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ETA example

Is it really appropriate to use a poem by Joseba Sarrionandia, a convicted ETA member, as an example of Basque text? Surely something less controversial should be used. 82.32.72.129 (talk) 23:00, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

The new president of the Basque Autonomous Community, the Spanish nationalist (unionist... use the term you prefer) Patxi López, cited Joseba Sarrionandia in its inauguration, so it cannot be that bad to have Sarrionandia's texts in this article.--Assargar (talk) 13:49, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Nevertheless, I don't see why it has to be that example. Why not pick something else that would cause no offense to anyone? As a proud Basque, I'm not too happy seeing the works of an ETA member used as generic example of Basque text. There are countless different things that could be used, why use something from Sarrionandia? It seems unnecessary. Would you put a poem written by Osama Bin Laden as an example of Arabic text? 193.60.78.34 (talk) 01:29, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

If it's a good poem, then why not? 178.93.64.139 (talk) 10:28, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Translation of Huesca quote from 1349 in "Names of Language" section

This may be getting nitpicky, and I don't have an etymological dictionary in front of me, but I think that the phrase:

"Item nuyl corridor nonsia usado que faga mercadería ninguna que compre nin venda entre ningunas personas, faulando en algaravia nin en abraych nin en basquenç"

prohibits the doing business with (faga mercadería = haga negocios), or buying or selling between, persons who speak these three languages. note that the next sentence:

"et qui lo fara pague por coto XXX sol"

fara = hara, not habla, so the fine is for doing business, not for speaking. Not that the language wasn't outlawed at this time in this community, but the example is specifically conducting business in Arabic, Hebrew or Euskara.

Again, I may be rusty - I did an undergrad research project to contribute to the DOSL in college, but that was a decade ago. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Girzirz (talk • contribs) 20:19, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Trask (History of Basque 40) translates "Let no merchant be employed who buys or sells with anybody speaking in Arabic, Hebrew or Basque". The target of the law is rather excluding its public use, it prohibits to have an employee who speaks Basque at work; but seems that the idea was that no commerce to be done in those languages. (For not Romance readers: "corridor" = "merchant"; "faulando" = "speaking". In any case the article now says penalising the use, not prohibiting; so I am not sure whether there is any problem. Maybe the wording could be more precise? Maybe the translation should be added to avoid misunderstandings? --Dumu Eduba (talk) 22:01, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
But now I realise that maybe the problem is conceptual. The quote is about the use of Basque in Huesca in the XIVth century, not on its "prohibition". For example, there is another text from La Rioja (Ojacastro; XIIIth) granting its use in legal processes which is not mentioned. --Dumu Eduba (talk) 22:26, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Phonology

Working on the russian transcription for the Basque language I have met the problem, when different sources provide the different IPA transcription for the same phonemes. There are samples from the English and German Wikipedias:

Basque DE-Wiki EN-Wiki
s [ɕ] [s̺]
x [ʃ] [ʃ]
z [s] [s̻]

Please, clarify, which version is closer to the Truth. --RYUS (talk) 18:13, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

According to Trask (History of Basque, Routledge 1997)

  • s is an apico-alveolar voiceless fricative
  • z is a lamino-alveolar voiceless fricative
  • x a palato-alveolar voiceless fricative

According to Hualde (Basque Phonology, Routledge 1991)

  • s is an apico-alveolar voiceless fricative
  • z is a dorso-alveolar voiceless fricative
  • x a pre-palatal voiceless fricative

The forms with t- represent the corresponding affricates. ɕ is a alveo-palatal fricative and not appropriate in the Basque context, so the ones on the English Wiki are better. Hope that helps. Akerbeltz (talk) 19:06, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, if you were going to use /ɕ/ due to legibility or typographic concerns (say, the way we use /r/ for English, even though it's not a trill), then I'd think you'd use it for z, not for s. In any case, I'd only recommend s.t. like that if your readers were Basque speakers and didn't need an accurate transcription. kwami (talk) 19:28, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
I wouldn't worry too much about legibility in this case if they're described at least once - the (t)s/(t)z distinction has fallen by the way for the majority of speakers anyway. Akerbeltz (talk) 19:43, 12 August 2009 (UTC)


There is no problem with affricates (ts, tz, tx) as Russian has the same mechanism ([ʦ], [ʧ]). Unclear is the pronunciation of s, x, z. So, your sorces also give two different explanations... --RYUS (talk) 21:16, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
If there's no problem with the affricates, then there's no problem with the fricatives, since they have the same place of articulation. kwami (talk) 00:21, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Sorry for unclear expression, "no problem with affricates" means "I know, how affricates are articulated generally (not in Basque only), no need to explain them especially", answering to "The forms with t- represent the corresponding affricates". The problem is with the "simple" phonemes. --RYUS (talk) 19:59, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
There's a certain amount of nit-picking about apical vs laminal. Checked a few more:

According to Rebuschi (Structure de l'énoncé en basque, SELAF 1984)

  • s is a retroflex or apico-alveolar voiceless fricative (transcribed /ʂ/)
  • z (transcribed /s/)
  • x (transcribed /š/)

According to Saltarelli (Basque, Croom Helm 1988)

  • s is an apico-alveolar voiceless fricative (transcribed /ś/)
  • z is a lamino-alveolar voiceless fricative (transcribed /s/)
  • x is a lamino-postalveolar voiceless fricative (transcribed /š/)

For s the leaning is towards apico-alveolar therefore so you need the bridge below symbol. z either is described as laminal or just transcribed as /s/. The default pronunciation of the IPA s is either laminal or apical, so the combining box below to indicate laminal is needed to be specific as it's a contrasting pair in some dialects. So use [s̺] and [s̻] Akerbeltz (talk) 11:20, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you both for help! --RYUS (talk) 19:59, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome Akerbeltz (talk) 20:51, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

The realization of /s/ is the same in Spanish; I suggest reading the following article: Voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant. --Daniel bg (talk) 23:53, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

How does that help though? They use Hualde as a source, which we mention above already. It doesn't solve the problem that there is no total agreement on what it is. Akerbeltz (talk) 07:44, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

The citations and the bibliography are a huge, incompetent mess

As for the footnotes (citations), given the sophistication of the research that produced these citations, it's even more amazing how ignorant the person who composed them is. No page numbers. Excessive proportion of them are in Basque, another excessive proportion are in other foreign languages. Punctuation all wrong, even seems to be sui generis.

