Talk:Basque language/Archive 2

Ez barandiaran ?

Please explain, if it really means something then it's definitely not modern Basque. --Kamitxu 21:18, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, ez means "no" or "not", and from googling I find that Barandiaran is a family name.

There is also a verb baranda(tu) meaning "watch" or "observe".

Can you give me more context? Where is that phrase from? --Schuetzm 16:13, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you're asking to me but if you are, the phrase is in the article, obviously. "Ez barandiaran= That which is great" --Kamitxu 23:38, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, forget what I wrote, I totally misunderstood you. --Schuetzm 16:34, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

What source do you need?

What source do you need? About what? That Georgian is not North Caucasian or that there exist such theory as Dene-Caucasian? The article in its current form confuses Georgian and North Caucasian.--Nixer 15:25, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

All your sources. You have cited [1] (which is in Russian, so if it can be used depends on interpretation of Wikipedia:Verifiability, which places restrictions on foreign sources) and [2] from the Santa Fe Institute. So obviously the theory exists, it is a fringe theory though. Encyclopaedia Britannica [3] and the Columbia Encyclopedia [4] call it a language isolate. If the Dene-Caucasian theory is to be mentioned, IMO it is sufficiently mentioned. Izehar 15:32, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget that the Dene-Caucasian hypothesis is relatively "young". Although a lot more has been published on the matter, I'm giving you the few the relevant links I'm able to find and suggest that you read: Sino-Caucasian Comparative Phonology, Sino-Caucasian Comparative Glossary, A Final (?) Response to the Basque Debate in Mother Tongue 1, Word-final Resonants in Sino-Caucasian.

There is also an article Dene-Caucasian. Note: I dont add information on it (it is alreadu added), I simply deconfuse it from other "Georgian" theory which is really fringe. You can also look through Na-Dene languages article. --Nixer 15:37, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Nixer, you're saying:

The Georgian theory should not be confused with the the much more scientifically proved theory that Basque is ralated to Adygo-Abasin and other North Caucasian languages.

If that's not POV, I don't know what it is. How is it much more proven (sic). The Wikipedia article you are citing says:

Many linguists, in particular John Bengtson, have proposed including Basque as well. However, due to the uncertainty of comparative linguistics, this has never been demonstrated unequivocally, and most linguists do not accept that these language families are related.

That artile says that this has never been demonstrated unequivocally, whereas you are saying that it is a much more scientifically proved theory. Izehar 15:41, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't know who's written the sentence, but I haven't. I'm going to add some information to the Dene-Caucasian article and correct some claims that aren't true. The sentence you mention should be rewritten in the sense, that the hypothesis is at a similar stage as was once the Indoueropean one. A lot of work has to be done, that's true, but the arguments are pretty strong and growing every year. As I mentioned somewhere above, hundreds of cognates (many in the range of the most stable vocabulary), recurrent sound correspondences and morphological correspondences are a very good start if not more.--Pet'usek 18:21, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes because Georgian theory is not proven at all. Though what the point? I only noted that Georgian and North Caucasian are not the same things.--Nixer 15:44, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Georgian (related to Svan, Laz and Mingrelian and belonging to the Kartvelian or South Caucasian phylum) is only typologically similar to the North Caucasian family. While Kartvelian is Nostratic, North Caucasian isn't.

If you want to correct something, please correct, dont revert.--Nixer 15:48, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe that languages can be "genetically related". Also, there were two obvious spelling mistakes and since the veracity of this claim is in doubt, I reverted back to the last version. It would be nice if you worked out your changes here or in your user space. Thank you for being considerate Jbetak 16:09, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Basque speakers as funny characters

I found De los vizcaínos a los arlotes by Jorge Echagüe Burgos, that cites examples of Basque speakers in Spanish works as funny characters. What was specially new for me was:

Lo notable de esta obra es que Gaspar Gómez no sólo pone en boca de Perucho pasajes de jerigonza avascuenzada como el citado, sino que intercala en ellos palabras y expresiones tomadas del euskera (p. e., ogia, "pan"), e incluso le hace cantar un breve aunque hermoso poema de amor, que es el primer texto literario vasco impreso, anterior en casi una década al libro de poemas de Bernat Dechepare.

