Basque Language

Classification

The impossibility of linking Basque with its Indo-European neighbours in Europe made many scholars search for its possible relatives elsewhere. Besides many pseudoscientific comparisons, the appearance of long-range linguistics gave rise to several attempts at connecting Basque with geographically very distant language families.

The link with ancient Aquitanian language, has however been proven beyond reasonable doubt by Michelena and Trask. Thus, Aquitanian is known to be an ancestor of Basque.

Other hypotheses are considered controversial and the suggested evidence is not generally accepted by most linguists. However, this situation may change in the future. Some of these hypothetical connections are:

    * Iberian: another ancient language once spoken in the peninsula, shows several similarities with Aquitanian and Basque. However, there is not enough evidence to distinguish areal contacts from genetic relationship. Iberian itself is considered an isolate.

    * Georgian: The Georgian hypothesis, linking Basque to South Caucasian or Kartvelian languages, seems now widely discredited.
* Northeast Caucasian languages, such as Chechen, are more likely candidates for a very distant connection.

    * Dene-Caucasian superfamily. Based on the possible Caucasian link, some linguists have proposed including Basque in the Dene-Caucasian superfamily of languages, but the existence of this proposed superfamily would include languages from North America and Eurasia, and is deemed controversial.

    * Vasconic languages: This theory, proposed by German linguist Theo Vennemann, claims that there is enough toponymical evidence to conclude that Basque is the only survivor of a larger family that once extended throughout most of Europe, and has also left its mark in modern Indo-European languages spoken in Europe.