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Euskara: The History of a Mystery R. Marie Thatcher Linguistics 450 Dr. Cynthia Hallen March 18, 1998 Ever since the first linguistic studies began in Europe, Basque, a language isolate spoken in the Pyrenees, has been a magnet for popular-but-shaky theories. An aura of mystery has descended over the language and its speakers because of the scores of fantastical histories which have been contrived by scholars and pseudo-scholars over the years, attempting to connect the Basques and their language to everyone, from northern Africans to alien invaders. Indeed, my own first interest in the Basques and their language came from less-than-credible reports that some Mormon scholar whose name had been conveniently forgotten claimed that the Basques were one of the lost tribes of Israel. In succeeding years, having studied Spanish for several years and taken a course from an expert on Basque folklore, both my interest and confusion have increased. T.V. documentaries offer DNA studies of the Basques to "prove" this or that bizarre theory, and otherwise-professional researchers, succumbing to the enigmatical allure of the language often stoop to using techniques that would be derided as unscientific in even the most basic linguistic courses. R.L. Trask, a leading scholar in Basque language studies, has often bewailed the low standards in much Basque research: "Words are wrongly cited, wrongly glossed, or wrongly analyzed . . . obvious errors by earlier investigators are copied and propagated; sources of data are almost never identified; even the most basic works on Basque linguistics go unmentioned and apparently unread" (Trask "Origin" 66-7). Modern interest in Basque is for the most part hopelessly caught up in a romantic quest for one of the Holy Grails of linguistic studies – a relative for Basque; yet it would seem that the one feature of Basque which makes the language so enticing to linguists and sensation-mongers everywhere – its linguistic isolation – is the single feature which completely resists scientific elucidation. However, in researching the internal and external histories of Basque, I found the most fascinating characteristic of the people and the language to be a remarkable survival instinct. Over the centuries, all the pre-Indo-European languages of Western Europe have been obliterated, and not surprisingly; the pressure for change by outside forces has been intense. And yet Basque has survived, in large part because its speakers seem to know how and when to resist changes, and when to simply accept changes and move forward with a different, but undefeated, Basque. Basque (or Euskara) is spoken in the Pyrenees, the mountain range which divides France and Spain; approximately 80,000 Basque speakers live within French jurisdiction and the remaining 580,000 are on the Spanish side of the boundary. Emigrations have also brought some Basque speakers to the larger cities of France and Spain, to Belgium, England, Latin America, Australia, and the western United States, but the combined number of these transplanted Basques is likely no more than a few tens of thousands (Trask History 1); due to the limitations of a paper this length, the histories of the varieties of Basque spoken by these expatriates will not be included here. There are several Basque dialects in the Basque homeland; Luis Michelena divides the language into the Bizkaian, Gipuzkoan, High Navarrese, Aezkoan, Salazarese, Roncalese (now extinct), Lapurdian, Low Navarrese, and Zuberoan dialects (paraphrased in Trask History 5). Until the 16th Century, Basque was an entirely oral language, and the scarcity of significant written records before that time makes reconstructing the history of Basque a linguistic Puzzle of puzzles. In his article "Reconstructing the Pre-Proto-Basque Root," Joseba A. Lakarra cites the distinguished Basque scholar Antoine Meillet, who insisted that a language without relatives is a language without a history. However, Lakarra points out that it is more correct to say that such a language is without a prehistory (189, emphasis mine). And while it often seems that the history of Basque is lost in a nearly impenetrable haze, a handful of persistent scholars have discovered a good deal about both the language and its speakers down through the centuries. Archaeological evidence strongly suggests that the same people lived in the Basque Country continuously from paleolithic times (about 10,000 years ago) until the end of the Bronze Age (about 3,000 years ago), and there is no evidence to suggest that any new population entered the area after that; of course, that does not mean that no such invasion occurred (Trask History 8-9). The discovery of neolithic "Basque-type" skulls in the area has led some researchers to conclude that the Basque language developed "in situ," or within the Basque Country itself (Maraña et al). Yet, however ancient the Basques’ claim to their homeland may actually be, their language has been conclusively linked to an ancestral language, Aquitanian, which is the sole pre-Indo-European language still surviving in western Europe (Trask 35). The first records containing Aquitanian words appear in the 1st Century B.C. with the Roman conquest of Gaul; however, the texts are for the most part Latin, including only the names of random Aquitanian places, persons, and divinities (Gorrochategui 39). While proper names are not usually the most helpful evidence for analysis of a language, Trask notes that quite a few of the recorded names have interesting correspondences within the modern Basque lexicon:
In the examples cited, it is notable that the sexes of the people named in the Aquitanian list are consistent with the genders for the Modern Basque words (Trask "Prehistory"). Even this early and sparse record of Aquitanian shows evidence of previous language contact. Joaquín Gorrochategui notes that Aquitanian toponyms (place names) mentioned in Roman histories include borrowings from both Celtic (e.g. Lugdunum and Pimpedunni) and Iberian (e.g. Iluro and Elimberris Auscorum) (39-40). As for the Romans, it appears that they were strangely unobtrusive in most of the Aquatanian lands. Of course, Latin contributed many words to Basque during the time of the Roman Empire; however, it is the very purity of many of these first recorded Latin borrowings, meaning specifically their lack of Basque elements, which suggests that there was minimal mingling of the two cultures (Gorrochategui 49). However, it was not long until hundreds of Latin words became fully integrated into Basque; most of these were from areas of higher culture and administration, such as lege ‘law’ Lat. LEGE, errege ‘king’ Lat. REGE, liburu ‘book’ Lat. LIBRU, and diru ‘money’ Lat. DANARIU (Trask History 259). The scarcity of Basque records continued until the 9th Century A.D., when a gradual, steady increase began which continued throughout the Middle Ages (Trask "Prehistory"). In the Basque Country, Roman influence had disappeared in the last half of the 3rd Century A.D., and the succeeding centuries brought warfare among the surrounding Germanic tribes. The need of the Basque people to unify and resist German invasion strengthened both the political cohesion and the language of the Basques, and led to the rise of the greatest Basque state in history – the Kingdom of Navarre (Zuazo 7). This glorious height of Basque political history, was also an especially interesting example of Basque linguistic attitudes. As previously mentioned, the 9th Century (during the time of the rise of Navarre) saw a steady increase in the number of Basque records, which continued until the decline of Navarre in the 16th Century. During the centuries before the advent of the printing press, it was the general rule that only languages with a good level of prestige were well-represented in written records; therefore, one may conclude that the Basque language was respected during this time. However, as Koldo Zuazo notes, speakers of Romance were imported to build the economic structure of the kingdom, and so despite the fact that Basque was in favor, it was never the official language of the Kingdom of Navarre (7-9). The Basque rulers were wise enough to realize that in order for the kingdom to flourish, business and administration needed a more common language than Basque. As a result of the voluntary linguistic mingling of this era, Basque acquired Romance words such as pintza ‘membrane’ Rom. BINZA, erraz ‘easy’ Rom. RAHEZ, and mulo ‘haystack’ Rom. MOULOU (Trask History 261). Following the fall of the Kingdom of Navarre, resulting from its division into the kingdoms of Navarre, Aragon, and Castile, the Protestant Reformation in France and the Catholic Counter-Reformation in Spain pulled the development of northern and southern Basque in opposite directions. The Protestant/nationalist emotion coming from France infused the northern Basque dialects with new prestige, as the Basques asserted their cultural and linguistic heritage. Aided by the newly-invented printing press, authors defended and glorified Basque, the first grammars and dictionaries appeared, literature flourished, and significant records of Basque finally appeared. The existence of multiple editions of many Basque publications from this time suggests that there was a fairly substantial number of literate Basques at this time; this increased awareness of the state of the language also led to the first attempt to codify and standardize Basque. By the end of the 17th Century, these northern Basque dialects had achieved high status. However, the southern Basque states during this time were hard hit by the Spanish Counter-Reformation which also spurred a reactionary assertion of control over fringe populations; as part of this, Castilian began to have an even greater influence on the southern dialects of Basque than it had previously (Zuazo 9-10). A economic decline in the 18th Century caused a corresponding decline in the language and literature of Basque; on the heels of this decline were harshly repressive measures by both France and Spain which further challenged the survival of the language. Because they did not support the French Revolutionaries, the northern Basques and their language were repressed by the French. Yet even as French was made the official language in the Basque Country and the prestige of Basque dropped, the people