--Error 21:53, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Syntagma vs. phrase

I'm curious if, in the section on stress, it might be better to use the word "phrase" in place of syntagma. That's really all, thanks. --Alcarilinque 14:30, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Difficulty

During the days when I was closer to linguistics than I am now, I often heard stories about how difficult a language Basque is. I've added a reference to "The Devil Wanted to Learn Basque" to the external references section. Could someone who's more familiar with the language add a description to the article on the relative complexity of Basque as compared with other languages, if you think it's appropriate? Waitak 07:01, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

The issue of the difficulty of learning a language is often best approached in relative terms, both with respect to the L1 (mother tongue) of the learner and to two different L2 (target languages). Thus, "English speakers find it easier to learn Spanish than Romanian," would be a good way to compare. The problem with making statements about absolute difficulty--"Chinese is hard to learn"--is that for all human languages, children master the phonology and grammar around the age of 4-5. This is hard to reconcile with any notion of major absolute differences. Also, such absolute statements obscure the importance of L1. For a Cantonese speaker, learning Mandarin isn't all that hard, certainly easier than it is for an English speaker.

You mentioned "relative complexity" but I think "relative distance" would be a better approach. I think that a strong case can be made that Spanish grammar is more complex than Hindi, certainly for the verbs (more forms, more irreguarlities). Despite this, English speakers find it much easier to attain a given level of fluency in Spanish than they do in Hindi because the distance, especially in terms of vocabulary, is less for English-Spanish than for English-Hindi.

For English speakers, certainly Basque is going to be harder to learn than Romance or Germanic languages and quite likely harder than for any Indo-European languages. It's possible that, for example, speakers of Quechua or the Mayan languages might find learning Basque easier than learning English. Why? They use polypersonal verbal constructions like Basque. Also, the Mayan languages are ergative-absolutive not nominative-accusative.Interlingua 04:08, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

---

Basque is also said to be hard to learn by basque people. Even nowadays for all the existing different basque dialects even kids study basque verbs and correct grammar (rarely used in street live then). It is usually hard even for native basque speakers sometimes to know the correct verb and sometimes even the correct word. Been basque such and old language makes it difficult to even use commonly used words for, for example ballpen. The word in basque exists but it has been made up by the regulating organization, and most people just use a local dialect word or the spanish word (boligrafo or just boli). And that's just an example. Discussions happend when deciding a word for a cell phone (mobile phone) which ended in "mugikorra" which just means mobile and nowadays everyone uses it. Just an example to show some of the problematica due to the quite recent creation of the unified basque.

Claims of this sort are often made for many languages, and confuse the idea of learning a language (which almost all human infants do effortlessly) with learning a standard variety of a language. The difficulty of the latter depends on many factors, including the degree of divergence of one's native dialect from the standard, the frequency with which the standard is encountered, and the status of the standard. This status itself has many components, including its prestige within the community, whether it is regarded by the community as favouring one group, whether there are more cosmopolitan (or more prestigious) other languages in competition with it, and so on. ColinFine 22:01, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

For people whose maternal (only) language is Spanish (or French), Basque is as difficult as for speakers of any other language, it doesn't matter much if they are born in the conventional geographic boundaries of the Basque Country. Most of the vocabulary is totally different and the grammar, while very logical in most cases, is complex enough to make it relatively difficult. For Spanish-speakers is much easier to learn Catalan or French or even English than Basque, that's clear.

Aditionally, while you can submerge youself in other languages (for instance if you're learning Finnish you may spend some time in Finland), getting submerged in Basque is not that easy, as even where Basque is dominant, everybody knows either Spanish or French or both and, in the end, people switch to them too easily.

