Basque

A language isolate with no known relatives anywhere on earth. It was already here when Indo-European arrived.

What sets it apart

• No relatives. Not one. Every other language in western Europe belongs to a family; Basque sits alone.
• It is ergative: the subject of he runs and the subject of he sees her take different endings, which is the opposite of the pattern English uses.
• One verb form can agree with the subject, the direct object and the indirect object at the same time.
• Counting runs in twenties. Seventy-five is hirurogeita hamabost, three twenties and fifteen.
• The standard written form, Batua, was only assembled in 1968. Before that there were dialects and no centre.
• In the seventeenth century Basque whalers and Icelandic locals traded in a pidgin built from both languages. Two glossaries of it survive, which is more than most pidgins leave behind.

What it opens

Older than every neighbour it has, related to none of them. The verb carries who does what to whom in a single word. Europe from before Europe. Bilbao's food scene alone justifies it: order pintxos in Euskara and watch the whole bar recalibrate who they think you are.

Words with no translation

All the untranslatable words →

Basque in the archive, next to the other sixty-six →