Euskara

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Vicki Rosenzweig (talk | contribs) at 15:12, 2 December 2001. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The Euskara or Basque is the non-Indo-European language spoken by some hundred thousand people of the Basque Country, or Euskal-herria in Basque. The Basques are among the ancient inhabitants of Europe, and their origins are still unknown as are the origins of their language itself. By contact with their neighbours, it has borrowed words from Latin, Spanish, French, etc. Some studies say that half of its words come from Latin. Some other words are thought to come from the Stone Age because they include the root "aiz-" (stone). For example, Aiztoa (knife), aizkora (axe).


Basque has some unique forms, such as the "ergatibo", which forces the addition of a -K to the subject when it has a transitive verb. The auriliary verb also reflects the number of the direct object, so the auriliary verb can contain a lot of information (about the subject, the number of direct object, if it´s singular or plural, and the indirect object).


For example if you say:


Martinek egunkariak erosten dizkit


which means Martin buys me the newspapers, Martine-k is the subject, so it has the -k ending.

The verb is "erosten dizkit", in which "erosten" means "buy" and the auriliary dizkit indicates a plural direct object:

di- is the form for transitive verbs with a direct object;

-zki- is the number of the direct object (in this case the newspapers; if it were singular you wouldn´t have to add anything); and

-t is the indirect object mark for to me.