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Speaker 1:          00:00          Hmm.

Speaker 1:          00:14          Hello everyone. Welcome to the Lange Focus Channel and my name is Paul. Yes, that's right. Today the focus channel has reached 50,000 subscribers. This is a big day for me. When I started my channel, I always had the dream in mind, the goal in mind of reaching 50,000 subscribers, and I thought that was kind of the pinnacle. Now it seems like that's an achievable goal and we'll see how much further I can get them $50,000, but for now I've achieved my initial goal and that's really great. Really exciting for me. So thank you for all of your support. So onto today's topic imagined that there was a mysterious language in Europe that was surrounded on all sides by languages that it had absolutely no connection with wealth. Directionally is a language like that. The language is the Basque language.

Speaker 1:          01:01          Basque is a language isolate, meaning that it has no known connection to any other language. It's located in Europe, but it's not an Indo European language. It forms its own language. Family ended is quite distinct, very different from Indo European languages. It is spoken by the basket people in the Basque country or region that spans the Spain, France border in the Western most Pyrenees mountains. It is not spoken by all Basques, but by around 27 percent of them in the basket country. Overall, the number of native speakers is 714,000, 135 out of a total population of 2 million, 648,998, and that includes about 663,000 on the Spanish side and 51,100 on the French side. It is an official language at the regional level in Spain, in the basket, autonomous community and in I've already in France, it holds no official status. The origins of the Basque language are shrouded in mystery. As I said before, it is a language isolate. It is thought to be the last remaining language that existed in Europe before the arrival of the Indo European languages.

Speaker 1:          02:09          There is conclusive evidence that basket is a descendant of the aqua tanium language, which is an ancient language spoken in the Pyrenees region. Some similarities are known between Aquitania and the ancient Iberian language, so some people think that they might be related, but those similarities might just be due to geographic proximity and mutual influence. We don't know. Some linguists suggests that Aqua Tinian was part of a wider language family called the vest chronic languages which covered most of Europe before the arrival of the Indo European languages, but again, we don't know other people draw connection between baskin, other non into European languages like the Caucasian languages, but again,

Speaker 1:          02:46          that's right. We don't know. One thing we do know is that the Basque people who descend mostly from farmers who arrived in the area around 6,000 years ago were isolated from the outside world for thousands of years. That's probably partly of the best countries, forested mountain terrain and it's lack of tempting resources that prevented invasion. This isolation is probably what allowed their language to survive and develop into the Basque language of today. Of course, there were Latin borrowings into the language and there have been other romance language borrowings throughout the centuries, but nothing like the total disappearance of other pre Latin languages in that area. Basketball's a unified language until the Middle Ages, when it began to diverge into dialects because of administrative and political divisions within the Basque country, despite being ruled by outside regimes throughout the centuries, the best country still remained isolated and relatively uninfluenced by the outside world, and that includes the language.

Speaker 1:          03:39          But when Francisco Franco became ruler of Spain in 1939, the use of Basque was heavily suppressed because Franco wanted to assimilate all of Spain into castilian culture. It was forbidden to speak baskin schools and to public. It was banned from media and removed from public services. This led to a big reduction in the number of people who could speak the Basque language, and that's part of the reason that only 27 percent of people in the Basque country speak the language. Today. In the 19 sixties that suppression was eased somewhat and Basque language schools became permitted and the language begin being used in publications and in education. Again, this led to the creation of a standardized language called [inaudible] about [inaudible]. It was developed by the Basque Language Academy or the Scouts and the uh, and it was intended to be comprehensible to speakers of the various dialects of basket. There are five main basket dialects be Skyann or western basket, keep Fusco on or central Basque.

Speaker 1:          04:32          Upper Novari's, Novari's, Freudian, and the town in France. These dialects correspond with the historic provinces of the Basque country, but they don't completely correspond with the modern provinces of today. The level of intelligibility depends on the distance between those two dialects on the dialect continuum with the most distant dialects, having trouble understanding each other, but that's where the standard language use got about two or comes in. So what is the Basque language like? Well, it's vocabulary has been influenced by the surrounding romance languages to some extent, but when you look at it structure, you will see that it is unlike any romance language or like any Indo European language for that matter, bass, Kaz grammatical cases, 12 cases to be exact, but that is not really unusual in Indo European languages, but it has something called the [inaudible] case. That means that there's a special form of the noun when it's the subject of a sentence and it takes a transitive verb.

Speaker 1:          05:22          That means it has a direct object. This ergotism case is marked with a k at the end of the known. Now, along with the [inaudible] case, there is also something called the absolute of case. This is for subjects of intransitive verbs, meaning that it has no direct object, and in this case there was no ending on the end of the. Now, well, let's take a look at a couple of sentences. Who America? Leanne, that means the child fell in the street. But if we look at it word by word, you can see the interesting structure of Basque word by word. It's child the street. The in fall is if we look at the first word there, who may his child, but then the definite article is the a at the end. Then for the next word, Kellyanne Conway is street and then the definite article is up and then in the end, at the end of the word, if we look at the next word, God, that's a verb, meaning fall, but it's in the perfect aspect.

Speaker 1:          06:11          That means that it shows a completed action and then the auxiliary verb comes after the main verb at the end and this one means is it's the present tense form of to be. And another sentence, Maddie, that means the man has given the book to the child, so word by word man, the [inaudible] case child, the data of case book, the given has. The first word is Gisele knuck. The zone is man than the definite article is a and then the negative case is k Lumiata. That's child again, child is meant and then this time it has the definite article a and then it has the date of case marker. The at the end, the date of case basically shows who or what is being affected by the action, the next word, the Buddha, the Buddha to his book, and then as the definite article, and this one looks like a lone word from a romance language.

Speaker 1:          07:02          The next one a month is a verb and it's in the perfect aspect showing that the action is completed and then the auxiliary verb deal comes after and that means has and the next sentence in my view, that means the woman has seen the memo, so word by word woman the or gets IV case man is a scene has. So the first word in Morocco may act in macrame is woman. That is the A and ergonomic cases. TheK , the next word [inaudible]. That's the man and the definite article. Again, the next word is [inaudible], which means scene and again, that's a verb with the perfect aspect, showing the actions completed and then the auxiliary verb comes at the end and it means has, as you can see, the Basque language is very different from any Indo European language. Very different from any language that I've studied, but it also looks quite logical and systematic.

Speaker 1:          07:52          It would be a shame to lose a language that's so unique and that connects us with the ancient history of Europe. The number of Basque speakers has sharply declined over the last century, but there are efforts in Spain to revive the language and to make it more widespread again and hopefully such efforts will continue and become more prominent in France as well. Thank you for watching the length focus channel. I want to say thanks again to all of my patreon supporters. You guys are awesome. I appreciate you. Thanks to all those other people who volunteered in different ways by creating subtitles for videos or offering to write some scripts for Geo focused or all of those things. Also be sure to check out the line focus facebook account, a twitter account and instagram because I'm often on there and that's a way to keep in touch and always know when I have new content being released. Thank you for watching and have a nice day.