The Basque language has a fascinating history! #language #europe #history #basque #didyouknow

Thousands of years ago, there were a bunch of languages spoken in Europe that we know next to nothing about. Of these languages, only one descendent survives: Basque! Let’s learn about the Basque language and its fascinating history!

#language #history #europe #basque #didyouknow

[wrdsatwrk]

I came to find after making this video that the preferred pronunciation of “Basque” in English is typically /bæsk/ (“bask”), rather than the /bɑsk/ I used throughout this video. Sorry about that… it won’t happen again! Eskerrik asko!

[uacce]

I speak Basque. You may not care but I wanted to brag

[VictorianWaistcoat]

The uniqueness of Basque has also resulted in some pretty wild "theories" about it from non-linguists. My personal favourite is that Basque is an alien language from another planet because why not

[RobynAnarchist]

I'd love to hear about the lesser known Celtic languages such as Cornish and Breton!

[monemori]

Talk about icelandic!! Blows my mind how similar it is to old norse.

[Emymagdalena]

The smile at “except for one” was so endearing

[noahfenech]

My grandparents speak Maltese but I never learned it. It's pretty interesting in that it is such a melting pot language, combining elements of arabic and romance words.

[ilplolthereturn]

My origins are from the Basque Country (dad's side), and it still feels nice to see people talk about the language even though I myself don't speak it fluently 😊

Could you talk about the Coptic language next? It's a language spoken by Christian Egyptians in the Coptic Church, and though today it is only used as a liturgical language (like Hebrew was for around 2000 years), people say it's related to Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and that amazes me

This is just a suggestion btw, I really like your channel and I'm subbed

[madym]

My grandmas maiden name is Ochoa and she was always very proud of it. I found out Ochoa is of basque origin and was a word for wolf and wolves are one of my favorite animals. Just something cool to share.

[Naviamold]

Fun fact: there are actually some similarities in speaking between Basque and Georgian languages, with a lot of studies conducted on this topic over the years

[KurtusCobainus]

They also made some weird pidgins due to their historical practice of whale hunting.

There was a Native American-Basque pidgin and an Icelandic one.

[HulluRichie]

Basque is so interesting. I love how it sounds and writes.

It'd be so cool if you made a video about österbottniska/pohjanmaanruotsi, ostrobothnian swedish. It's not an officially recognised language though is considered a dialect of swedish (and fennoswedish) despite it being pretty much unintelligible to people who aren't familiar with it. But since information on it is scarce in english I understand if you'd rather not tackle it LOL..

[adityasriram]

Yes!! Do more about Basque please, and about interesting/unique language features too!

[Danilium]

In Spanish there is a proto-European word, if I remember correctly: "perro", dog, which is not from Latin (it would be "can" using that source).

[Colorless_Gremlin]

I hope you go over Lithuanian it has quite cool history

[mr.flibblessumeriantransla]

For those wondering:
An Ergative system marks Intransitive Subjects the same way it marks the Direct Object of a transitive verb. A Transitive Subject receives a special marking (the Ergative Case) denoting that it is the Subject in a transitive construction. Other than this it really isn’t that special, merely a different system of marking Subjects and Direct Objects.

English is Nominative-Accusative. It marks an Intransitive Subject the same way it marks a Transitive Subject, and the Direct Object is the one which is marked differently.
For English, this is achieved by syntax: the Subject always precedes the verb (whether transitive or intransitive), and the Direct Object always comes after the verb.
The only vestiges of Old English’s morphological system is in the different forms for pronouns: one for Nominative (Subject) and one for Accusative (Direct Object), the difference between “he” and “him.”

[NTCO]

I am half German and half Spanish and I’m currently figuring out where my ancestors are from. Most of my relatives from Spain possess typically basque characteristics and I’m currently learning Basque to someday move to Euskadi and because I love learning languages. Eskerrik asko for talking about this ancient and mysterious language! 🙏🙏

[ingvyon]

Can you do one on the Frisian languages?

[Adoribull]

oh I could talk about Basque and the Paleo-European languages for hours. The Iberian peninsula has a fascinating linguistic history, especially because of the mass of language families found across three millennia on a relatively small piece of land.

The Carthiginians that ruled much of the peninsula before the Second Punic War (iirc) spoke Punic a Semitic language, which arrived there from the Middle East via North Africa. Then there was Celtiberian, closely related to Gaulish, which arrived there through the Ancient Celts, who actually spanned much of Europe and even Anatolia! Latin, an Italic language, which would obviously become the current predominant languages of Spanish, Catalonian, and Portuguese, arrived through the first Roman colonies and quickly replaced all other languages, except Basque's predecessor for some reason, through its political and economical dominance over the peninsula once Carthago was destroyed in the war. Later on, Arabic, another Semitic language, also played a very important role during Ottoman times. All of these languages left a profound impact on the modern language landscape of the peninsula.

Most relevant for this video, however, is an ancient language spoken along the Eastern coast of the peninsual simply known as Iberian. We don't know a lot about it, mostly because the surviving material is very scarce and simplistic. However, we do know it's numeric vocabulary and it is very, very similar to Basque's, such as Iberian irur "three" and Basque hiru(r) "three". There are also other similarities; however, we don't know enough about Iberian to make a real assertion that it is related to Basque. Vocabulary specifically can easily be borrowed and isn't very convincing, except for certain parts of speech like pronouns and adpositions. Sound equivalences are better at proving relation.

The real predecessor is most likely another Paleo-European language called Aquitanian, which was also spoken in what is the Basque region today. The question is whether Aquitanian and Iberian are siblings, cousins or merely very close friends.

[HarryNyssen]

Etruscan (Tuscany) is another interesting language like this, now extinct but still being around in Roman times. The first Roman Caesars still knew it and even documented it. The language survived long enough to have written records, they adopted a modified version of the Greek alphabet which was even the basis for the Roman alphabet that we all use today, even though the language itself was not related at all to Greek or Roman.