The bibliography is excessively classified, almost a dozen categories. This is quite inappropriate, and also unwieldy. Very difficult to edit a list when it is categorized so much. Hurmata (talk) 04:32, 17 August 2009 (UTC)


Map of basque as inicitial language

I have corrected de "errors" reported by Egitan several times (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Basque_language&diff=301769615&oldid=300308681). I have kept only contrasted data: I have checked all data in the sources appeared in the map and they are all correct to the date they indicates (it tooke me hours!...) So, information of the map is completely right an the only person displeased with it is Egitan (as we can see the history of Basque language page), but I think he can now accept it, once "errors" he reported were corrected. In the other hand, map information has a high value, so it shows clearly the family transmision of basque language and shows the actual process of des-basconization of areas like Navarre Pyrenees, Bilbao metropolitan area or Oiartzualdea region. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Andrew Champs (talk • contribs) 17:47, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Advanced phrases

   * Eup! = The colloquial way of greeting someone on the street, also apa or aupa or iep!.

The above information in the article is of great interest to me as a resident of Derbyshire, England. Derbyshire has a distinctive language/ dialect which seems to be related to Old English. Please note that I have no knowledge of linguistics so that even that statement may be not correct.

The dialect is often used on sentimental occasions for entertainment and is regarded with great esteem.

But in it there is one phrase or word which is more commonly and widely used and that is:

"AYUP" or "EHUP" - sometimes with the addition of "me duck!"

It means, in a friendly way, "hello my friend or comrade".

(But it can also mean "wait a minute - there is something wrong here" again in a friendly way.)

So it is a friendly greeting (or the drawing attention to something in which there is mutual interest).

Accepting the warnings on cognates being alluded to by the non scholarly would somebody please look at the possibility of a connection with the Euskara word "Eup!"? Derbyshire was a very isolated region of what is now England and if it is not the same word it would also be facinating for an analysis of how it could have been "borrowed" in either direction.

The Derbyshire phrase could of course have an origin far predating the use of "Old English" in the area of Derbyshire. Compagnero (talk) 17:29, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Chance coincidence. Definitely. Akerbeltz (talk) 18:43, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
What is the basis of it being definite? There are surely many unknowns?

Compagnero (talk) 19:57, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

(in a hurry) 1) no genetic link has ever been established between Basque and other IE languages and believe me, people have tried. 2) You must always, when working on an etymology, provide "motive and opportunity". Better even to work off general patterns of borrowing, not just a single word. In this case how would the word have been borrowed and most importantly, why? Also, you must never compare modern surface forms. You must go back as far as possible and compare historical forms. In this case, I very much suspect a two word origin for eyup such as hey up rather than a Basque root. Akerbeltz (talk) 22:53, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Speaker numbers

I've tidied the numbers but just in case someone is wondering about the discrepancy between the over-a-million claim and the current figure: I believe whoever added the OAM figure mistook the meaning of "passive speaker" (of whom there are 397.900) and added the two figures up, which gives you a figure of 1,063.700 "speakers". But since passive speakers don't count as speakers in such census data, I've revised them down to the figures of actual speakers. Akerbeltz (talk) 14:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

There is something important to mention, this number is for the 16 years old and above. A more realistic number would be closed to 800 000 people, but I did not find any recent statistics for the 16 years old and below. -- Zorion blabla 24 January 2010 13:23 (ET) —Preceding undated comment added 18:23, 24 January 2010 (UTC).
Most research doesn't include those age groups and since the Inkestak have consistently ignored that, we can use these numbers. Next one is 2010 so we'll get a better idea. Akerbeltz (talk) 16:00, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Basque not really ergative/absolutive?

I recall reading, some years ago, a paper by Larry Trask in which (if I remember correctly) he argued that Basque is not a "true" ergative/absolutive language. He analysed subordinate clauses, pronoun references, etc., and he concluded that Basque's deep structure was of a conventional subject/object variety, and that the case markings were a surface phenomenon. Does anyone else remember seeing this paper (or something like it)? If my recollection is reasonably on the mark, it would be good to track down the source and mention it in the article in some way. Richwales (talk) 22:19, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Nothing springs to mind. He only calls it the ergative in his opus magnum The History of Basque and does not debate its status. Akerbeltz (talk) 22:32, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Maybe that paragraph was in the section in which Trask speculated on how should have been pre-Basque, suggesting that Basque comes from a non-ergative language. Trask wrote this section more like a try or experiment that as a formal proposal. --Dumu Eduba (talk) 11:59, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
Which, given the general tendencies of language evolution and grammaticalisation, wouldn't really be earth-shattering news... Akerbeltz (talk) 12:35, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

This page is very scholarly, and so I hesitate to add a reference -- since it is a reference to a novel where the Basque country and in particular the Basque language plays something of a part. The novel "Shibumi" by Trevanian, a somewhat noted novelist, has the main character imprisoned with nothing more than some Basque language material, including a Basque dictionary. From this he learns how to speak the language, though with odd pronunciation since there was no one to teach it. He then later lives in the mountains of northern Spain, obviously Basque country. I thought it an interesting reference, but as I said, it may not commensurate with the scholarly description in this article.

