The Basque Language in Context

Europe’s languages are quite closely related. There are the Germanic languages, which likely started life in southern Sweden over three thousand years ago and now include German, Swedish, Dutch, Danish, English and Norwegian. The Slavonic languages such as Bulgarian, Czech, Russian and Polish came from the East, as did the Baltic languages of Latvia and Lithuania. The Celtic languages (predominantly Welsh and Gaelic) are still spoken in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, while the Romance languages (primarily Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Romanian) have conquered more of the world that the Romans themselves ever did. All of these major languages belong to the Indo-European language family and linguists can track their development back through the ages to their parent languages. But one European language stands completely alone. Basque (Euskara) is the only language in Western Europe which is not demonstrably related to any other, making it a “language isolate”. Spoken by over 600,000 people – mostly alongside Castilian Spanish – Basque has endured Vikings, Romans and Franco’s Fascism and is currently enjoying a resurgence as the Basque region finds its identity within modern Spain. The other regional languages in Spain are Iberian Romance languages. Along the motorways in Galicia, for example, it’s not unusual to see one road sign in Castilian and one in Galician, with over 90% of the same words. Catalan is also similar to Castilian Spanish. But Basque is not. Some words have migrated to Basque from Spanish over the centuries, but the structure of the language is unique. A little history of the Basque language San_Sebastian Well, it has to be a “little” history because we don’t know how the language developed. Linguists over the years have tried to find relationships between Basque and any number of other languages, without any real success. The language has a distinct grammatical structure from any other European language and even this varies between dialects. The Basque region itself spans a chunk of northern Spain and south western France, with most of the population living in Spain. When the Romans took control of the Iberian Peninsula, most tribes let their own languages go and replaced them with Latin. But the Basques did not. The language was left in comparative peace until Francisco Franco took power in Spain and moved to oppress regional identities by banning regional languages. In the French part of the Basque Country, the state interfered long before to force French as the primary language, which may explain why the Basque language today survives mainly in Spain. Regional devolution is a currently a huge topic in Spain. On the streets of Spain’s cities, you will still hear more Castilian than anything else. But the regions have more autonomy than for generations while traditional culture and interest in regional languages is booming. This can only be good news for the most mysterious of European languages.