JANIRE ZURBANO ARRESE

 

If last month we started this section with the Galician language, now is the turn of the Basque language or Euskera, the most unknown and enigmatic language among the four languages spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. Basque is spoken in both Spain and France: while the Basque provinces of Guipuzcoa, Vizcaya and Alava belong to Spain; the so-called French Basque Country or Iparralde, made up of Labort (Lapurdi), Baja Nafarroa (Navarre Behera) and Sola (Soule), is part of France. In Spain, in addition to the Basque Country, this language is also spoken in the neighbouring autonomous community of Navarre.

 

Besides, 2,000 people from 14 countries are studying Euskera through the Basque Government’s program Euskara Munduan (Basque in the World) and there are numerous groups of migrants worldwide, descendants of Basque people, who practice it. They do this in the 23 Euskal Etxeak or Basque Houses distributed in countries like Argentina, the USA, Brazil or France. In 2011, the Basque Country had 715,000 bilingual Basque speakers more or less.

 

In spite of living with Spanish, French, Catalan or Galician, Basque is considered a language isolate, in other words, unrelated to any other language in the world. In addition, together with languages ​​such as Finnish, Hungarian and Turkish, it is one of the few languages ​​currently spoken in Europe and the only one spoken in Western Europe that has nothing to do with Indo-European languages. Euskera is settled since pre-Roman times in the same place where is spoken nowadays.

 

Despite the difficulties involved in understanding or speaking Basque language, we suggest you to learn some words when visiting the Basque Country. Thus, below you have a list of useful phrases and words, which will help you earn Basque people’s respect and they’ll truly appreciate your attempt.

 

 

 

 

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