I’ve been hearing quite a bit about the ETA in the Basque region of Spain (known as el Pais Vasco to the Spaniards), and have heard that they speak a language which predates Latin, called Euskara. Now, this interests me a bit, and I decided I’d like to learn some of the basic workings of that language. Having only about 800,000 speakers, however, it’s rather difficult to find any information about it online. Specifically, right now, I’m interested in pronunciations so that I know how to say what words I’ve found already. Anyone have any ideas where I might find these resources, especially online?
Eskerrick asko!
The University of Idaho (might actually be called Boise State) has a Basque language program, although I’ve never heard it called Euskara. I have heard Eskaldunak, which I’m supposing is related. Anyway, they might have tapes available. Sorry I don’t know about resources online - I only know about the college because my brother went there. Basque is a horribly difficult language, though. I know about 25 words, and that’s more than anyone I know.
My grandmother speaks Basque fluently, as her first language. I’m sorry to report that she’s not the kind of person you’d want to talk to for even a minute.
Does anyone know whether most people who speak the Basque language also speak Spanish? Also, are exclamatory sentences preceded by an upside-down exclamation point or questions preceded by an upside-down question mark?
When I was in Spain on vacation, I heard it spoken one time. It’s the most bizarre sounding language you’ve ever heard. It almost sounded like chirps and trills. I have heard that it is not even close to any other language still spoken today.
Come to Bakersfield, California. There are plenty of Basques here. In fact my house is surrounded by Bascos. Plenty of Basque restaurants and even a Basque club. A quick search of the local university did not show a Basque language class.
This site might have what you are looking for:
[http://www.kcbasqueclub.com/](Kern County Basque Club)
I think you’ll find a lot of good links here.
For those who wonder what Basque sounds like, one of the sites linked at the url above has soundfiles of sentences. The site is entirely in Basque, so I have no idea what these sentences mean, but I figured out that hitting “Entzun” gave me a reading of the sentence.
This site is a decent introduction to Euskara grammar. However, it’s only an introduction, and doesn’t include a lot of information about more advanced grammar topics.
Like Japanese, and a few other languages, Basque is a language that doesn’t belong to a language group, and has unclear origins. It’s beleived the language predates the Indo-European root language(s) that give us the various Latin and Germanic languages we use today (English being both.)
What is it about the language that it sounds like Russian to me? (Which I don’t understand a word of either.) I listened to a couple of them, and if I overheard this, I would have guessed it was Russian:
