# Basque



## Fennec89

I have heard by a friend that Basque is older than the other languages that are spoken in Spain. I have also heard that the language acctually are more related to languages as Finish and Hungarian.

Is this right? And in that case, about how old are Basque?


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## Frank06

Hi,

Welcome to the EHL Forum!



Fennec89 said:


> I have heard by a friend that basque is older than the other languages that are spoken in Spain. I have also heard that the language acctually are more related to languages as Finish and Hungarian.


Basque is a so-called language isolate, meaning that it cannot be connected with any other known language. There is certainly no connection with Finnish or Hungarian. For more basic information see here.



> And in that case, about how old are Basque?


Basque is as old as any other language. The idea of old and young languages is a matter of labels, not of the languages themselves.

Groetjes,

Frank


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## Outsider

The Basque language is thought to descend from the language of peoples who lived in Europe before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. In that sense, it's been here for longer than IE languages. But of course, just like IE languages have changed, so has Basque. And just as IE split into several distinct languages, Basque was probably not the only descendant of that ancestral language of Europe. It is the only surviving descendant, though.


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## Maroseika

Some linguists talk about the interesting parallels between Basque and Georgian (Sakartvelo) and more generally - Caucasian languages, both being, on their opinion, residuals of Indo-European languages predecessors in Europe.


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## Breogan

Fennec89 said:


> I have heard by a friend that Basque is older than the other languages that are spoken in Spain.



Yes and older than the rest of European languages.



> I have also heard that the language acctually are more related to languages as Finish and Hungarian.  Is this right?


Basque is not related to any other language, but unlike Indoeuropean _flexive_ languages, is an _aglutinative_ one, perhaps you're referring to this with "as Finish and Hungarian", aglutinative languages as well.



> And in that case, about how old are Basque?


6000-7000 years according to wikipedia, but I'm not sure, anyway older than IE ones.


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## Breogan

Frank06 said:


> ...
> 
> Basque is as old as any other language. The idea of old and young languages is a matter of labels, not of the languages themselves.
> 
> Groetjes,
> 
> Frank



Really? 

I thought it was a matter of historical linguistics.


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## Frank06

Hi,


Breogan said:


> Yes and older than the rest of European languages.
> [...]
> 6000-7000 years according to wikipedia, but I'm not sure, anyway older than IE ones.
> [...]
> I thought it was a matter of historical linguistics.


Well, it _is_ a matter of historical linguists. 
I took the very sound idea from a historical linguist, viz. L. Trask. Please also check out the texts by the other (historical) linguists on that very same page.
BTW, 6/7000 years, that's how old some people think the (P)IE language is (keeping in mind the remarks above)... the labels 'English', 'French' etc., used to denote IE-dialects, are younger.

Groetjes,

Frank


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## Spectre scolaire

Outsider said:


> The Basque language is thought to descend from one of the languages of peoples who lived in Europe before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. In that sense, it's been here for longer than IE languages.


 There is no doubt about the statement in blue, but the previous statement is pure speculation – previous to my corrections. Which would be “_*the*_ language of peoples who lived in Europe before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans”?

Even if the following statement could equally be considered as “pure speculation”:_In Europe, before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans, several indigenous languages are likely to have coexisted._​-- it sounds much more plausible than to postulate Basque as the descendant of _the_ language of the Proto-Europeans.

Even in the Iberian Peninsula there were languages which linguists have not yet deciphered! And in this case we are fortunate enough to have written “documents” – alas to no avail; so far no Iberian version of the Rosette Stone has been found...

We are so used to thinking in terms of “descendants of Indo-European languages” (and some other language groups that historically have closed in on our cultural grasslands, Finno-Ugrian, Semitic, Turkic) that the idea of having *Basque* or *Burushaski* next to us is considered to be weird. I don’t think it is, and cutting edge cognitive science research would support a falsification of the myth according to which there was “a first language that all others evolved from” – see the popular thread on this subject (in this very forum).

Language is something that cropped up spontaneously wherever _Homo sapiens sapiens_ settled. As much as coincidence would decide on the word denoting “hand” to be uttered with one specific phonetic sequence in language *x* and with an entirely different one in language *y*, it is equally much of a coincidence that only _Basque_ and _Burushaski_ have remained as co-called “language isolates”. 
 ​


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## Athaulf

Frank06 said:


> I took the very sound idea from a historical linguist, viz. L. Trask. Please also check out the texts by the other (historical) linguists on that very same page.
> BTW, 6/7000 years, that's how old some people think the (P)IE language is (keeping in mind the remarks above)... the labels 'English', 'French' etc., used to denote IE-dialects, are younger.



It is obviously true that it makes no sense to assign a fixed "age" to any language, since all languages change constantly and continuously, so that there is no well-defined cut-off point at which some modern language "came into being". (When exactly did e.g. Latin turn into Italian or French? The question makes no sense.) 

However, as a different criterion, it might be interesting to observe how far into the past the archaic forms of each language are still partially intelligible to a modern speaker. Of course, there is no well-defined cut-off point here either; the more ancient a text is, the less intelligible it will be. But there is no doubt that the rate of change of different languages is very different. For example, English has changed much more in the last thousand years than most Slavic languages. So it can be interesting to compare the "age" of modern languages by observing which speakers can make some sense out of the most archaic version of their language.

I don't know how Basque would rate in such comparison; I would expect that archaic Basque would have many words unintelligible to a modern speaker because of heavy Spanish and French influences that happened in the meantime. But this is just a highly uneducated guess. How old are the oldest extand documents in Basque anyway?


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## Outsider

That question runs into semantics as well. Some scholars have argued that the old Iberian language was related to Basque -- but, due to the scarcity of Iberian inscriptions, this is not certain.

The medieval Aquitanian language was probably related to Basque, but it's not clear how closely...


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## Frank06

Hi,


Athaulf said:


> How old are the oldest extand documents in Basque anyway?


According to Price's _Encyclopedia of the European languages_, the oldest attestation of Basque is a 11th century charter about the donation of the monastery of Ollazabal. It contains texts in Latin and in Basque. Two other texts from the 11th and 12th century are known. The latter, a pilgrim's guide to Santiago de Compostella, contains a small Basque word-list (yes, even then ).

Groetjes,

Frank


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## yujuju

Basque is said to be one of the oldest languages *in Europe*, and the oldest one alive. Maybe that's the difference between IE and it.

There are some hypothesis that relate it with Iberian, being the Basques those who got maintain the language.
There are others that relate it with Caucasic languages or with Bere-Beres. Anyway, no one has been accepted.


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## Spectre scolaire

yujuju said:
			
		

> Basque is said to be one of the oldest languages *in Europe*, and the oldest one alive. Maybe that's the difference between IE and it.


 Posting #2 contained the following wise words:




			
				Frank06 said:
			
		

> Basque is as old as any other language. The idea of old and young languages is a matter of labels, not of the languages themselves.


 Are we beating around the bush?
 ​


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## yujuju

The thing I wanted to point out, was that it was one of the oldest *in Europe* (compared with IE), not just saying it was old (as many others are). I think it's not a question of labels here, but it's just my opinion, and not just because I speak it. But it is ok.


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## Spectre scolaire

Most of the theories pertaining to early languages in Europe (and adjacent areas) are linked to “Indo-European”. If we preclude Rasmus Rask and postulate the real beginning of Indo-European studies with Franz Bopp, this has been a field of study for 175 years completely overshadowing the fact that “Europeans” did talk before this language group came along. Impressive efforts have been made to describe how Proto-Indo-European split up into a great number of Indo-European “dialects”, and to restore earlier stages of the various languages. The study of Indo-European comparative linguistics is strangely devoid of substratum theories – except for the eastern branch where Dravidian influence is notorious. And the reason is obvious: you can’t postulate a substratum without knowing what sort of substratum you are talking about. Only Basque has survived the Indo-European “linguistic invasion” – but numerous traces of a previous state of affairs are found, f.ex. in Frisk’s _Griechisches etymologisches W__örterbuch_. Etymology includes the elimination of what we don’t know, _in casu_ indiscriminately “anatolisches Wort”, often of non-Indo-European origin.

