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Nov. 17th, 2002 11:31 am
What makes Basque so cool?
Basque is what linguists call an isolate. That is, no one has been able to demonstrate any genetic affiliation between Basque and any other language living or dead (with the minor exception of Aquitanian, the extinct language of southwest France). And Jainko knows they've tried. Comparative reconstructive techniques have been applied to every likely pairing of Basque with another language group--Berber, Etruscan, Kartvelian, Uto-Aztecan, you name it--never yielding anything more than the number of similarities dictated by chance.
This accounts, in large part, for its legendary impossibility. What is this most difficult single component of a language to learn? YMMV, but for most it's the daunting task of learning new names for everything. As Zompist says, there are few times when speaking a foreign language that he's realised he doesn't have enough grammar, but he's constantly running out of words. Heck, this happens to us all the time in our native languages! Sure, you can paraphrase, but many's the time I've gone round and round for ten minutes and gotten no closer to mutual understanding than when I started.
Since Basque has no relatives, the bulk of its lexicon is completely unique. Even the number of borrowings from Spanish is rather limited, especially when compared to the amount of French in English or Latinate vocabulary in Russian. Plus, even a common source is no guarantee that two words will resemble one another. Consider gurutz, denda, and lore. Would you have guessed that these are doublets of cruz, tienda, and flor, respectively (much less that they share the same etyma as English cross, tent, and flower)? Even "international" words, like kafe and kanpin can be tough to recognise in compounds like kafesne ("cafe leche") or inflected forms like kanpinean noaz ("I'm going camping").
It's no wonder, then, that Basque words strike speakers of other languages as bizarre (one of the few English words believed to be taken from Basque). There's a lovely selection of them on Larry Trask's website. (Trask is one of the world's authorities on the language and a fine writer for a general audience. I highly recommend his books. His site also has an introduction to Basque grammar that presumes some familiarity with linguistic terminology, but not a lot.)
Besides the distinctive vocabulary, Basque also has some interesting morphological features. I'm particularly struck by the periphrastic nature of the verb conjugations. (A periphrastic conjugation is, roughly speaking, one that requires a helping verb of some sort. For instance, the English progressive ["I am working"] and perfect ["She has conquered"] are periphrastic.) There are very few simple verbs in Basque; the vast majority are conjugated with the help of the auxillaries "be" and "have". For instance, Lan egiten dut "(I) work making have", i.e. "I work." Ameriketan bizi da "(He) America-in living is", i.e. "He lives in America."
This reminds me a lot of the Celtic languages, where conjugated simple verbs are also rather few and far between. In fact, the list of simple verbs in common use--to be, to know, to be able, to go, to come--is almost identical in Welsh and Basque! It's a good thing the list is so short, since Basque morphology is essentially agglutinative. This means that endings tend to be built up from simpler ones. (E.g zu "you", zure "of your; your", zuretzat "for you".) Compared to the irregular inflections of most Indo-European languages, which tend to code many things at once (e.g. Latin TU "you", TEUS "of you, yours", TIBI "to you, for you"), it seems very straightforward. But those little auxillaries can still get fiendishly complex, e.g. dizute "they have it to/for you" (as in Eskatuko dizute "They will demand it from you." vs. Eskatuko diezu "You will demand it from them").
I could bubble on about more of Basque's intriguing features, but I've probably lost most of you already. Suffice it to say that, while different enough to make the language interesting, they aren't so difficult as to make it unlearnable. I don't know that I'll ever acquire even a basic familiarity with the Basque language, but, from what I've seen so far, its fearsome reputation is undeserved.
(The reputation of the Basque people is another matter entirely!)
This accounts, in large part, for its legendary impossibility. What is this most difficult single component of a language to learn? YMMV, but for most it's the daunting task of learning new names for everything. As Zompist says, there are few times when speaking a foreign language that he's realised he doesn't have enough grammar, but he's constantly running out of words. Heck, this happens to us all the time in our native languages! Sure, you can paraphrase, but many's the time I've gone round and round for ten minutes and gotten no closer to mutual understanding than when I started.
Since Basque has no relatives, the bulk of its lexicon is completely unique. Even the number of borrowings from Spanish is rather limited, especially when compared to the amount of French in English or Latinate vocabulary in Russian. Plus, even a common source is no guarantee that two words will resemble one another. Consider gurutz, denda, and lore. Would you have guessed that these are doublets of cruz, tienda, and flor, respectively (much less that they share the same etyma as English cross, tent, and flower)? Even "international" words, like kafe and kanpin can be tough to recognise in compounds like kafesne ("cafe leche") or inflected forms like kanpinean noaz ("I'm going camping").
It's no wonder, then, that Basque words strike speakers of other languages as bizarre (one of the few English words believed to be taken from Basque). There's a lovely selection of them on Larry Trask's website. (Trask is one of the world's authorities on the language and a fine writer for a general audience. I highly recommend his books. His site also has an introduction to Basque grammar that presumes some familiarity with linguistic terminology, but not a lot.)
Besides the distinctive vocabulary, Basque also has some interesting morphological features. I'm particularly struck by the periphrastic nature of the verb conjugations. (A periphrastic conjugation is, roughly speaking, one that requires a helping verb of some sort. For instance, the English progressive ["I am working"] and perfect ["She has conquered"] are periphrastic.) There are very few simple verbs in Basque; the vast majority are conjugated with the help of the auxillaries "be" and "have". For instance, Lan egiten dut "(I) work making have", i.e. "I work." Ameriketan bizi da "(He) America-in living is", i.e. "He lives in America."
This reminds me a lot of the Celtic languages, where conjugated simple verbs are also rather few and far between. In fact, the list of simple verbs in common use--to be, to know, to be able, to go, to come--is almost identical in Welsh and Basque! It's a good thing the list is so short, since Basque morphology is essentially agglutinative. This means that endings tend to be built up from simpler ones. (E.g zu "you", zure "of your; your", zuretzat "for you".) Compared to the irregular inflections of most Indo-European languages, which tend to code many things at once (e.g. Latin TU "you", TEUS "of you, yours", TIBI "to you, for you"), it seems very straightforward. But those little auxillaries can still get fiendishly complex, e.g. dizute "they have it to/for you" (as in Eskatuko dizute "They will demand it from you." vs. Eskatuko diezu "You will demand it from them").
I could bubble on about more of Basque's intriguing features, but I've probably lost most of you already. Suffice it to say that, while different enough to make the language interesting, they aren't so difficult as to make it unlearnable. I don't know that I'll ever acquire even a basic familiarity with the Basque language, but, from what I've seen so far, its fearsome reputation is undeserved.
(The reputation of the Basque people is another matter entirely!)