euskara
Language Facts:
Speakers: 750,000
Family: language isolate
Status: Official in some regions of Spain , recognized minority language in France
Family: language isolate
Status: Official in some regions of Spain , recognized minority language in France
Script: Latin
- Basque is the last remaining Pre-Indo-European language in Western Europe. Because of this, the vocabulary and grammar elements will be very different than what a learner will be used to. Although there are some load words from neighboring languages, the majority of the vocabulary will be completely foreign for someone who wants learn Basque.
- One main feature is that Basque is an ergative-absolutive language. That means the subject of an intransitive verb is marked the same as an object of a transitive verb.
- Basque has 17 noun cases.
- There are no specific words for third person pronouns, instead using demonstrative pronouns.
- Articles and determiners are added as post-positions , and not as separate words.
- Basque uses a Subject-Object-Verb word order.
Resources
Books:
For English Speakers:
Colloquial Basque– Good book with free online audio. A little bit pricey for a shorter book, but there aren’t that many options for this language.
Youtube:
LangFocus– a good introduction video to the Basque language.
Basque Idioma– lessons in Spanish / Español