
Basque and Armenian share a baffling litany of words and grammatical elements - Phithagoras
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190603-the-surprising-story-of-the-basque-language
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kace91
As a spaniard, I checked out the topic of Euskera's origin for a bit after
several trips to the area left me a strong curiosity in the topic.

What I found out is pretty much that every bit of information has to be taken
with a grain of salt, because there is a very strong amount of urban legends,
fringe historians supporting outlandish theories with just a bit of anecdotal
evidence like the ![vasconic substrate
hypothesis]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasconic_substrate_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasconic_substrate_hypothesis)),
and bad pseudohistory. There's always claims of mountains of evidence of which
just one or two (usually already debunked) examples are provided.

It is somewhat comparable to the pseudo history that's sometimes seen in the
African American comunity in the US (like the black egyptian hipothesis, the
idea that Jesus was black, etc). The issue is a mix of lack of well funded
investigation, distrust of mainstream authorities by the people affected and
local pride (that causes good sounding stories to be spread without much
research).

~~~
chrstphrhrt
Reminds me of the Irish Chronicles that say the people came from Galicia in
northern Spain, before that from northern Africa (possibly Phoenicians), all
the way back to Scythia (the horse archers who smoked weed in tents). Seems
like a stretch but I think there have been some DNA studies that confirm parts
of it, but my understanding is the medieval monks who compiled the stories
were trying to claim a link to the Mediterranean/holy land in order to connect
their identities to the Bible. Maybe they were mixing up multiple different
migrations to fit the narrative. I'm curious about what real
historians/scientists think about it.

~~~
mig39
The Celtic connection to the Iberian Peninsula is probably a bit more
complicated, but the Celtiberians and Celtic people in Ireland have common
ancestors. Both being the results of Celtic migrations westward.

So I'd say that instead of Irish people coming from Spain and Portugal, it
would be fairer to say both are Celtic and leave it at that :-)

~~~
asveikau
And worth noting that parts of today's modern northern Italy and France also
had Celts. Though I also read another claim that Romans just over-applied the
term "Celt" to foreign people. (Like the grandparent states, there seems to be
a lot of conjecture and folk opinion on these subjects.)

~~~
weberc2
The Celts used to live all over Europe; they were displaced and assimilated
during various migrations, especially the Germanic tribes migrating south.
"Ancestral Journeys" by Jean Manco provides a great overview based on
linguistic, archeological, and historical evidence.

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zazpiak_bat
Native Basque speaker here. Happy to see an article about my mother tongue in
HN! It is indeed quite a mystery the origin of Euskara, many hypotheses but no
clear winner. Gladly, most of us were thaught that diversity of theories in
school instead of being hammered the official/most popular of the hypotheses
at the time.

A curious feature of Euskara is linked to the geography of most of the Basque
Country: lots of mountains and lots of smallish towns. This helped develop
subtle differences between towns just a few kilometers apart, to the point of
most native speakers being able to accurately pinpoint another native
speaker's hometown. These differences grow bigger the farther apart the
speakers' origins are. I am aware this happens in practically all the
languages but to have it occur in distances of a few kilometres instead of
hundreds is quite incredible. I wonder if millennia ago proto-euskara was
spoken all the way from the current Basque Country to Armenia, those subtle
dialectal differences would have been huge, to the point of being unable to
understand each other.

Sadly, Euskera is less and less heard in big cities where most of the
inhabitants or their ancestors come from other parts of Spain and saw no need
to bother with the local language. This also happened in a time where nothing
but spanish (Castilian) was allowed in Spain under Franco. The recent
permanent ceasefire of E.T.A. has been crucial in making our little country
attractive for tourism and commerce again.

I am confident in our collective willingness to extend the usage of Euskara
and with the plethora of activities and projects undertaken for this goal:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilometroak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilometroak)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korrika](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korrika)

[https://www.hellabasque.org/euskaraldia/](https://www.hellabasque.org/euskaraldia/)

