The Basque language

Euskara

The Basque language or euskara is the oldest living language in western Europe. It is one of the survivors of a group of languages spoken prior to the invasion of Europe by the Indo-Europeans 2000 years before our era.

The Basques refer to themselves as ‘‘euskaldun’’, roughly meaning someone who ‘‘possesses’’ the Basque language. This shows just how much importance Basques attach to their language.

Basque has less words than French, although over time it has absorbed many words of Iberian, Latin, Gascon and Arabic origin, as well as countless words borrowed from French and Spanish which have been more or less made Basque in order to express new realities or nuances specific to these languages.

Furthermore, one word can be used to make others by simply adding a suffix, adjective or another noun, thus modifying the word’s meaning, eg. the word ‘‘lur’’ (earth) can be combined with around fifty different suffixes to refer to things as different as ‘‘lurralde’’ (region, territory), ‘‘lursagar’’ (potato), ‘‘lurgile’’ (potter), etc.

Basque spelling is very simple and much more phonetic than French. All the letters are pronounced. The Basque alphabet differs slightly from French and English since there are no letters C, V, W, Y, and no accents.