Basque language

Basque
euskara
Pronunciation	IPA: [eus̺ˈkaɾa]
Native to	France, Spain
Region	Basque Country Basque Autonomous Community and Navarre (Spain) French Basque Country
Ethnicity	Basques
Native speakers	806,000 (2021) 434,000 passive speakers
Language family	Language isolate (Vasconic?)
Early forms	Aquitanian? Proto-Basque
Standard forms	Standard Basque
Dialects	Biscayan Gipuzkoan Upper Navarrese Navarro-Lapurdian Eastern Navarrese (Salazarese and Roncalese) † Souletin (Zuberoan) Alavese †
Writing system	Latin (Basque alphabet) Basque Braille Northeastern Iberian script (c. 80 BC)
Official status
Official language in	Spain Basque Autonomous Community Navarre (zones designated by the Foral Law on Basque)
Recognised minority language in	France Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Nouvelle-Aquitaine
Regulated by	Euskaltzaindia
Language codes
ISO 639-1	eu
ISO 639-2	baq (B) eus (T)
ISO 639-3	eus
Glottolog	basq1248
Linguasphere	40-AAA-a
Dialect areas of Basque. Light-coloured dialects are extinct. See § Dialects
Basque speakers, including second-language speakers   80–100%   50–80%   20–50%   0–20%

Person	Basque (euskaldun)
People	Basques (euskaldunak)
Language	Basque (euskara)

Family transmission of Basque language (Basque as initial language)

Percentage of students registered in Basque language schools (2000–2005)

Location of the Basque-language provinces within France and Spain

Basque (/ˈbæsk, ˈbɑːsk/ BASK, BAHSK; endonym euskara [eus̺ˈkaɾa]) is a language spoken by Basques and other residents of the Basque Country, a region that straddles the westernmost Pyrenees in adjacent parts of southwestern France and northern Spain. Basque is Europe's only known language isolate (with no relation to any other known languages) and the only surviving language of Paleo-European origin. The Basques are indigenous to and primarily inhabit the Basque Country. Basque has 806,000 speakers: 93.7% (756,000) are in the Spanish area of the Basque Country and the remaining 6.3% (51,000) are in the French portion.

Native speakers live in a contiguous area that includes parts of four Spanish provinces and the three "ancient provinces" in France. Gipuzkoa, most of Biscay, a few municipalities on the northern border of Álava and the northern area of Navarre formed the core of the remaining Basque-speaking area before measures were introduced in the 1980s to strengthen Basque fluency. By contrast, most of Álava, the westernmost part of Biscay, and central and southern Navarre are predominantly populated by native speakers of Spanish, either because Basque was replaced by either Navarro-Aragonese or Spanish over the centuries (as in most of Álava and central Navarre), or because it may never have been spoken there (as in parts of Enkarterri and south-eastern Navarre).

In Francoist Spain, Basque language use was suppressed by the government's repressive policies. In the Basque Country, "Francoist repression was not only political, but also linguistic and cultural." Franco's regime suppressed Basque from official discourse, education, and publishing, making it illegal to register newborn babies under Basque names, and even requiring tombstone engravings in Basque to be removed. In some provinces the public use of Basque was suppressed, with people fined for speaking it. Public use of Basque was frowned upon by supporters of the regime, often regarded as a sign of anti-Francoism or separatism. In the 1960s and later, still under the regime, the trend reversed and education and publishing in Basque began to flourish. As a part of this process, a standardised form of the Basque language, called Euskara Batua, was developed by the Euskaltzaindia in the late 1960s.

Besides its standardised version, the five historic Basque dialects are Biscayan, Gipuzkoan, and Upper Navarrese in Spain and Navarrese–Lapurdian and Souletin in France. They take their names from the historic Basque provinces, but the dialect boundaries are not congruent with province boundaries. Euskara Batua was created so that the Basque language could be used—and easily understood by all Basque speakers—in formal situations (education, mass media, literature), and this is its main use today. In both Spain and France, the use of Basque for education varies from region to region and from school to school.

The current mainstream scientific view on the origin of the Basques and of their language is that early forms of Basque developed before the arrival of Indo-European languages in the area, i.e. before the arrival of Celtic and Romance languages, as the latter today geographically surround the Basque-speaking region. Basque grammar remains markedly different from that of Standard Average European languages, due to its agglutinative morphology and ergative-absolutive alignment. Agglutinative morphology refers to the fact that it is a language that is formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts) without significant changes made to their forms. Moreover, ergative-absolute alignment refers to a system in which the subject of an intransitive verb is treated similarly to the object of a transitive verb, while the subject of a transitive verb is marked differently.