edit: added some links

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I'm curious. I presume you also speak Spanish? (And, clearly, English.) If you
don't mind saying, which is the language of your heart? When you are alone and
think, which language do you think in?

~~~
zazpiak_bat
I do not mind at all, I could spend half a day with curious HNers talking
about the topic :)

My mother being spanish and my father basque, I grew up with both of them at
home. My mother's mother was genuinely worried with my then toddler's brain
being unable to cope with both languages at the same time, as I am told I did
not begin speaking until almost my third birthday. At that point I started
speaking both indistinctly. Nevertheless, my heart beats in Euskara, because
this is where I grew up. When it comes to thinking, I believe my brain does
not directly parse thoughts into language unless preparing to express them
verbally or writing.

The struggle comes when talking to a group of people with part of them not
being proficient in basque; even if they understand it perfectly, the tendency
is to switch to spanish out of politeness with those who do not speak it
fluently; nowadays only the senior denizens of the most rural and small
villages may find harder to express themselves in spanish than in basque. The
recent Euskaraldia* event, where you could choose among 3 pins to wear during
11 days expressing that you could either talk Euskara, understand Euskara, or
just did not mind not understanding it but having it spoken around you, has
helped a lot when it comes to these everyday situations.

When it comes to preferring a mother tongue more than the other, spanish seems
to be doing fine in the languages ranking, as opposed to Euskara; the cool
part of that being my SO and myself enjoy using "that funny language"
especially when abroad so no one understands us. Very occasionally we meet a
fellow basque or someone who recognizes the language and at least a nice chat
ensues. Additionally most people here will open their homes to every foreigner
who shows the tiniest bit of interest in our language or culture.

As a finishing fact, there is actually no adjective for basque (citizenship)
in the basque language, there is just "euskaldun" (euskara + "-dun" suffix),
meaning possessor/holder of basque language.

* [https://www.hellabasque.org/euskaraldia/](https://www.hellabasque.org/euskaraldia/)

------
roywiggins
> Though their languages indicate no superficial resemblance – even the
> scripts look comparatively alien to one another

well that's hardly dispositive, lots of similar languages use completely
different scripts, and dissimilar languages borrow scripts from each other all
the time

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DylanBohlender
After an unplanned Wikipedia binge about Armenian history, I stumbled upon
this interesting fact: in antiquity (~300 BC to ~600 AD), there was a kingdom
established near the location of present-day Armenia called the Kingdom of
Iberia.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Iberia_(antiquity)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Iberia_\(antiquity\))

Iberian peninsula in the west, and a Kingdom of Iberia in the east? Yet
another very strange coincidence, it seems.

~~~
inawarminister
Nope, (Caucasian) Iberia is Georgia, not Armenia. The Urartu (linked with
Hurrians of East Anatolia/North Syria) are old old old though, already
mentioned by surrounding people's by 2000BCE, and seems to be the direct
ancestors of Armenians with some Indo-Iranian injections.

------
GCA10
The linguists of Quora had a similar discussion a while back about the
putative similarities between Hebrew and Navajo. Basic conclusion: if you
accept loose pairings (shoe/boot) you can find "inexplicable" coincidences
anywhere you want.

~~~
Phithagoras
Good point. Do you have the link to the Quora discussion? I'd be curious to
see it.

There's a relatively small number of words that are common to human life
around the world and of course there's going to be some coincidences. From the
BBC article:

>linguists identified almost 600-shared parallel words between the two
languages... the Armenian and Basque languages have a number of almost
identical words relating to agriculture

600 seems a little high to be completely random coincidence and the article
refers to a paper describing grammatical similarities, which makes stronger
and stranger case than shared words alone.

------
russnewcomer
Not a linguist, but isn’t the influence of Arabic on both languages at around
the same time seem worthy of considering? There seem some similarities with
some of the words they mention as similar between Basque and Armenian (note,
also not an actually speaker of any Arabic dialect) like txar for evil in
Armenian and sharun is evil in some dialects of Arabic.

Again, not a linguist, but loanwords from languages at the same time period
make sense to me.

------
NelsonMinar
This theory is complete nonsense, right? I mean far be it from me to cast
aspersions on a BBC Travel writer, but if there were actual real linguistic
connections (ie, grammar) or genetic connections or cultural connections,
surely there'd be more written about that? Armenia and the Basque region are
not exactly obscure places.

~~~
ummonk
That's not necessarily true. There aren't enough linguists out there
(especially those fluent in any given language pair) to be able to vet such
purported connections.

That said, it's very common for people to notice superficial word coincidences
in modern languages and think it implies a relationship. To demonstrate an
actual relationship you need to go back to early versions of the two
languages, come up with clear sound change rules for how words in one
correspond to words in the other (languages change pronunciation over time and
words shift in ways that are regular to the language; it's highly unlikely for
words to stay identical across two related languages; instead you tend to have
a set of sound change rules that tell you how to transform words from one
language to get what the corresponding word in the other language is mostly
like).

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mhermher
It seems likely that we will be able to go back only so far using language as
a tool for history. I think the origin of Basque is probably beyond that
boundary. There are some parts of history that we will probably never know.
But no, it seems extremely unlikely that Armenian and Basque have anything to
do with each other.

~~~
jacobush
Why extremely? They came from somewhere. Also history is full of languages
picking up nomenclature from each other while they were in touch for centuries
or millennia, then moved on.

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petjuh
Armenian is an Indo-European language, Basque is not, so I am not sure how
they can be related.

~~~
chr1
Armenian has large Hurro-Urartian influence, so many armenian words are not
related to the Proto-Indo-European, and there have been ancient migrations
from Anatolia to Britain through Iberia [https://www.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-47938188](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47938188).
Of course there doesn't seem to be enough evidence that the languages are
related, but the hypothesis is not trivial to prove false either.

