The Vasconic languages (from

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

'Basque') are a putative family of languages that includes

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

and the extinct

Aquitanian language The Aquitanian language was the language of the ancient Aquitani, spoken on both sides of the western Pyrenees in ancient Aquitaine (approximately between the Pyrenees and the Garonne, in the region later known as Gascony) and in the areas sout ...

. The extinct

Iberian language The Iberian language was the language of an indigenous western European people identified by Greek and Roman sources who lived in the eastern and southeastern regions of the Iberian Peninsula in the pre- Migration Era (before about 375 AD). The ...

is sometimes putatively included. The concept of the Vasconic languages is often linked to the

Vasconic substratum hypothesis The Vasconic substrate hypothesis is a proposal that several Western European languages contain remnants of an old language family of Vasconic languages, of which Basque is the only surviving member. The proposal was made by the German linguist ...

of Theo Vennemann, who speculated that the ancestors of the Basque spread across Europe at the end of the last glacial period when the

Cro-Magnon Early European modern humans (EEMH), or Cro-Magnons, were the first early modern humans (''Homo sapiens'') to settle in Europe, migrating from Western Asia, continuously occupying the continent possibly from as early as 56,800 years ago. They i ...

s entered Europe and left traces in the modern languages of Europe. Along with other hypotheses that seek to relate Basque to other languages of the world, this is widely rejected by

historical linguists Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # ...

. Proponents of a Vasconic language family argue that Basque and the extinct

are close relatives, or that the modern varieties of Basque are distinct languages rather than dialects. However, these notions contradict conventional views on these languages, in two areas: #Theories regarding the relationship between Aquitanian and Basque, which suggest that either: #* Aquitanian is the ancestor of Basque, and as

Larry Trask Robert Lawrence Trask (10 November 1944 – 27 March 2004) was an American–British professor of linguistics at the University of Sussex, and an authority on the Basque language and the field of historical linguistics. Biography Born in Ole ...

puts it: "Aquitanian is so closely related to Basque that we can, for practical purposes, regard it as being the more-or-less direct ancestor of Basque", #* or that a hypothetical

Proto-Basque Proto-Basque ( eu, aitzineuskara; es, protoeuskera, protovasco; french: proto-basque), or Pre-Basque, is the reconstructed predecessor of the Basque language before the Roman conquests in the Western Pyrenees. Background The first linguist w ...

is the parent language of Aquitanian, #The view that varieties of Basque are dialects with varying degrees of

mutual intelligibility In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as ...

.Pagola, RM ''Euskalkiz Euskalki''

Basque Government The Basque Government ( eu, Eusko Jaurlaritza, es, Gobierno Vasco) is the governing body of the Basque Autonomous Community of Spain. The head of the Basque government is known as the ''Lehendakari''. The Lehendakari is appointed by the Basque P ...

1984 This view is held by scholars such as Trask,

Koldo Zuazo Koldo Zuazo (Eibar, Gipuzkoa, 1956) is a Basque linguist, professor at the University of the Basque Country and specialist in Basque language dialectology and sociolinguistics. The dialects of the Basque language Since 1998, Zuazo's work on ...

, and

Koldo Mitxelena Koldo Mitxelena Elissalt () (also known as ''Luis Michelena''; 1915, Errenteria, Gipuzkoa – 11 October 1987, San Sebastián) was an eminent Basque linguist. He taught in the Department of Philology at the University of the Basque Country, ...

. Trask states: "Nonetheless, the diversification should not be exaggerated, as has often been done in the literature: the dialects are overwhelmingly congruent in their fundamentals and differ chiefly in vocabulary and in a few low-level phonological rules." Trask, L. ''The History of Basque'', Routledge: 1997, Various attempts have been made to tie other languages, modern or extinct, such as Iberian, the language of the Nuraghe, and the language of the

Cantabri The Cantabri ( grc-gre, Καντάβροι, ''Kantabroi'') or Ancient Cantabrians, were a pre-Roman people and large tribal federation that lived in the northern coastal region of ancient Iberia in the second half of the first millennium BC. Thes ...

and various others to Vasconic. None of these theories have been able to provide convincing data, and they are rejected by most mainstream Basque linguists. A reconstruction of a Proto-Vasconic language is almost impossible with currently available information. More data and research are needed to reconstruct the basics of a proto-language, as well as more information surrounding the neighboring extinct languages such as Iberian and the relationship it has with Vasconic. Reconstruction of a hypothesized Vasconic Proto-language could only be done using the

comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...

, although the accuracy of the reconstructed proto-language would still be uncertain.

References

{{Eurasian languages Pre-Indo-Europeans Basque language Proposed language families

See also

References