‘The Indo-European language syndrome’ is overwhelmingly present in European culture. When Spain joined the EEC (1986), I can’t remember any mention of Basque. And if there was one, Basque was only a “minority language” anyway... When Sweden and Finland joined the EU (1995), was there any mention of Saami? Again a minority language... There certainly was a mention of Finnish not being Indo-European, and the same with Hungarian and Maltese in 2004, but then, *a*) these languages are _majority languages_ in their respective countries, and *b*) the Finns, the Hungarians and the Maltese are Christians. A change of mentality towards Turkey operated during this 10 year period - together with this “invasion” of so many non-Indo-European languages in EU - saying that a country with _both_ a non-Indo-European language _and_ a (basically) non-Christian population would be too heavy to digest. _The Finno-Ugrian dimension had changed the focus._ The religious argument (which does not officially exist in the EU) had become prevalent! 

Basque is the reason for mentioning this apparently non-linguistic argument. But there is no such thing as a language without a culture, and the question of origin of a language is to a large extent linked to the question of the origin of the speakers of a specific language. Basque has probably always been spoken where it is spoken today – even if we don’t know that for sure. But as _Outsider_ indicates, the “nearby” Medieval Aquitanian might have been a “Basque dialect”, and, as I suggest myself, other pre-Indo-European languages must have existed in Europe – only we know next to nothing about them. We don’t know who the _Pannonians_ were – and we don’t know where the Finns came from. Or perhaps most of the Finns were there all the time, only there was a language shift? The question is highly controversial. Applied to another part of our “old world”: was there nobody in Anatolia before Turkic tribes came along?! Is Anatolia now outside Europe because the people in this area changed _both_ religion _and_ language? Consequently, Turks may not be ‘outliers’ in Europe!

A stunning case of probable language shift to a non-Indo-European language from a Indo-European or a pre-Indo-European one can be read here:
http://www.oxfordancestors.com/papers/mtDNA04%20Saami.pdf. The case of the Saami has surprised linguists and anthropologists alike. It is a story of genetic “outliers”. But they are not alone! Here is the very first sentence of this article:




> Although not homogenous, the European genetic landscape has been characterized by relatively short genetic distances between individual populations. Classic genetic markers have revealed a few clearly pronounced outliers, like the Sardinians, the Greeks [*!*], the Basques, the Finns and, in particular, the Saami.


 I think there are more surprises to come; _mtDNA_ is only in its infancy.
 ​


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## Miguel Antonio

Frank06 said:


> Hi,
> 
> According to Price's _Encyclopedia of the European languages_, the oldest attestation of Basque is a 11th century charter about the donation of the monastery of Ollazabal. It contains texts in Latin and in Basque. Two other texts from the 11th and 12th century are known. The latter, a pilgrim's guide to Santiago de Compostella, contains a small Basque word-list (yes, even then ).
> 
> Groetjes,
> 
> Frank



Or even older...

http://www.google.es/url?sa=t&ct=re...nToisrcZHnS_shKig&sig2=hLuRbC_IDjnQ_m7evMP0jg

Zorionak

MA


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## Asgaard

Hi,



Spectre scolaire said:


> I think there are more surprises to come; _mtDNA_ is only in its infancy.




As Frank once said, and I paraphrase ... How is DNA related to language?


Happy Holidays
Asgaard


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## Spectre scolaire

DNA is *a tool together with many other tools* in order to establish early human settlement and cultural history. That is why even linguists have taken an interest in it. 

If you consider Colin Renfrew’s book _Archeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins_, it turned out to be a very controversial theory among linguists – but it is still around to nourish new and better hypotheses. 

