History of the Basque language
Prehistory
The mainstream view of linguists today is that Basque is the last surviving member of one of the ancient "
Early attestations
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.[5] A few Roman-period inscriptions in Latin also include Basque names.[6]
It is generally thought that the first attestation of Basque in a manuscript is constituted by six words in the tenth- or eleventh-century
The first book written in Basque, the Linguae Vasconum Primitiae, appeared in 1545.[citation needed] 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]
Modern history
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]
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.[citation needed]
See also
Notes
- ^ "Basque". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.); [bæsk] is the US pronunciation, in British English it is [bask] or [bɑːsk].
- ^ Trask 1997, p. 35.
- ^ Lakarra 2017, pp. 60–61.
- ^ Trask 1997, p. 10.
- ^ Olaya, Vicente G. (2022-11-14). "Researchers claim to have found earliest document written in Basque 2,100 years ago". EL PAÍS English Edition. Retrieved 2022-11-14.
- ^ "University of Cambridge Language Centre Resources - Basque". www.langcen.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 2022-11-14.
- ^ 'Written Basque may be 1,000 years older than anyone thought', The Economist (17 November 2022).
- ISBN 0-415-13116-2
References
- Lakarra, Joseba A. (2017). "Basque and the Reconstruction of Isolated Languages". In Campbell, Lyle (ed.). Language Isolates. London: Routledge. pp. 59–99.
- Trask, Robert Lawrence (1997). The History of Basque. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-13116-2.