Personally I have only felt "forced" to use Basque with one Basque monolingual in the Pyrenees and when crossing to the North (as my French is quite worse than my Basque). Some people do favor using Basque with bad speakers as myself but most just prefer to switch languages in benefit of immediate communication but in detriment of Basque conservation. --Sugaar 23:44, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Dene-Caucasian

Reverted the "Connections" section back to that of March 16 - the Dene-Caucasian hypothesis has been hashed out here many times, is accepted by only a very small number of linguists, and is already covered in its own article. Plus, the additions were clearly POV ("the majority is overwhelming" etc.) Ergative rlt 03:31, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

the euskara in RIOJA

The euskara was spoken in Rioja before the romans age. You think that, I think not. Besides, euskara was not spoken in Basque Country till middle ages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.125.30.207 (talk) 18:10, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

what about y?

This page is identified by Fagan Finder as Basque. It has translations for many of the words I tried (a little less than half). The page corresponds to what this article says in lacking the letter forms 'c', 'q' etc. but it does make frequent use of y which seems all too common to be loan words only. I know nothing about Basque other than what I've read in Empires of the Word which more or less lumps into the category of different fish along with Magyar. Is the info in this article about the use of y in Basque correct, or is this page I've stumbled across not standard Basque at all? It was an accidental Google hit on a manufactured lexeme, but I immediately recognized it as unrecognizably unfamiliar, so I pursued it. If this is a true Basque in a non-standard orthography, I'd suggest the article make mention that non-standard orthographies are sometimes encountered. MaxEnt 03:47, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I looked at other pages containing similar words and it now strikes me that some orthographies substitute y for j. For example, I find yaten in this page which contains no j, and jaten in pages that contain no y. MaxEnt 06:24, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

You are right, the page you say is written in basque, but non-standard. I dindn't read the entire text,it seems like western-dialect or so, but it's very near to standardized basque (euskara batua). Nowadays it's not usual to find texts written in non-standardized basque, but remember that euskara batua only exists since some decades ago. Before that, people used to write as they spoke. The js are usually read as y, that's why ys are used in this example. In all modern published texts, y only exists as a letter for foreign words. Well, when writing to my friends I write in our dialect and I may use some ys, but it's definitely non-standard. ;) Keta 15:18, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely agree with Keta, I am also basque and in my case in our dialect we don't use ys at all. So it's just a matter of the local dialect nowadays.

'Y' is only used for foreign words, specially some Greek words. The dictionary has a few entries under 'y' and, with the sole exception of yayo, its derivate yayotasun and yoretu, all are from foreign origin. The full list is: y, yang-tao (kiwi fruit), yankee, yate (yatch), yarda (yard), yayo, yayotasun, ye-ye, yeismo (pronunciation defect, Spanish loanword), yemeniar (Yemeni), yen, yod, yola, yterbio, ytrio and yuan.

Yayo can also be written iaio but I found not an alternative spelling for yoretu. --Sugaar 23:33, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Endangered?

700,000 native speakers. I've read that most Basques don't speak BAsque as a mother tongue.

Is Basque endangered? Will it ever die?67.170.176.203 06:21, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Well we have 3 different education models in the schools, depending on the language used in the lessons.

A model: All in spanish and basque as a language class.

B model: Half in spanish and half in basque.

D model: All in basque and spanish as a literature class.

Numbers say most kids enroll in the D model, that is THEY STUDY IN BASQUE. Which doesn't mean they use it in the street. The % of kids enrolled in the D model is even rising (even if there is starting to be some inmigrants at schools). So definetly not dying. These numbers vary through provinces been Gipuzkoa the most pro D model then Bizkaia and then Araba. The numbers I am talking about are the overall in the basque country autonomous community.

The problem is when you grow older only 47% of the university majors can be studied in basque, you make the math. Not everyone wants to study in basque and even if you want to you only have 47% the oportunity to do so. OLAIA 2006/08/26

In the Western Basque Country is NOW official and protected and as Olaia says, teached in schools regularly with most children (their parents, I guess) chosing the Basque D model, as it is the one that makes sure that your children learn good Basque, even if at home or in the town the main language is Spanish.

But in Navarre and the North the situation is very different. In the North Basque has near to zero official presence and only recently a few decorative changes have been made under pressure from EU cultural watchdogs. The lack of any form of self-government doesn't help at all, naturally. Still some 40% of the people does speak it.

