B is for Basque

[muckefuck]

Basque-English dictionary Aulestia, Gorka. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1989.

Few acquisitions do I recall as vividly as the purchase of this huge hardcover Basque dictionary. Europa Books, a place of pilgrimage on Clark Street just north of Belmont, was having a gigantic half-off closeout sale in the early 90s. I made it to the counter with a stack of books a least two feet high, but this 672-page monster was easily the biggest among them. I think it retailed for something like $50-70 dollars, but that's assuming you could find a place to buy it. When the owner reached it, he said, "Do you know how hard it was for me to get this?" "I do," I replied. "Why do you think I'm buying it?" (In retaliation, he went on to drop the entire godblessed stack in an attempt to fit it into my bag in the most weak-minded manner imaginable.)

Even though it was a prize possession, I made little use of it until recently. I'd browse it occasionally, but I wasn't trying actively to learn Basque. The most useful feature for many years was the fact that it lists virtually ever Basque place or personal name I've ever heard anywhere (provided one can figure out how it should be spelled in normalised Basque orthography). But, as y'all may know, a couple months ago I dusted off my copy of Colloquial Basque which had likewise spent years neglected on the shelf and worked my way through the first couple lessons. As a result, I discovered just how comprehensive and useful the conjugational tables in the prefatory material could be.

The genius of Basque is that almost none of the verbs are conjugated. The madness of it is that the few auxiliaries which are have a confusing array of forms. They vary based not only according to the number and person of the subject, but also of all objects. That's not so crazy--Osage does this, too, as I've explained at length--except that the suffixes and prefixes are almost completely different in the past tense from what they are in the present. Other than that and the fact that few of the words bear any resemblance to the vocabulary of any other language (despite a seemingly endless number of attempts to show a relationship between Basque and literally any other language in the world), it's really not as impossible as it's cracked up to be. The Basques like to brag, for instance, that the Devil spent ten years in the Basque Country trying to tempt souls and left knowing only the words for "Yes" and "No". (You'll find an excellent introduction to Basque grammar penned by the late great Larry Trask on Martin Buber's website.)

Comments

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

God I love Basque ... my Basque is still horrendous, and I know for a fact what a pain in the ass it is to get suitable materials for the language!!

Thank God for random crazy ladies on the bus I ride who just gave me the 450p+ book The Basque Language (by Alan R. King), which is a wonderful resource!!

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

Now I really feel like a lightweight for losing patience with Russian over little things like the single/plural issue and the perfective/imperfective split for verbs.

That said, I only learn languages under duress, because they're necessary for other things I do.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I remember that day! keyne and I were also there at Europa's closing sale. It sticks in my mind chiefly because of how bitter the owner was about everything!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I'll always be grateful to you two for replacing a book on Chinese verbs that I lost when Mr Bitter dropped my stack.

[bwillsouth.livejournal.com]

I've found that I really like the aesthetic of Basque, and the grammar as well (the weight shifted from verbs to auxiliaries is sexy), but something about it turns me off to the point where I wouldn't learn it. I would ascribe that to my tendency towards knee-jerk reactions against popular things (i.e. the popularity of Basque in the ZBB community), except that I'd learn Finnish sooner than Basque. In any case, I've signed up to take Chinese next semester, and I'm thinking of having a look at it over the summer to get a head start (possibly in addition to my intention to get back into Korean).

(This is Space Dracula by the way.)