In the years to come there will certainly be other interdisciplinary “provocations” resulting from studies carried out by people who dare to step out of their professional ivory tower.  In fact, interdisciplinary studies have become popular topics at many universities. Who would have thought of combining entomology and jurisprudence (i.e. forensic entomology) only a couple of decades ago?

I think it would be wrong to exclude _a priori_ the possibility that _mtDNA_ might contribute to linguistic research. 
 ​


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## J.F. de TROYES

The basque population has a gene pool closely related to the  other European ones, especially as to DNAmt but with the notable exception of a high frequency of Rhesus negative groups. More recent data (1999)shows that they share a specific variation of Y-chromosom DNA with other populations of Spain, but I doubt it is of any help for assuming a linguistic link with Iberian. Such data is not available for Caucasian, Ienisseian or Burushaski speaking populations.
By the way I also think that putting together linguistics, archeology and genetics of populations may be promising and sometimes efficient. Estella Poloni's research (University of Geneva) based on analysing Y-chromosomal DNA of 58 populations all over the world  provided proof that the gene map is correlated with the existence of three big language families : I.E , Afro-Asian, Niger-Congo families. Genetically Niger-Congo speaking populations are strongly related with each other and highly distant from the two others.


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## Aoyama

I'll put my grain of salt in the Basque saga.
Don't know much about DNA stuff BUT it may be of some interest to know that the Japanese and the Basques share (at least) one notable common point :
both people have a higher percentage of AB blood type (+- 13 % for the Japanese, I heard a similar number for the Basques). Other blood types are close.
Then, there is the matter of the Basque language having some similarity with Japanese (and for that matter also, with Finnish). 
But that is beyond my practice, though I can say that _phonetically_ , Basque and Japanese have some common points, mainly the consonant +vowel structure.


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## Consimmer

Deep ancestral DNA analysis (such as those done by Oxford Genetics and the Genographic project) is done primarily to research how humans spread from Africa to the rest of world.

From what I've read, the relationship between DNA and linguistics is that as tribes move apart and away, the tribes' dialect also drifts apart and away. Once enough tribes settle in a given area, the tribes' genetic markers stabilize and they could then be described as a people (eg. Basque or Sammi or Malay etc.), and the dialect stablizes as well and becomes a 'language'.

The DNA/language correlation is interesting, and as Spectre scolaire mentioned, is one of many tools for academicians to use.

As a side note, I myself have undergone deep ancestry DNA testing.


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## sokol

Breogan said:


> 6000-7000 years according to wikipedia, but I'm not sure, anyway older than IE ones.


As was already said one could not say that a single language were 'the oldest' one: this is nonsense, sorry to being so frank.

We are talking here of times from which we have *no written documents at all* - so no means at all to be sure what were the languages like spoken at that time; even PIE is only a construct and (most likely) never was spoken like it has been reconstructed carefully over two centuries.
And if, at that, one were allowed to speak of an 'oldest language group' at all one would have to consider first and foremost the oldest known races which would be the Khoisan of Southern Africa and the Australian Aboriginals - but not even that is something we can be sure of.



Spectre scolaire said:


> DNA is *a tool together with many other tools* in order to establish early human settlement and cultural history.



I agree though I am not quite sure if mtDNA is (at the point where it's now) appropriate in isolating language groups and immigration streams: one just has to consider mixing of populations and I am not quite sure if I'm confident enough in mtDNA to even try and base hypothesis on it. (But this may change.) Besides, I have to confess that I had a hard time with my first try of reading the pdf linked above; I probably will try sometime later.

However, in general, comparative linguistics today is at a point where studies of ancient texts would not provide much more information - certainly not enough to prove conclusively links between the great language families or between Basque and any other language: it is certainly _not sufficient_ to construct relations between two languages solely on the fact that both of them are agglutinative languages.
Therefore, for now, one could not be serious about linking Basque with any other known language: we may guess, and this, of course, is allowed - but only if one says that this is only guesswork.

Genetics and cultural/historical sciences might someday help discover the origin of the Basques (they certainly had to come from somewhere, but as we know that manhood - most likely - did originate in Africa we know at least that they most likely came from Africa ;-).