In Navarre there's the situation graphically defined as Napartheid, with a bilingual "Basque-speaking" area where Basque is considered almost in parity with Spanish, a "mixed" strip where Basque has only limited rights and a "non-Basque" area that comprises most of the territory, where the situation is as pitiful as in the North legally. Only some 20% of Navarrese can speak Basque as per 2001, what is highly ironic for the language of Navarre.

Some municipalities are trying to get into the "mixed" or "Basque-speaking" area, so their children can access public schooling in Basque, yet the Navarrese goverment (pro-Spanish right wing) always puts all kind of obstacles.

But, while officiality could help, what most handicaps Basque is that everyone is bilingual and that knowledege of Spanish or French is not just compulsory but also necessary for most bussiness. If you can't go to the city and buy or work in Basque, as normally happens... in he end your only motivation is affective. So, in the end, I, a quite mediocre Basque speaker, probably will only use Basque when travelling to the North (as my Basque is much better than my French), meeting one of those isolated monolingual farmers or falling in the middle of a conversation in Basque.

While many Catalans have pushed for daily usage of Catalan by keeping talking in Catalan when replied in Spanish, Basques normally don't do that but rather switch to Spanish or French. --Sugaar 23:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Basque monoglots

What is the report on the number of Basque speakers who have limited Spanish or French? And as time goes on will more or less monoglots begin to appear as a relfection of the growth and spread of the language? Ethnologue says "speakers also use Castilian or Catalan." Some information on this would be interesting.

I could say I have only met basque speakers with limited Spanish in old people living in farms (Baserriak). Must know that spanish is an official language and the spanish constitution says every spanish citizen has the right AND THE OBLIGATION of knowing spanish (even if there are inmigrants that know shit), so there is no way a kid doesn't get it at school. Maybe he/she doesn't use it at home or with friends (spanish) but definetly must learn it at school and plus at schools they don't really teach spanish as a language but more the spanish literature and stuff. Plus it is a fact that if you don't limit you tv channels to ONE, you watch spanish TV, and if you go to the movies more than onces in a year, you watch movies in spanish.

So I would definetly say it is extremely difficult to find someone with limited Spanish. Another point is we usually (basque people) make mistakes in spanish, but not due to lack of knowledge more to just the use, just the way Andalusian's (south spain) make mistakes in spanish. OLAIA 2006/08/26 3:09 AM

Ansewring your question: very few poeple are basque monogloths, most of them elderly and living in small isolated communities. I do not quite agree with some of the statements in the comment above. Many people now have the opportunity to study in basque and in basque alone, having spanish only as a subject with 3-4 hours a week of it. As a matter of fact it is becoming rare that kids study in spanish in the basque country, even if they come from spanish spaeking families. --Mrfoxtalbot (talk) 17:21, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Do sound samples exist?

I'd love to hear what Basque sounds like. Can someone upload a few samples to the page? - Christopher 10:16, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Historical Basque Country is just a nationalist idea, not real

This article should remove that reference, or at least clearly say that it is a nationalist idea, very discussed and not aproved by the vast majority. The historical region is, in any case, the Kingdom of Navarre.

You should know that the term "historical region" referring to Euskal Herria is used in spanish media due to the lack of a term in spanish for it. It might be and surely is a nationalist idea (not a bad idea, every country at some point has been a nationalist idea) but that doesn't make is unreal. It is a used term and this is an enciclopedia, to provide the info, wether you like it or not the term exists and is used.

Maybe you should mean 'Political Basque Country is just a nationalist idea', but nobody can deny the Basque Country, 'Euskal Herria', as a cultural or historical idea.

Theories of connections with other languages

This section was recently much elaborated, but I think these edits have done more harm than good. The problem is that the section devotes too much space to fringe / pseudoscientific theories of Basque language origins. For example, of the Dené-Caucasian connection it is said that the hypothesis is "perhaps the only one supported by some knowledgeable historical linguists". Well, if the others aren't supported by any knowledgeable historical linguists, why are they listed here in the first place - especially as the section lacks references? Most of these should be outright deleted, or if the information is to be kept, then it should go to a separate article like "Theories of Basque language origins" or something similar. But speculations that are uniformly rejected by specialists are hardly worth including in a broad-scope general article on the language. --AAikio 13:08, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

You're right, of course. My aim was to reach some consensus (I have nothing against the idea of making a separate article for the theories) and to avoid hurting somebody's pride :-). And, I didn't write this sentence: ""perhaps the only one supported by some knowledgeable historical linguists". I don't know who did. I will gladly delete it.