http://www.amazon.com/Shibumi-Trevanian/dp/3858860840/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273271068&sr=8-14

Saxonthedog (talk) 22:30, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Allow me a reductio ad absurdum. Imagine such a level of references for every language (such as English, German, Russian...). BTW It looks to me too much reminiscent of the argument of Schachnovelle. --Dumu Eduba (talk) 11:08, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
I must concur with Dumu but thank you for talking about it on the talk page first!! Akerbeltz (talk) 11:49, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I totally understand, no worries on that front. My only thought was that Basque country let alone the Basque language doesn't show up as a significant component of a widely distributed novel, at least not in the United States, so that it might be of interest. Something that's hardly the case with English, German or Russian. Basque is very unique and not widely known, certainly not widely spoken. But if folks want to keep the article free of such a popular culture reference, that's fine. It's unfortunate that most Americans know nothing of the Basques, or if they do, it's all about ETA and bombs. But America is not the world, so if others have more experience with such material, so that the novel is not as unique as I do, or if others think it an inappropriate addition, I totally understand. (I guess that's why I asked!) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Saxonthedog (talk • contribs) 03:49, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

No problem at all. My viewpoint is that any person able to reach this article gets much more information on the Basque country and language. IMHO the Basque language should be dealt as a normal language (what it is), because there are too many people that sees it as a very odd thing, almost as if it was Martian. This "esoteric" approach has damaged the study of the Basque language (at least this is my opinion). Dumu Eduba (talk) 10:26, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Names of the language

"goes back to the Greek term ουασκωνους (ouaskōnous), an ethnonym used by Strabo"

Not correct: The Greek term in nominative is ουασκωνοι (ouaskōnoi) - ουασκωνους is the accusative ... --JFritsche (talk) 17:34, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

No, this is correct. You'll find that there are relatively few incidents of languages borrowing nominative forms, borrowing accusative/dative or other common case forms is much more frequent. Akerbeltz (talk) 17:44, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Basque phonology

Should there be an article for this topic? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bruinfan12 (talk • contribs) 15:53, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't see why there should. Oh, and please sign your talk page posts. --JorisvS (talk) 15:56, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Ok Thank you! Bruinfan12 (talk) 12:24, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't see why there shouldn't. Admittedly, it would be in need of expanding but lots of languages have separate phonology articles. I guess it depends on whether you intend to xpand it. Akerbeltz (talk) 13:16, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

aspirated consonants

I've come across several articles which apparently attribute aspirated C's to Basque, such as "Apʰara" mentioned in Aran (river). There's also "*Barrʰun(a)" at Barhoue. I don't know whether this should be explained on this article, on changed in those. — kwami (talk) 21:04, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Northern varieties often distinguish /b/ /p/ /pʰ/ but southern varieties rarely. It depends on whether we're aiming to transcribe something broadly mid-ground (in which case /pʰ/ and /rʰ/ are out or hardcore dialect. Akerbeltz (talk) 21:34, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Figures don't add up

According to the article, the Basque language "is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories (1.105.331 out of 2,589,600). Of these, 614,000 live in the Spanish part of the Basque country and the remaining 51,800 live in the French part.". This does not add up: 1,105,331 is not 25.7% of 2,589,600, nor is it the sum of 614,000 + 51,800. Shouldn't the figure be 665800? It appears to have been changed from this by An13sa on 14th June 2011 without any explanatory comment. 81.101.197.228 (talk) 15:51, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Discrepancies among different versions of Wikipedia

Right now the English wiki says there are 665,000 speakers of this language (in 2006); the French and Basque versions say 775,000 (in 2008); the Spanish version gives 883,146 (also from 2006); the German version says "690,000 to 800,000". Which is it? 71.205.174.204 (talk) 03:46, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

We're "right". As in, we're using the most recent reliable census data (the 2006 Sociolinguistic Inquest). The Spanish Wiki is citing the 2011 figures, the German page isn't citing any source, just a random figure vaguely in the right area. The French page cites a source which is no longer there, apparently a page on EITb (Basque radio and tv) but the figure also includes passive speakers which isn't a good idea. So overall, our figure is the most reliable unless we can find a source for the claim the French wiki makes. I'd love a figure above a million but I don't think we're quite there yet. Akerbeltz (talk) 10:15, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
PS I've just checked, the 2011 figures aren't all out yet, they're done a preliminary report on the BAC but I'd rather wait for the full report before changing figures. Looking at it, I'd say the 1m+ figure is wrong. Akerbeltz (talk) 10:23, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
The Basque Gov has just published some preliminary figures, stating that the total has just topped 850,000. I've added a note in the demographics section but not yet changed the infobox figure as that gives native speakers only and the figures published so far only give the total. I'll add the detailed new figures as soon as they're published. Akerbeltz (talk) 10:02, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

"This article needs additional citations for verification"

What is this for? The page looks accurate and with enough links, doesn't it? StasMalyga (talk) 14:24, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

I would say so too but there's always some drive by tagger who puts it back so I've given up. Akerbeltz (talk) 23:32, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
In other words, the tag is of no value to editors. Anyone who wishes such a tag should tag specific statements with {{Citation needed}}.--JorisvS (talk) 10:48, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Archaeological and genetic studies seem to suggest a tenuous link between Europe and the NE and E coast of N America - presumably via European bands skirting the edge of the ice shelf circa 15000 years ago and thereby heading west into N America. If this is the case, might there be links between Basque and the Native languages along the NE coast of N America? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.176.27.231 (talk) 07:37, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

