What language is Basque like?

The Basque language is a non-Indo-European language, the only one existing in Western Europe at the moment. It is a tongue older than Latin, which is why it’s said that Basque is a millennial language — perhaps even one of the first languages that ever existed.

Why has the Basque language continued as a distinct language?

Most non-native speakers will recognize Basque as different from Spanish because of its distinct consonants, whose pronunciation is closer to those of Slavic consonants. The vowels in Basque can sound similar to those in Spanish , but beyond a volume of borrowed words, the Basque language remains uniquely its own.

How is Basque related to other languages?

Basque is not related to any other language in the world; it is a linguistic isolate. There have been attempts to connect Basque to languages in the Caucasus, but these are highly speculative conjectures.

Is there a Basque-Caucasian link?

The French Indo-Europeanist (and Caucasianist) Georges Dumézil devoted a chapter of his 1933 book to putative cognates found among Basque and the Northern Caucasian languages. René Lafon, a French scholar of Basque, produced a long series of articles, published in 1930s through 1960s, arguing for a Basque-Caucasian link.

Are there any Basque cognates in the Georgian language?

Among the specifically Georgian-Basque cognates that suffer from the same problem is the Georgian bza ‘box tree,’ matched with the Basque ezpel ‘box tree.’ These lists of putative cognates typically pair Basque words with words in some particular Caucasian language (or closely related languages).

Are Basques a cultural or genetic isolate?

Basques are a cultural isolate, and, according to mainly allele frequencies of classical polymorphisms, also a genetic isolate. We investigated the differentiation of Spanish Basques from the rest of Iberian populations by means of a dense, genome-wide SNP array.