Europe before the Roman conquest’ (http://www.buber.net/Basque/Euskara/lang.lt.html ). This is most extraordinary, when in 2007 it was established that there were at least 6912 living human languages throughout the world with the vast majority classified according to families of genetic, typological and areal taxonomies with no more than two or three recognized isolates in the world. There have been many speculations as to the origin of the Basque language. Although surrounded by Indo-European languages according to areal taxonomy, it is not related in any way to these languages. Many linguists argue that it pre-dates Roman times and is restricted to ethnic Basques who were a primitive tribe descended from Cro-Magnon man going back 40,000 years. The geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, who compiled a genetic map of Europe, observed that ‘the Basques are genetically sharply distinct from their neighbours, particularly in Spain’ (http://www.buber.net/Basque/Euskara/lang.html ). There have been attempts to link Euskara genetically to the ancient Iberian language spoken throughout the peninsula, but there is not enough evidence to support this. ‘Iberian itself is considered an isolate’. There could possibly be a distant connection to …‘Northeast Caucasian languages such as Chechen.’ But the most convincing recent hypothesis is the one put forward by the German linguist Theo Venneman citing toponymical (= from place names) evidence for an ancient Vasconic language family which existed throughout Europe with Basque as the only surviving member. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language ). However, there was a pre-Roman language known as Aquitanian (an ancestral from of Basque) that has left Latin inscriptions with names like ‘Nescato and Cison (neskato and gizon mean “young girl” and “man” respectively in modern Basque)’ (op. cit.). ‘Manyof the elements in these names are transparently Basque. …Aq. Andere, Bq. Andere ‘lady’. Aq. Sembe, Bq. Seme ‘son’, Aq. Ombe, Bq. Ume, ‘child’, Aq, Sahar, Bq. Zahar ‘old’, Aq. Osso, Bq. Otso ‘wolf’ (http://www.buber.net/Basque/Euskara/lang.lt.html ). Additionally, evidence indicating the stability of the Basque language comes from a third century 270-item epigraphic set found by archaeologists in June 2006 in Iruńa-Veleia. ‘Some of the words and phrases found were “urdin” (blue), “zuri” (white), “gori” (red, “edan” (drink) “ian” (eat), “lo” (sleep)’ etc. (op. cit.). The earliest written form of the Basque language survives in the form of a book of poems, Linguae Vasconum Primitiae written by Bernard Dechepare in 1545. But even before that, in AD 950, two Basque phrases as glosses in a Latin manuscript Glosas Emilianenses were seen in “iziogui dugu” and “guec ajutu ez dugu” meaning “we have lit” and “we have not helped”. Meanwhile, the oral literature has survived in the form of bersolarismos, improvised occasional or pastoral verses still popular in regular competitions. ‘In the 12th century, the Calixtino Codex mentions some Basque vocabulary of the people living along the pilgrim’s road to Santiago de Compostela’ (http://www.cd.sc.ehu.es/DOCS/book.SS-G/v2/Euskara.html ). There have been many attempts to eradicate Basque as a living language. During the period of the Franco dictatorship in Spain it was banned or ‘outlawed altogether. … The ethnic insularity of the Basques, however, has fostered revivals. Attempts are now being made to standardize the orthography.’ (http://www.buber.net/Basque/Euskara/langl.html ). Today, Basque (or euskara) is recognized as the ‘co-official language’ in the Basque areas of Spain. However, it has no official standing in France and ‘French citizens are barred from officially using Basque in a French court of law’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language ). However, those Spanish nationals who are Basque speakers are allowed to use it in French courts, with translations, of course. Basque is an inflected language. This means that words (or more correctly lexemes) are modified according to grammatical information reflecting gender, tense, number, time, mood and person. For example, in English the usual rule of adding ‘s’ or ‘es’ as a suffix to indicate plural is not always followed with say, ‘mouse’ changing to ‘mice’ and ‘child’ to ‘children’ in the plural. These are exceptions and in English generally, grammatical changes are indicated by word order and helper words rather than changes in the word suffixes or prefixes. The Basque language sounds are very much like the Spanish. It has the same five pure vowels along with the trilled ‘r’ and the palatal ‘n’ and ‘l’ (‘ll’). ‘In spite of this, and the presence of numerous Latinate loanwords, Basque has maintained its distinctiveness throughout two millennia of external contacts. For example, it still places a unique emphasis on suffixes to denote case and number to form new words’ (http://www.buber,net/Basque/Euskara/langl/html . However, not only has Basque borrowed from Latin, Castilian and French, it has also borrowed from Celtic (zilar: “silver”) Arabic (azoka: “market”, gutuna: “letter”), and, in turn loaned words to Castilian (left: izquierda) and to French and English quite bizarrely, the word “bizarre”. A unique isolate and a minority language of the world, the Basque language is a living example of the cultural heritage of the world and needs support and help to preserve it from extinction. (c.1230 words) References < http://www.cd.sc.ehu.es/DOCS/book.SS-G/v2/Euskara.html > 20/03/2008 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language > 20/03/2008 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_isolate > 20/03/2008 < http://www.buber.net/Basque/Euskara/langlt.html > 20/03/2008 < http://www.buber.net/Basque/Euskara/langl.html > 20/03/2008 Read More