No, this is a bit out of reality. StasMalyga (talk) 14:02, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
Although a decade or so ago there were suggestions of a genetic link, this has been dropped as more research was done. There are a couple of archaeologists still putting this forward as a hypothesis but that's all, the general feeling among archaeologists and so far as I know the unanimous opinion of geneticists is that the Native Americans came from Asia. Dougweller (talk) 14:46, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
Even more importantly 15,000 years ago these people wouldn't have been "Basque" - they were not yet a nation then. These would have been primitive hunter-gatherers with the most rudimentary culture.HammerFilmFan (talk) 13:16, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
rudimentary culture? yikes, which antiquated texbook did that come from? In any case, nation or no nation they would have still spoken a language, unless you're suggesting grunts? :) Akerbeltz (talk) 15:46, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
YES, rudimentary. What history texts are YOU reading that has anything beyond extremely primitive lifestyles in 11,000 B.C.???? Sorry, doesn't fly except in fringe theories.HammerFilmFan (talk) 20:57, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
Rudimentary technology, not necessarily culture. Unless by "culture" you mean a stratified society, written literature, and organized religion. — kwami (talk) 21:42, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
The only thing we know is that Basque predates IE in Westernmost Europe (or better said, descends from a language that was spoken in the general area before IEs showed up), who arrived there around 1000 BC. For all we know, Basque could have arrived there in an earlier migration, say, with agriculture c.4700 BC, or with Bronze c.2500 BC. We have no evidence it was spoken in any form in Western Europe in 15000 BC, which is what you suggest.--80.26.120.40 (talk) 21:47, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Establishment of uniqueness.

Who was the linguist that was the first one to realize that Basque is unrelated to Indo-European? twitter.com/YOMALSIDOROFF (talk) 23:38, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Good question. I don't know and a cursory glance through the literature doesn't come up with anything either. A bit of daterange manipulation on Google Scholar seems to point at the 1920/30s as the first (cf the roundabout mention as Basque being non IE in Three Etymologies in Early Celtic by LH Gray) period in which Basque is bandied around as non-IE but that's just based on what Google has in it's search engine. But I would say that that's probably right for the first period in which the scientific community considered the idea. I think the general notion that Basque is very alien to IE has probably been around for a long time, as it's obvious even to the casual observer. Akerbeltz (talk) 14:06, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
Depends ... early Roman scholars recognized it, but they were not scientific by today's standards. HammerFilmFan (talk) 20:55, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
Hammer, that wasn't the question. In order to recognise Basque as not being IE, the concept of IE as a linguistic family had to be recognised first and that didn't happen until the 20th century. Akerbeltz (talk) 11:05, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Issue with coherency

Under the second example in the grammar section (you buy the newspapers), the descriptions of didzidazue or whatever don't match up very well. They should be closer to duplicates of one another. Also, niri isn't introduced until explained in the following parapraph, which is confusing.

I recommend putting niri in the pronunciation link, and changing the the breakdown descpription. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.28.183.166 (talk) 19:19, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

So it looks like we have to have a discussion about those sections. The further reading section is clearly an arbitrary list, and I don't see how the external links conforms to our guideline. Why should we keep them as they currently stand? Thargor Orlando (talk) 19:03, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Since you nixed highly relevant links such as that to the Academy of the Basque Language, why don't you list those you have beef with and we'll deal with it that way? The list currently looks no worse than that on French language so I don't quite get you. Akerbeltz (talk) 19:22, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
That was an error on my part, I did misread what that link was saying. Looking again at what is there, my "beef" is with all of them, the one you've highlighted excluded. As for french language, I'm only currently in the middle of the letter B. I'll get to France eventually. Thargor Orlando (talk) 19:28, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Phonostatistical research

I've not removed or tagged it but this new section worries me. If I google "phonostatistical" on Google Scholar, I mostly get stuff by the same author, Tambovtsev, and on the whole, it does not seem a widely used technique. Intuitively, it would worry me as a scientific technique as it compares surface phenomena and, reading the article, seems to have made little or no effort to filter for known loanwords which would, given the relatively small corpus, skew the output. It's a bit like trying to grade the relationship between insects based on leg thickness and wing length - interesting but not obviously meaningful. I don't think this clears WP:PSTS but does anyone have other thoughts? Akerbeltz (talk) 16:25, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Deleted. No indication of why one would make such calculations, what they mean, or why they would be of interest to the reader of this article. — kwami (talk) 01:56, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
@kwami As it is indicated by Tambovtsev, the work gives very important clues about the phonetics of languages by using the method of Euclidean distance. Here are some important clues to keep the text in the article:
  1. "The structure of the frequency of occurrence of consonants in the speech sound chain" which "is a good clue of understanding the typological closeness of languages."
  2. "It is interesting to compare how the computer and how different linguists place them in different language families and super-families."
  3. Because "... consonants bear the semantic load in the word, not vowels ... it is more possible to understand the meaning of the message by consonants, rather by vowels."
They have chosen Basque because...
4."... Basque as well as Japanese, Korean, Ainu, Burushaski, Nivh (Gilyak), Yukaghir are considered to be isolated languages, i.e. languages that do not belong to the known language families."
Furthermore Tambovtsev and his team believe...
5."... that under the circumstances even some traits and hints from the typological point may help to find the languages genetically related to Basque (Tambovtsev, 2001: 83-85)." and that "the chosen features" appear "to be the >> most informative << from the phonetic point of view."
And here comes the most important clue:
6."As a conclusion, we can say that the phonostatistical distances >> allow us to find out how similar Basque is to the other world languages << under investigation."
(Link: http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/publications/cl2003/papers/tambovtsev_abstract2.pdf)
@Akerbeltz What is your opinion on this issue, except WP:PSTS :) ? Talgatov (talk) 12:34, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
I think it's bordering on pseudo-science, I'm afraid. Many techniques in science can be applied in other areas and give us interesting insights but that has to be done with great care and sensitivity to the subject areas in question. To begin with, as I already stated, comparing such phonetic corpora MUST filter out known loanwords in all languages being compared. There seems to have been no effort at doing so. Given the small corpus, the presence of common Romance borrowings in Basque and, for the same of argument, Chinese loanwords in Korean (which are *very* common, between ~20% (speech) and 60% (overall count), which is very bad news for such a project) will skew the result. He's also comparing modern sound inventories rather than the earliest known inventories. For example, modern Basque has <m> but we know this is an innovation which was not present in older forms of Basque. This will make Basque seem x degrees closer to Ainu which has <m> too. There also seems no effort at differentiating initial, medial and final position. There is also NO indication that they actually compared phonemes across all these languages as opposed to letters - some of the languages involve rather complex letter-to-sound rules. And last but not least, it is FULL of typos which doesn't fill me with confidence either in the author or the publication which allowed such careless mistakes to be published. Akerbeltz (talk) 12:50, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for your appreciation on this issue. Interesting publication, but it's rather still in a baby-phase. I thinks it need more attention by other scientists, too, be it inter- or intradisciplinary. With regards. Talgatov (talk) 13:00, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