Myself I'm a great fan of interdisciplinary approaches (to any problem), only problem with this is that you have to know so many different approaches to a single question - it's more than one person alone could manage, usually. (Myself I cannot even keep up with genetics ...)




J.F. de TROYES said:


> By the way I also think that putting together linguistics, archeology and genetics of populations may be promising and sometimes efficient. Estella Poloni's research (University of Geneva) based on analysing Y-chromosomal DNA of 58 populations all over the world  provided proof that the gene map is correlated with the existence of three big language families : I.E , Afro-Asian, Niger-Congo families. Genetically Niger-Congo speaking populations are strongly related with each other and highly distant from the two others.



What about the Khoisan group and Australian Aboriginals? I think I am at the brink of remembering something about them being highly distant from the Niger-Congo-group and closer to IE & Afro-Asian.

As for Basques, there is cultural evidence of a belt of proto IE cultures from Spain through the whole mediterranean (including isles) to Greece which might have communicated culturally (but no evidence, of course, concerning language as this was before the time of written documents except for Greece, where the pre-IE language still is not deciphered - Linear-A as called traditionally (the pre-Greek Minoan language, partly decipherable but only in meaning, which is due to the character of the hieroglyphic script).

There could have been a broad belt of 'Pre-IE' languages, probably all of them related, from Spain over France, the Alps, Italy and the Isles towards the Balkans and the Caucasus - there _could _have, but no proof for that is likely coming forth in the foreseeable future.


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## Spectre scolaire

sokol said:
			
		

> Genetics and cultural/historical sciences might someday help discover the origin of the Basques (they certainly had to come from somewhere, but as we know that manhood - most likely - did originate in Africa we know at least that they most likely came from Africa)


 Even if the following statement would tend to falsify my own previous postings , _I basically think__ that language emergence in the first place is_ nothing but a combination of cognitive ability and coincidence. The spread of a language already _conceived_, so to say , is only a _constraint_ to the emergence from scratch. The reason why Indo-European was such a considerable _constraint_, we simply don’t know enough about. (Renfrew has suggested one reason).

This makes the question of the origin of the Basque language a non-debatable one; they were there all the time – ever since the _species_ (which both the Basques and the rest of the “Caucasians” represent) once came from Africa, obviously. They already had the necessary cognitive ability by the time they had reached Europe.
 ​


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## Qcumber

Basques don't look different from other Europeans. Ditto for Finns and Hungarians. Yet their languages are not Indo-European ones. So it is quite possible that in each case the language of a non-European minority was adopted by the majority.


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## Spectre scolaire

Qcumber said:


> Basques don't look different from other Europeans. Ditto for Finns and Hungarians. Yet their languages are not Indo-European ones. So it is quite possible that in each case the language of a non-European minority was adopted by the majority.


 Sorry, _Qcumber_, I just coudn’t follow your line of thought here.  Why would that be the case?
 ​


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## J.F. de TROYES

sokol said:


> What about the Khoisan group and Australian Aboriginals? I think I am at the brink of remembering something about them being highly distant from the Niger-Congo-group and closer to IE & Afro-Asian.


 
I am afraid I am getting off-topic ; I'd just like to answer your question. The same research shows that populations speaking khoisan languages make a fourth genetically related group, but not as well knit up as Niger-Congo and I.E. populations. The Damas on one hand  speak a Khoisan language and have a mtDMA matching up with their linguistic filiation, on the other hand their Y-chromosome is the same as Congo-Niger speaking populations. So the Dama are supposed to originate from Bantu ancestors who altered their genetic features and adopted a Khoisan language from the time when they united khoisan women. The Hereros show the exact opposite with a Niger-Congo language and a Y-chromosome of the same family, but with a typically Khoisan mtDNA.
The splitting between gene pools matches up pretty well with the splitting between some linguistic families, with noted but not surprising exceptions. C.Renfew, one of the pioneers in this interdisciplinary field, says that undoubtedly genes automatically related to a specific language family don't exist. However this kind of research is comparatively new and may be promising.