fought back by attempting internal language reforms in order to unify the Basque dialects. Though these attempts met with only minimal success, they demonstrate once again the buoyancy of Basque in the face of harsh linguistic repression. The southern Basque dialects suffered similar linguistic restraints – laws were passed forbidding all languages except Castilian, and a sharp decline in the distribution of Basque speakers and in the prestige of Basque followed. But once again, Basque was preserved by an internal reaction that emphasized codification, grammars, dictionaries, literature, and the "purification" of Basque from all past foreign influence (Zuazo 13-15). Of course, by the end of the 19th Century, this drive for linguistic purification and isolation had probably gone too far; native Basque speakers couldn’t understand the language that the Basque purists were advocating. And yet, many of the suggested changes were practical, and with the First Congress of Basque Studies in 1918 and the formation of the Academy of the Basque Language, or Euskaltzaindia, some of these changes began to be gradually implemented in order to save the language from the crushing influences of France, Spain, and the Industrial Revolution. As it soon became evident that trying to purge the language of "non-Basque" elements was impossible, the focus shifted to steps such as orthographic codification and lexical modernization, and efforts were quite successful (Zuazo 18-21). For example, in 1964 Basque finally acquired a standard orthography; previous alphabets had varied widely, depending on whether a given dialect was nearer France or Spain. The new orthography, which has gained an impressive acceptance throughout the Basque Country, is as follows:
There are also seven compound letters, dd, ll, rr, ts, tt, tx, and tz, and some foreign words are spelled using c, ch, q, v, w, and y (Aulestia a19). Not only were new language standards decreed by Euskaltzaindia, but they were implemented into actual life through a new Basque educational system targeted not only at children, but adults. The results were quite dramatic, as Basque was resurrected in areas where the language had been dead for a long time (Zuazo 21-2). In order to preserve their mother tongue, the Basques have somehow pulled off a series of imposed changes which most linguists would regard as next-to-impossible. However, despite this recent movement to counteract the disappearance of Basque, its continued survival seems somewhat shaky at present, as it is encroached upon so forcefully by French from the north, Spanish from the south, and of course the pervasive, obliterating influence of English. In the northern Basque country, for example, the percentage of Basques who do not speak Basque has risen from 6% to 55% in the last 50 years despite the modern Basque schools, newspapers, and publications (Aulestia a15). In order to revive the language and unify the speakers of various dialects, Euskaltzaindia has been responsible since 1968 for the continual shaping of a unified literary Basque language, Euskara Batua, and the number of Basques favoring this artificial intervention is continually on the rise (Aulestia a15-a16). Gabriel Aresti, a famous activist for the preservation of Basque once said, "In order for Basque to survive, the dialects must die" (Aulestia a16). It is amazing to see that despite the affection they have for their local dialects, many Basques have begun to do just that – they have begun to unify linguistically in order to preserve their language. As proven from the ancient past, the Basques are survivors.
Works Cited Aulestia, Gorka. Basque-English Dictionary. Las Vegas: U of Nevada, 1989. Gorrochategui, Joaquín. "The Basque Language and Its Neighbors in Antiquity." Towards a History of the Basque Language. José Ignacio Hualde, et al., eds. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1995. 31-63. Lakarra, Joseba A. "Reconstructing the Pre-Proto-Basque Root." Towards a History of the Basque Language. José Ignacio Hualde, et al., eds. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1995. 189-206. Maraña, Félix, et al. "Euskara, the Language of the Basque People." http://simr02.si.ehu.es/docs/book.SS-G/v2/Euskara.html
(16 Feb. 1998). Trask, R. L. The History of Basque. New York: Routledge, 1997. "A Linguistic Sketch of Basque." 23 Aug. 1996. "Prehistory and Connections with Other Languages." 23 Aug. 1996. http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/larryt/prehistory.html
(16 Feb. 1998). Zuazo, Koldo. "The Basque Country and the Basque Language: An overview of the external history of the Basque language." Towards a History of the Basque Language. José Ignacio Hualde, et al., eds. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1995. 5-30. Interesting Basque links on the WWW Egunkaria, an all-Basque newspaper Basque’s Prehistory and Connections with Other Languages Some Important Basque Words (And a Bit of Culture) Synopsis of Basque Case System A Short Guide to Basque Word Order A Linguistic Sketch of Basque Basque Greetings Books in English for Learning Basque Basque: Frequently Asked Questions Your First Basque Lesson Introduction to Basque (66 pages) |