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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]
The origin of the Basques and the Basque language is a controversial topic that has given rise to numerous hypotheses. Modern Basque, a descendant or close relative of Aquitanian and Proto-Basque, is the only pre-Indo-European language that is extant in western Europe.
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 in particular, as the latter today geographically surround the Basque-speaking region.
The Basques (Basque: Euskaldunak) are an indigenous ethno-linguistic group mainly inhabiting the Basque Country (adjacent areas of Spain and France).Their history is therefore interconnected with Spanish and French history and also with the history of many other past and present countries, particularly in Europe and the Americas, where a large number of their descendants keep attached to their ...
Since the introduction of Standard Basque and a common written standard, the number of non-indigenous spelling variants has begun to decrease, especially in Spain, taking on a form in accordance with the meaning of the surname in Basque, which remains irrelevant in other language spellings. The Basque Language Academy keeps a database with the ...
There are several theories about its origin; the Basque linguistic Koldo Mitxelena argues that an "in-situ" origin is the most likely, [32] and thus explains the current dialectical classification [33] while other theories advocate for a proposed kinship between the Basque language and other language families, like the languages of the Caucasus ...
The engraving used an early Basque alphabet, experts said, the oldest and most extensive text ever written in the Basque language. The writing proved difficult to decipher.
The "Late Basquisation" hypothesis set the historical geographical spread of the Basque or the proto-Basque language later in history. It suggests that at the end of the Roman Republic and during the first centuries of the Empire, migration of Basque-speakers from Aquitaine overlapped with an autochthonous population whose most ancient substrate would be Indo-European. [2]