It has been repeated many times that the Dene-Caucasian (or Macro-Caucasian) hypothesis is the most promising of the theories, but it hasn't been explained why this can be so: (1) regular phonological correspondences (including the very important non-trivial ones) have been proposed, (2) almost 250 potential lexical cognates have been found so far (majority of which belong to the stablest semantic cathegories), (3) common grammatical morphemes have been identified (see the Talk page of the DC languages), (4) typological features seem to be an indirect (which should be stressed) evidence of an old (be it areal or genetic) bond with the Caucasus.

I added some references (I'm not sure how to format them in the Wiki markup language). Since the DC theory is (if I am not mistaken) the only one that gives some references, I don't mind deleting the others, which seem to lack them. Anyway, I have nothing against replacing the whole section with a brief mention of the individual theories. The DC article is growing constantly and the Basque section is being worked on at the moment. So, it is quite unnecessary to include any long passages here.

What if we replace the section with a sentence of the type: "There have been many attempts at linking Basque with other languages and language families, such as..." (list of the names of the theories and links to the individual articles dealing with them) "..., but the majority of linguists still consider the Basque language to be a language isolate, unrelated to any other language or language family.". Or something like that?

Oh, and, in order to save some space here, in the Talk section, I will delete my old proposal for the new version of the section mentioned above + the Old talks of the Basque's affinities, ok? Anyone can look in the history of the Talk section or send me an email. I saved the discussions in a file if somebody wants them.

All in all, I think making a separate article will be the best option indeed. Really. Thanks for any comments and criticisms. What should be the title of the separate article? So the talks can be inserted in the Talk section there, once the article is created.

--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 15:29, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

In my understanding of the matter, most of the theories are roughly valid. The case for Iberian was largely dropped for lack of clear evidence but when reading some Iberian texts one can't help having the impression that they sound somehow lik Basque and seem to share terms and the like.

Georgian is probably the less valid nowadays. It is with NE Caucasian languages, like Chechen, that the link is made. NE Caucasian languages and Georgian have no clear link and are actually postulated as hypothetical members of different super-families. The comments on the brothership between Bilbao and Tiblisi are just frivolous and should be removed.

Dene-Caucasian is based in the link with NE Caucasian, what seems the most suggestive hypothesis in itself.

Vasconic theory is pretty good actually and explains many things that otherwise have no explanation. As the related article on pre-Indo-European says, not all pre-IE substrate has to be Basque, specially in the Mediterranean, but there is a good ground for this theory.

In my opinion, I'd reformat the section in a more comprised space, without separate titles for the different hypothesis. I'd mention Iberian. But would only mention Georgian as entry to pass to NW Caucasian. I'd ignore the extremely hypothetical Dene-Caucasian proposal (more proper of other articles surely, as Basque has ever been directly related, even in tentative manner, with any Sino-Tibetan or Na-Dene language) and go directly into Vasconic substratum theory.

In fact Vasconic languages theory must surely be mentioned as something growing in credibility and based in the findings, not just of linguistics, but with good archeological and genetical backing - and compatible with possible Caucasian and even Iberian links.

Not sure how to do that but while NW Caucasian and Iberian (and maybe even Georgian, but I'd like to see a source for that) deserve a mention, these would be better presented as apreritiff to the growing paradigm of Vasconic-Paleolitic substratum.