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NIger-COngo

This paper at http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/gc_dunn/Basque_as_Niger-Congo.html says Basque is Niger Congo and very close to the Siwu or Akpafu language and Niger-Congo. [[1]].Do you think this is true? To me, this seems totally false! —User:Alexlatham96

That is a fringe theory not even notable, so WP:NFRINGE applies. Should not even be mentioned in the article. --Xabier Armendaritz(talk) 08:39, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

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"ancestral"?

What does it mean to say that the Basque language is "ancestral" to the Basque people? --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 18:48, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Fair point, I tweaked it. Akerbeltz (talk) 12:57, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

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Basque is a Indo European languge

As its in Western Europe and uses Latin Letters the Basque Language is a Indo European languge — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.175.243.206 (talk) 00:30, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Those characteristics have no relation with classifying a language as Indo-European. Please read the article on Indo-European languages. You'll see that Basque is not one of them. --Xabier Armendaritz(talk) 06:02, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
This makes no sense. Many languages use the latin alphabet nowadays, including languages like Vietnamese and Turkish, which are not Indo-European. This happens so as to simplify/enable reading and/or to "modernize" the language. In order for a language to be in the same family as another they need to share the same "ancestor" (in this case it is proto-Indo-European, which is the ancestral language of others, like Spanish, English or Greek, yet it is not the ancestral language of Basque). -Myrmecium (talk) 14:00, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

"More than merely tolerated"

Hi, I would not like to add litigation here, just get sth straight. I know a bit of the situation since my family is from the area, has had some involvement, plus I think the source should be taken into account. In both Navarre and Álava all education in Basque came to a halt during Civil War (there was not much before either), but it started to be revived in the 1960s under the shelter of Church. Overall Basque was presented as something picturesque and rural.

Some people in the Church were sympathetic and in Álava there was one or two Basque language schools for primary education starting in the late 1960s (Olabide, and little more). In Navarre, some officials were likewise sympathetic and fostered in certain official periodicals and awards the use of language, although the institutional approach was patchy, so to say.

If the source is not very wrong, I think that should be taken into account. Regards Iñaki LL (talk) 11:38, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I was using the education thing merely as an example, I'm not sure to the extent of support "beyond toleration" things went, as I said, I didn't write that bit and I'm not sure what source this comes from. I suspect that "beyond toleration" suggest things such as sporadic use by official bodies and so on but that era isn't exactly my specialism, I'd have to dig into it. But as far as the wording goes, it may be a bit vague but it's certainly English and doesn't seem outrageously wrong from what I know of that era. Akerbeltz (talk) 11:51, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
As anything Basque removed from private household, it was regarded with suspicion and/or condescending attitude, but some officials in the regional councils attempted to promote its study and enhance its status, talking about the 1960s. During and after the coup d'etat (1936) it was frowned upon or prohibited in Navarre, as elsewhere. Books in Basque were burned in Estella-Lizarra, for example. Preaching in Basque was abandoned in many parishes of central Navarre.
I would say, "it came to be increasingly tolerated, after a period of proscription". Of course, that statement is not from the source. Iñaki LL (talk) 14:31, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
I agree with Iñaki — as far as I know from the elders in my family and from the history texts I have read, Basque language was not even tolerated in the years of the hardest Francoist repression, not even in Navarre or Álava. For example, some family members in Navarre had to change their given names from Basque to Spanish to avoid being punished — the Spanish law did not allow them recover their Basque names until the 1980s. So I suggest this wording: "... this applied especially to those regions that did not support Franco's uprising (such as Biscay or Gipuzkoa). Overall, in the 1960s and later, the trend reversed and education and publishing in Basque began to flourish — this was tolerated in those Basque-speaking regions that supported the uprising (such as Navarre or Álava) earlier than in the other Basque regions."
I think this would be more precise. --Xabier Armendaritz(talk) 17:01, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
I agree with Xabier's wording overall, but remember there is a reference in between. We cannot attribute an in-existing statement to a source. Iñaki LL (talk) 21:11, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
Perhaps that reference to Navarre and Álava could be deleted — after all, that the linguistic repression in those two territories was somewhat weaker is already implied by the first sentence in my proposal (a sentence which already was in the article, with no debate about it). That way, the wording would stick to the source referenced. --Xabier Armendaritz(talk) 22:06, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
I think we can do without "this was tolerated in those...", since it sounds a bit awkward, what do you think? Iñaki LL (talk) 06:59, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I think that the text would be better this way: "... this applied especially to those regions that did not support Franco's uprising (such as Biscay or Gipuzkoa). Overall, in the 1960s and later, the trend reversed and education and publishing in Basque began to flourish." That the repression in Álava and Navarre was somewhat weaker is already implied there. --Xabier Armendaritz(talk) 11:50, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

