History of the Basque language

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The mainstream view of linguists today is that Basque is the last surviving member of one of the ancient "pre-Indo-European" language families that were once spoken widely in Western Europe.{{sfn|Trask|1997|p=10}} By the Roman period, the majority of the Western European population had become speakers of Indo-European languages; nevertheless, toponyms, personal names, and inscriptions attest to the presence of languages with Basque-like morphology and lexical roots around the Pyrenees at the time. Since the Early Middle Ages, Basque has receded geographically, and for the past 400 years it has been largely confined to the Basque Country. Basque has both influenced, and been influenced by, its geographically neighboring languages, exchanging both loanwords and structures.{{cn|date=October 2020}}

Basque remained until the late-20th century a language steeped in oral tradition and little used in writing. In 2022, an inscription dated to the first quarter of the first century BCE, known as the Hand of Irulegi, was found to contain a supposed Basque word, providing the earliest attestation of the language to date.{{Cite web |last=Olaya |first=Vicente G. |date=2022-11-14 |title=Researchers claim to have found earliest document written in Basque 2,100 years ago |url=https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-11-14/researchers-claim-to-have-found-earliest-document-written-in-basque-2100-years-ago.html |access-date=2022-11-14 |website=EL PAÍS English Edition |language=en-us}} A few Roman-period inscriptions in Latin also include Basque names.{{Cite web |title=University of Cambridge Language Centre Resources - Basque |url=https://www.langcen.cam.ac.uk/resources/langb/basque.html |access-date=2022-11-14 |website=www.langcen.cam.ac.uk}}

It is generally thought that the first attestation of Basque in a manuscript is constituted by six words in the tenth- or eleventh-century Glosas Emilianenses.'[https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/11/17/written-basque-may-be-1000-years-older-than-anyone-thought Written Basque may be 1,000 years older than anyone thought]', The Economist (17 November 2022). A more substantial early witness is a few words and phrases in Aymeric Picaud's account of his journey to Santiago de Compostela (around the year 1140).Trask, L. The History of Basque Routledge: 1997 {{ISBN|0-415-13116-2}}

The first book written in Basque, the {{lang|la|Linguae Vasconum Primitiae}}, appeared in 1545.{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/linguaevasconump0000dech |title=Linguae Vasconum Primitiae : The first fruits of the Basque language, 1545 |publisher=Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada |year=2012 |edition=Translation to English}} Yet Basque was never used for official documents, and came to be gradually excluded as an oral communication language from governing, educative, administrative bodies, and finally also from Church.{{Citation needed|date=June 2017}}

Basque venturers have taken their language overseas since the sixteenth century, especially into the Americas, where it came to be diluted in the larger, prevailing colonial languages, like Spanish, French, or English.{{Citation needed|date=June 2017}}

During the twentieth century, scholars, writers and activists endeavoured to develop a long-discussed aspiration to create a unified, formal standard, which finally crystallized in standard Basque (euskara batua) as of 1968.{{cn|date=October 2020}}

• Origin of the Basques

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• {{cite book |last=Lakarra |first=Joseba A. |year=2017 |chapter=Basque and the Reconstruction of Isolated Languages |editor-last=Campbell |editor-first=Lyle |title=Language Isolates |location=London |publisher=Routledge |pages=59–99 |language=en}}
• {{cite book |last=Trask |first=Robert Lawrence |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OiemTo_t5r8C |title=The History of Basque |date=1997 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=0-415-13116-2 |location=London |language=en}}

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{{Language histories}}

Basque

Category:Basque language