In any case, no separate sections but just paragraphs and links. Three or four paragraphs would do, making justice to these theories and cleaning up the section a little bit. What do you think? --Sugaar 23:15, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Nobody said anything so I've been bold and revamped the section adding some references. --Sugaar 01:24, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Basically, what can be said about Basque from the genetic perspective? You can be almost perfectly sure, where Basque comes from, but you still have two choices:

1/ judging from the dominant R1b lineage in Basque males, it can be a descendant of the Cro-Magnon language from Central Asia. Hence its closest relatives are Burushaski (descendant of R2?), and then Paleoindian languages in Siberia (Ket, Nivkhi, Yukaghir, Eskymo-Aleut) and Amerind languages. However, the relationship with some Caucasian languages can't be excluded, because during the last ice age R1b was present in the Caucasus as well.

2/ Judging from the dominance of H-lineage in Basque females, it can be a descendant of the Gravettian language from Asia Minor. The Gravettian mammoth hunters (Y-haplogroup I) brought mtDNA haplogroup H to Europe 28 000 years ago. We shouldn't forget that Gravettian culture was present in today's France and the dominance of R1b can be a genetic drift that can't tell anything certain about the ethnic composition of the population that gave rise to modern Basques. If this theory is true, then Basque can be very, very distantly related to Etruscan (J2).

But this all is even more confusing, when we take into consideration the unresolved origin of Indo-European languages. If they come from today's Ukraine, they would be of Cro-Magnon origin (R1a1) and hence the most closely related languages to Basque (which doesn't seem too probable). If they came from Asia Minor, they could be distantly related to either Etruscan or perhaps to some Caucasian languages. Again, they could be related to Basque, if Basque came from Asia Minor. Choose, what you want. 82.100.61.114 15:00, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Your arguments may be very cogent in anthropology - I am not well-versed enough to know. They are irrelevant to linguistics. In the absence of specific evidence, it is not a safe assumption that genetically related people will speak genetically related languages. In addition to which, I am not aware of any evidence whatsoever that bears on the question of what language(s) the Cro-Magnon people spoke. It could have been something connected with Basque, or Burushaski, or Krahe's Old European (which Theo Vennemann seems to think is related to Basque.) It could just as easily have been a language which has completely vanished, leaving no remnant anywhere. --ColinFine 22:03, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

This is all that genetics can say. The male lineages of Basques (and all people in Western Europe) are predominantly of Cro-Magnon origin (R1b) and may have come to Europe ca. 36 000 years ago from Central Asia, while ca. 50% of their female lineages came from Asia Minor 29 000 years ago with the bearers of the Gravettian culture. But what a language they actually speak now? The Cro-Magnon or the Gravettian one? Here genetics can't help much. But we can be practically sure that it is some of these two. The situation could be somewhat clearer, if we knew the origin of the Indo-European languages. 82.100.61.114 23:50, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Your argumentation confuses linguistic, genetic and archaeological concepts. "The Cro-Magnon language" and "the Gravettian language" are no well-defined entities, and there is no evidence whatosoever that the Cro-Magnons, or the people of the Gravettian cultural complex, would have spoken a single language. With current linguistic methods at least, our knowledge of the linguistic situation 29 000 - 36 000 years is simply zero. No genetic findings can change this; it is methodologically invalid to draw linguistic conclusion from genetic data. --AAikio 06:08, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Learning

We should have something on the organizations teaching Basque (the A, B, D, X models; AEK, HABE, ikastolas,...) --Error 22:17, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

That's a very good idea. Can you do that? --Sugaar 01:36, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Pronunciation of "Basque"

Is the pronunciation of "Basque" really /bæsk/, even for speakers with the Trap-bath split? --Ptcamn 18:46, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Well one thing is how "Basque" is pronnounced and another thing is how you are able to pronounce it. OLAIA nov. 3rd 2006

Merriam-Webster online suggests:

Pronunciation: 'bask, 'bäsk

Guess that the second is like /bæsk/. It has also a sound file if that's of any help.--Sugaar 23:49, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

For Merriam-Webster, "'bask" means /bæsk/ and "'bäsk" means /bɑsk/. At any rate, the two British pronunciation dictionaries I just consulted both give /bæsk/ as the RP pronunciation, with /bɑːsk/ as a less common/less preferred variant. —Angr 21:50, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Basque Polysynthetic

In the article on Polysynthetic language Basque is given as an example of a Polysynthetic language - while there are certainly better examples of Polysynthesis than Basque I don't know if there is any support to the claim at all. Are there any reliable sources calling basque Polysynthetic? PAarticipate in thee discussion at Talk:Polysynthetic language.Maunus 08:50, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Sources for Language Population

Ethnologue and the University of Nevada both disagree with the "Total number of speakers" section. Does anyone have a source for this one-million-speakers idea?