To come back to *Basque* the various hypotheses on its origin are clearly set out on Wikipedia .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language#Hypotheses_on_connections_with_other_languages

The Caucasian hypothese is being carried out again by the linguist Michel Morvan.


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## Qcumber

Spectre scolaire said:


> Sorry, _Qcumber_, I just coudn’t follow your line of thought here.  Why would that be the case?
> 
> ​


Well ... I thought I was clear enough. If you are a European and you speak a language that is not Indo-European, then the chances are that your ancestors were taught this language by invaders.


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## sokol

Qcumber said:


> Well ... I thought I was clear enough. If you are a European and you speak a language that is not Indo-European, then the chances are that your ancestors were taught this language by invaders.


I cannot follow your arguments either, sorry.
Indoeuropeans were strangers to Europe, they invaded (most likely) from the South Russian steppes and/or the steppes of Kazakhstan.

Many IE languages show clearly substrate influence, most noticeably Germanic languages (the first Germanic consonant shift - from p to f, from t to th, from k to h - could be due to substratum influence), and there is plenty of archaeological evidence that shows that indeed there were many different human cultures (all supposedly speaking non-IE) living in Europe before the IE expansion.
So there's no doubt about Non-IE's living under IE rule and becoming assimilated by them, given time - the Basques are only a small population that did resist assimilation.



Spectre scolaire said:


> (...) _I basically think__ that language emergence in the first place is_ nothing but a combination of cognitive ability and coincidence. The spread of a language already _conceived_, so to say , is only a _constraint_ to the emergence from scratch. (...)



Basically, I agree  but I wouldn't push coincidence too far.

The spread of languages (due to the expansion of the cultures using them) certainly prevented more diversity, but who knows, probably a very small core of a proto language existed before manhood spread all over the world and all who came later built with their languages just on that - but I don't want to move away from topic to some esoteric reasoning that couldn't possibly lead anywhere. ...

Anyway, the Basque language certainly is a relic from Europe before the arrival of the Indoeuropeans, as are the Finns and Saami (not Hungarians and Turks who came only later), and some language groups in the Caucasus.
However, this alone is not enough to claim that these languages are related, and linguists trying to prove something like that have a very hard task ahead of them.


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## Spectre scolaire

Qcumber said:


> Well ... I thought I was clear enough. If you are a European and you speak a language that is not Indo-European, then the chances are that your ancestors were taught this language by invaders.


 That would be the opposite of what I am trying to say. 

I thought of Basque as a language that might have been “conceived” _in situ_ - for the sake of argument – but may have been widespread in Europe _before_ the real “invaders” came along, i.e. the Indo-Europeans. 

And why would you be “taught” a language by invaders unless they had a superior culture to offer? –like the Romans coming to _Gallia_, obviously. The Indo-Europeans probably also represented – in the eyes of people they met on their march westwards! – such a “superior culture”. That is why this group of languages is so widespread.

There is no _language shift_ if not associated with _prestige_ in some way or another.

I still wonder whether we are talking past each other...  Thanks to _sokol_ for coming to my relief...




			
				sokol said:
			
		

> Anyway, the Basque language certainly *most probably* is a relic from Europe before the arrival of the Indoeuropeans, as are the Finns and Saami


 We don’t know that for sure.  But relics may be – mutatis mutandis – a type of language/culture like the one depicted in ‘Asterix and his friends’...

As a devil’s advocate I am now correcting _sokol_ to give room for _Qcumber_’s more unlikely theory of “invading Basques” _since they are not _“_Europeans_”_ language wise_.


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## Mr.Slade

yujuju said:


> The thing I wanted to point out, was that it was one of the oldest *in Europe* (compared with IE), not just saying it was old (as many others are). I think it's not a question of labels here, but it's just my opinion, and not just because I speak it. But it is ok.


 
Limiting your conception to Europe may not be logical. There are those who are examining a possible link between the Basques and the Berbers of North Africa.


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