French lost /h/ but later regained it as a result of Germanic influence

Latin had no [h] sound AFAIK (sounds must be noted in brackets, not slashes that note phonemes). Hence the roman languages I have heard of don't have this sound either. Old french, middle french did not have it. It is possible that it was very briefly introduced by Franks in some words but it died as a phone and what was left almost immediatly was only what is indeed called in french 'h aspiré', but this trait doesn't have any pronunciation in standard french (it is not aspirated). It's only effect is to prevent elision or liaison, hence : le haut~l'eau. Stefjourdan — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2401:7000:B067:E200:4FD:FA3F:4A25:C38B (talk) 09:25, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Latin had /h/, it was Vulgar Latin which lost /h/. Romanian but also Gascon retain /h/ to this day. So it's not as simple as saying Latin had no [h]. Akerbeltz (talk) 11:49, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
It should be pretty clear that Latin <H> was pronounced. To say otherwise would be to imagine that when they adopted a writing system, they said, "Hey, let's make up this silent letter <H> and stick it arbitrarily in a whole bunch of words for no reason." Largoplazo (talk) 13:39, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
Well, stuff like that does happen when people borrow writing systems (Greek did borrow qoph and two s letters even though it needed only one) but in any case, the preservation of h in some modern Romance languages is one massive hole in that argument so before we even contemplate this here, the user above should make his/her case on the Romanian and Gascon phonology pages first and then maybe we'll consider it here ;) Akerbeltz (talk) 12:16, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
Apples and oranges. Greek used koppa and sampi to represent specific sounds, redundant though they may have been. It didn't randomly scatter them through words in which they would have no pronunciation at all, as though it were just for fun and to make the language harder to learn to write. Largoplazo (talk) 12:57, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
I can't see the connection between this discussion and Basque but, for what it's worth, the Latin /h/ died out completely. Pronouncing it was already seen as affected by Cicero's time, and any [h] in the Romance languages has a different origin (in Gascon and Spanish, initial f-, in Romanian, Slavic loans). --Jotamar (talk) 14:48, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Ribera d'Ebre

In the following paragraph, "Ribera d'Ebre"should be corrected to "Ribera de Ebro" (I guess); the link also should be corrected. It now redirects to the Catalan county of "Ribera d'Ebre" instead of the Navarrese o Riojan "Ribera de Ebro". I am not an editor, so I just hope someone will do the changes

In the Spanish part, Basque-language schools for children and Basque-teaching centres for adults have brought the language to areas such as Enkarterri and the Ribera d'Ebre in Navarre, where it is not known if it has ever been spoken before; and in the French Basque Country, these schools and centres have almost stopped the decline of the language.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.192.78.93 (talk • contribs)

It's indeed a mistake. Thank you. --Jotamar (talk) 16:15, 8 May 2019 (UTC)


Hellenic substrate in Basque and Iberian

http://euskerarenjatorria.eus/?p=21123&lang=en. This site talks about Greek loanwords in Vasconic languages. It should be added. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.177.242.232 (talk) 11:48, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

In a word, no. It's unmitigated shite. Akerbeltz (talk) 12:14, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
These are uncorroborated conjectures by a single person so, no, they shouldn't be added to the article. Not only that, but they're from a person who's sure that Basque must have words derived from Greek because, well, it must, and therefore, moreover, it must. So that's the level of sophistication behind his reasoning. And then he finds an assortment of words in which he's able to see correspondences with Greek with no more substance behind them than exists in the cases of English "day"/Latin "dies", English "bad"/Persian "bad", or English "bullshit"/Mandarin 不是 "bù shì" = "not true". Largoplazo (talk) 12:32, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
Right so, Angus J. Huck is an amateur **crackpot** who pretended to translate Iberian anthroponyms and texts as verbatim Basque. Talskubilos (talk) 11:36, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Current trial relating to this article

How Forgers Get True Believers to Buy Their Fake Artifacts - search for Gil above. Doug Weller talk 19:15, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Percentage of borrowings

The % of borrowings in any language is notoriously difficult to measure because it's almost impossible to agree on what to compare with what. Ignore Basque for a moment and let's look at English. If you try and analyze the % of Norman French loanwords in English, you get radically different answers depending on what register or domain you compare. Based on the Shorter Oxford Dictionary you get about 28%. J Williams did one for business letters and came up with 41%. Other people give figures of up to 45%. But if you calculated the number against core vocabulary, you'd get a much lower figure. Maltese is another such case, you get anythings from 40% to 55% thrown at you depending on what people counted. I'm not suggesting desoxirribonukleiko (deoxyribonucleic) isn't a Basque word. But whether or not you include words that are hardly ever used by most speakers in such stats will vastly alter the figures given. Which is why to my knowledge, most linguists shy away from just giving a raw figure these days and say "that's the % of borrowings", at best you'll get a tentative figure relating to specific domains. Trask talks about this over a whole couple of pages but other than saying it's tricky and that the number of loans is high, he avoids giving numbers for this reason. We don't have domain specific numbers to my knowledge so giving a number is at best dicey, at worst potentially misleading. We should just say the number is high, cite Trask on that and leave it at that. Especially since Bakker doesn't actually say which source he got the 40% from. Akerbeltz (talk) 09:51, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

That last part is why I refrained from trying to solve the dispute by adding "estimated" to the text. It was still begging for a {{who?}} tag, and the answer would, given the source, be "Whoever Bakker got his number from", which wouldn't be a satisfactory response. Largoplazo (talk) 12:36, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

"Indo-European" =/= Romance

before the arrival of Indo-European languages in the area i.e before the arrival of Romance languages that today geographically surround the Basque-speaking region

This is an anachronism -- "Romance languages" are modern descendants of Latin, but speakers of Celtic languages lived in Gaul and the Iberian peninsula before the Romans ever arrived. I would suggest rewriting the above to read before the arrival of the Indo-European languages that today geographically surround the Basque-speaking region or perhaps before the arrival of Indo-European languages in the area.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:27, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