Ethnologue is very poor for Basque. It's description of the dialects is totally aberrant. I lost a lot of respect for the site after reading that.

Check this for instance. It's in Basque only but based in the 2001 linguistic poll. Elebidunak means bilingual, elebidun hartzailaeak means learning bilinguals and erdeldun elebakarrak means monlingual speakers of Spanish/French. Figures are in percentages but a simple calculation gives the million speakers. There are very few Basque monolinguals but I know at least one. --Sugaar 22:44, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Similarities between Ainu and Basque.

Is any information about this on Wikipedia? I'm not aware of how accurate this is but look http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/bronze/ainu.htm {usigned|168.103.71.34| 04:34, 29 November 2006}

Nah. It really seems another of those far fetched amateur guesses based in a list of words with wrong (twisted, opportunistic) meanings. For example:

• Ama is mother, mun in Basque, not goddess (except by extesion). Ama is also mother in many other languages. In fact it seems quasi-universal (with some variants, like amma, mamma, mum, etc.).
• Lur is not dirt but earth, soil
• Kuraia is courage, but it is an obvious loanword
• Jaso is to bear not "to get better"
• Etapa is a Spanish loanword

Many are composite words, like tontordun, derivate from tontor (point, promontory) or sukor, derivate from su (fire).

Many others are just far fetched comparisons:

• yasumi (to rest) - jaso (to bear, to support)
• kema (leg, foot) - kemen (vigour, strength)
• oka (man) - oka egin (to eat in excess)
• etc.

A couple of them could pass the test maybe (aske-esku, for instance) but they are not enough to build up any minimally solid theory.

Aditionally the words are arbitrarily selected, they have no system: where are the numbers?, the basic words like fire or water?

The Berber theory was something like this one, maybe a little better.

Still some phonetic simmilarities may be found between Japanese (don't know enough about Ainu) and Basque, but 'P' and 'F' (very rare sounds/letters in Basque actually) are not among them.

--Sugaar 07:16, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

s and z

Can anyone provide a minimal pair for laminal s vs. apical z? —Angr 21:52, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

esker = gratitude, ezker = left, but if you're going to use them in a sentence, they're probably going to be definite: eskerra, ezkerra. Supadawg (talk • contribs) 00:02, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Yet anohter: su ("fire"), zu, ("you"). --Error 00:56, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you! —Angr 06:17, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

It's the other way round: apical s vs. laminal z. Another example: soro (land) vs. zoro (mad). Some examples of the affricates: atso (old woman) vs. atzo (yesterday), hats (breath) vs. hatz (finger), hots (noise) vs. hotz (cold). There are also cases where the apical and laminal alternation produces merely variant forms of the same word, e.g. sorgin / zorgin (witch), esne / ezne (milk), marrazo / marraso (shark), zigilu / sigilu (stamp, from Latin sigillum). Some cases of s derive from a former z preceded by r (note the s sound combines the sibilance of z with the apicality of r), e.g. the suffix -tasun (-ness) was historically -tarzun (and still is dialectally, I think in Souletin), the word uso (dove) was urzo; similarly, some former -rtz became -st, as in bortz > bost (five). I think the s in esne arose from the variant ezne by influence from the apical pronunciation of n. Note, however, that even though some former laminals have become apicals, the most frequent sibilants in the language are still by far the laminals, z and tz. In fact, the apicals do not appear in flexive morphemes, while the laminals are common in them (instrumental case -z, "prolative" case -tzat, 2nd person verbs with z- or -zu-, verbal plurals with -z-, etc.). Finally, note that in the Biscayne dialect the apical/laminal distinction has been lost, with the fricatives s/z merging in favour of the apical sound s and the affricates ts/tz merging in favour of the laminal sound tz. Uaxuctum 17:21, 4 May 2007 (UTC)