I dunno, I kind of see what you mean but then today, it is totally surrounded by Romance languages, which is going to be the reference for most readers. Few people are going to sit up and think "oh wait, what about Continental Celtic?". Akerbeltz (talk) 11:03, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
I'm taking the following to be factual as given: "The current mainstream scientific view ... is that early forms of Basque developed" before those other, non-Romance Indo-European languages. Then it looks like the current text just has the wrong connective wording between the two facts. How about "before the arrival of Indo-European languages in the area, i.e. before ending with the Romance languages that today geographically surround the Basque-speaking region"? Alternatively, "including" or "up to and including" in place of "ending with"? Largoplazo (talk) 11:35, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
Simple "including" sounds best, which allows us to be precise without bothering in detail about earlier IE languages in the area (from Continental Celtic to speculative/ephemeral substratum ghost languages like "Sorothaptic"). –Austronesier (talk) 14:53, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
Thing is, the point of the paragraph is that Basque is unrelated to the Indo-European languages and predates their presence in the region, so just saying that it is unrelated to and predates the the specific Romance languages that are spoken there now is off-topic. In order to implement that solution, you'd need to rewrite (or at least restructure) the information around it so it doesn't look like a non sequitur (or, worse, a flawed assertion that because Basque might date back as far as Roman times then it predates the presence of Indo-European languages in the region). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:52, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
Could not we just add "like Celtic languages, or Latin, some time later" instead of "i.e before the arrival of Romance languages (...)"? Regards Iñaki LL (talk) 14:48, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
I've been a historical linguistics nerd since I was 14, so I actually knew what "Indo-European" meant before I ever learned what a "Romance language" was, but is "Romance" really that much better known to English Wikipedia's "average reader" (or the average expected reader of this particular article) than "Indo-European"? I've been working under the assumption that people who don't know about historical linguistics would be aware that French, Spanish, etc. were called "Romance languages" and that that is why Romance languages are mentioned at all, but now I'm actually not sure: would it be better not to mention Celtic, Latin, or Romance at all, and just say before the arrival of the Indo-European languages that today geographically surround the Basque-speaking region? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:47, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Are dogon and Basque language related?

It would be interesting to include the hypothesis that the Basque language proceeds from Dogon. According to the news from several newspapers, a linguistic study done by James Martin, professor at the Instituto Cervantes in Madrid. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.219.124.178 (talk) 20:48, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, there are too many crackpot theories in the Hypotheses on connections with other languages section already. Not until it has become a widely accepted theory, the crazy theories connecting Basque with anything from Navajo to Martian would fill a small library. Akerbeltz (talk) 21:54, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
For what it's worth, here's an article on Martin's study (in Spanish). Mutt Lunker (talk) 16:21, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Yeurgh, another random comparison of modern forms. Honestly, some journals have NO standards. Kuia and pipil when Vasconists agree that no Basque term of any antiquity can contain initial k or p, barring onomatopoeia. Soro, a Latin loanword (solum)? <sigh> Akerbeltz (talk) 22:53, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Someone had inserted the Dogon fringe claim into the opening paragraph, so today I replaced it with the widely agreed upon understanding that Basque is a language isolate. There's something about language isolates that drives people to invent supposed relationships based on the shallowest of analyses that fall far short of accepted linguistic standards of evidence for such claims. The world is full of language isolates, just as it is full of biological families with only one member species. It's a normal feature of evolution and extinction. With biological evolution, we can trace relationships after the fact through analysis of DNA, RNA, proteins, and other biochemical signatures. But with linguistic evolution, we have no such reliable encoding to work with. None of the linguistic analysis tools we have should be treated the same as a DNA signature. They have to be applied with judicious taste based on deep expertise and experience. When we consult such experts on Basque, such as Koldo Mitxelena[1] or Joseba Lakarra[2], they universally condemn such attempts as crackpot theories, and they have written at length on the subject. To anyone interested in why it's so clear that Basque is not related to (insert language X here), I encourage you to find and read a copy of Lakarra's excellent "Basque and the reconstruction of isolated languages," which explores various such claims and shows where their analyses fall apart. It's fascinating reading, rigorously researched, and well written. Unless new evidence emerges (not just someone's new harebrained idea they passionately want to convince us of), this subject has to be treated as closed. We're going to have to watch this page closely, to keep replacing future attempts to insert such pseudo-scientific claims. Toad4242 (talk) 23:44, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
@Toad4242: Thank you for handling this! There are a couple of well-argued, but still hopelessly speculative proposals by respectable linguists (the latest being by Blevins), but the Dogon stuff is utter BS. –Austronesier (talk) 00:45, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ http://www.gbv.de/dms/sub-hamburg/583914055.pdf
  2. ^ https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/pdf/doi/10.4324/9781315750026.ch3

Undue Weight?

Am I the only one who feels that Forni's arguments are given undue weight? I've done a background check and he is not a professional linguist, he is an admitted hobbyist. Not to mention the fact that his hypotheses completely contradicts the basic foundations of historical linguistics. The other theories have their detractors (obviously they can't all be true) but here proposed by actual linguists (albeit not always in the relevant sub-field). His appearance in the JEIS was basically a stunt meant to disprove his claims, it's his only published work in an English-language academic journal. Debunking his claims just tells us what we already knew, I don't really see the point in keeping him in the article. MToumbola (talk) 17:33, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

It's a bit of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't one with that section. The problem is that ever since Basque caught the attention of philologists, there have been countless attempts to tie it to this, that or the next thing. The moment you remove it, it'll boomerang back.
Having said that, perhaps we could keep the sections, like the one on IE, and write them in a more general way without giving weight to individual crackpots other than perhaps as a source i.e. remove Forni from the text but keep the ref? Akerbeltz (talk) 20:45, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
Might it make sense to relegate all of the theories to the History of the Basque language article, where, relatively speaking, their weight would be less undue than it is in the main article about the language? It's weird to give them not only more prominence here than there, but to give them prominence only here and not mention to them there. Largoplazo (talk) 22:06, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
Come to think of it, it doesn't even make sense that the "main article" about the language's history has no more lines of text than the history section here does even if we ignore the hypotheses subsection. When a section points to a "main article", the point is supposed to be that the full coverage is at the "main article" and the section should be only a summary, at a higher level and/or feature only highlights. Largoplazo (talk) 22:12, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
Well, it's difficult to say much about the history of a language isolate :D Anyway, other language articles (Sumerian language, Burushaski) for isolates have classification attempts in the main article. I actually think it would be worse to have this on the 'history' page because it would suggest hat these - mostly crazy - attempts at classification are part of its history. But I do think that we could reduce the length of each section broadly in line with how Sumerian language presents this data i.e. name the proposed affiliation + link to proponent (if they have a bio page) + ref and leave it with the general statement that these are all refuted by mainstream linguists. Akerbeltz (talk) 10:05, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
There is no History of the Sumerian language or History of Burushaski, so in the absence of an article split, any theory about their origins would have to be in the top-level articles. In this case, there is a history article, so that's where details about history would logically go. I don't see that we're giving any less of a sense that those conjectures are part of the language's history by including them in a history section instead of in a history article. Even if they're crackpot conjectures, the language's history is what they're crackpot conjectures about! It doesn't make sense to include information that falls into a subtopic in an article on the general topic but not in an existing article about the subtopic. Largoplazo (talk) 10:15, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm actually not sure that History of the Basque language page wouldn't be better off being merged into this article. Most of the (relatively few) History of language X pages (History of the Irish language, History of the Welsh language, History of French) cover really well documented languages but in many cases, like Japanese or Chinese, there's not even a single History of X page but it's split off by period like Middle Chinese and Old Chinese. We're not ever going to have enough material to turn History of the Basque language into anything beyond a stub because the material we do have is to all intents and purposes modern Basque and further back, there's nothing except for Aquitanian which is covered on the Aquitanian language page.

I also note that the closest match to a language difficult to classify would be Japanese and that various attempts at classification are not covered by History of the Japanese Language but a fairly specific Classification of the Japonic languages. Maybe User:Iñaki_LL can shed some light on what the intention behind that page was? Maybe I missed something. Akerbeltz (talk) 15:48, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't disagree with merging the history article here. It is definitely awfully short to have been spun off into a separate article. Conversely, there's such a thing as spinning off a section precisely to serve as a focus for fringe theory enthusiasts and to deter them from the top-level article. Largoplazo (talk) 16:13, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
I think we should seriously consider an article Hypotheses about the classification of Basque (or whatever we may call it, as long as its not a monstrosity such as Alternative theories of Hungarian language origins). @Largoplazo: Not as a magnet and dumping ground (or more positively: a diversion strategy) for fringe amateur crap like Basque-Dogon, but as an earnest reflection of long-range hypotheses put forward by the leading figures among long-range comparatist. Of course, this should be done with all necessary caveats and an overall emphasis on the mainstream view that rejects these hypotheses. Sure, it will not be easy to write a good article about it, and it will be hard enough afterwards to shepherd it from drive-by additions of fluff. Just an idea.
As for the IE connection mentioned in this present article, Forni is given to much room both in the prose and in the citekill from scholars rejecting his position. This is clearly undue, also when we consider the much more detailed effort by Blevins (2018). @Akerbeltz: We have talked about this book before, and agreed then that it was premature to include mention of an unreviewed hypothesis. In the meantime, I have found a lengthy review by Peter Bakker. Bakker calls the book "a brilliant endeavor" and "without doubt one of the best argued cases for a link of Basque with other languages", but at the same time concludes "that the case is not proven". Blevins is an eminent scholar; admittedly, her efforts in historical linguistics were not always fortunate (cf. Austronesian–Ongan languages), but maybe time is ripe to add at least a brief mention of Blevins's proposal here. –Austronesier (talk) 16:47, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
Hi, I have been called here, so here we go. Not my intention to dwell on Forni, which I do not know really. Hypotheses on Basque and its history are very different things. My initial intent was to develop the article, which can easily go beyond 100,000 bytes, considering its history, both internal and external. However, for the time being that will not happen, as far as I am concerned. Regards Iñaki LL (talk) 19:50, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
Thanks Iñaki. Perhaps we should merge it back into the main article for now until someone has time to do something more significant? About Hypotheses about the classification of Basque my main worry would be that there are few enough people watching Basque articles and that such a page would be watched by fewer than this page and attract significantly more crackpots, resulting either in a bad article or the same names having to police yet another page. Especially if something similar has happened to the Hungarian page, a language that must have quite a few more editors following it than Basque pages. Are we at risk of making rope to hang ourselves? ;) Akerbeltz (talk) 10:52, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
I think the article on the history of Basque is pretty inoffensive, and could provide some grounds for further development, but will not oppose any move if the article is seen as a nuisance or not functional. Regards Iñaki LL (talk) 08:51, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
I don't think it's a nuisance or offensive at all :) It's just a bit small and forlorn and purely based on that, I'm not sure if it requires its own page. Akerbeltz (talk) 11:03, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
'Forni... is not a professional linguist, he is an admitted hobbyist' - then why discuss him at all? All that matters are what scholarly linguists state.50.111.19.34 (talk) 20:17, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Young infiltration hypothesis.

Couldn't Basque idiom have been brought by one of the tribes in the multy-language Magyar tribal confederation or something like that? --37.144.245.56 (talk) 16:17, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

In a word, no. Akerbeltz (talk) 16:28, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
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