The Basque vocabulary appears to be very poor. Although it is still imperfectly known (for the old books, and the names of places, as well as certain little studied dialectic variations, must have retained some words generally forgotten), we are yet able to assert that pure Basque terms do not express abstract ideas. Except in words borrowed from the Gascon, French, Spanish, and Latin, we find no trace of any advanced civilization, and we can discover but very few expressions which imply collectivity or generalization—e.g., there is no word which has the wide signification of our word “tree,” of our “animal.” “God” is simply, by anthropomorphism, “the Master on High.” One and the same word translates our ideas of “will, desire, fancy, thought.” Borrowed words are more numerous, from the fact that the influence of Aryan dialects has been felt through many ages; it is probably owing to their contact with the Indo-European races that the Basques, or those who used to speak the Basque, have any historical existence.
Thus, in order to study this singular idiom, it is necessary to understand thoroughly the history of the intervention of Latin in the Pyrenean region. No assistance is to be obtained from written documents, for there is not (and there cannot have been) any primitive Basque literature. The oldest book was published in 1545.[2] The second is the Protestant version of the New Testament, printed at La Rochelle by order of Jeanne d’Albret, in 1571.[3]
Another difficulty arises from the extreme variability of the language. There are, perhaps, not two villages where it is spoken absolutely in the same manner. This is natural enough among an unlettered people, and one which can only rise to the level of the surrounding civilization by forgetting its ancient language. These different varieties are easily grouped into secondary dialects. Prince L. L. Bonaparte recognises twenty-five of them, but they are reduced without difficulty to eight great dialects. A closer inspection further reduces these eight divisions to three; that is to say, the differences between the eight principal dialects are unequal, and admit of partial resemblances.
The eight dialects are: (1) The Labourdine, (2) The Souletine, (3) The Eastern Lower-Navarrese, (4) The Western Lower-Navarrese, (5) The Northern Upper-Navarrese, (6) The Southern Upper-Navarrese, (7) The Guipuzcoan, (8) The Biscayan. The Souletine and the two Lower-Navarrese dialects form the first group, which may be called the Oriental division. The Biscayan alone forms the Western, and the four others form the Central group. These names are taken from territorial divisions. La Soule was formerly a province feudatory to Navarre, and now embraces, within the French department of the Basses-Pyrénées, the cantons of Mauléon and Tardets, as well as some parishes of the canton of St. Palais, in the arrondissement of Mauléon. The Labourd, a viscounty, vassal of the Duchy of Aquitaine, corresponded to the cantons of Bayonne (excepting the city itself and three other parishes), of St. Jean de Luz, of Ustaritz, of Espelette, and part of Hasparren, in the arrondissement of Bayonne. The remaining part of the two French arrondissements which we have just named composes Lower Navarre, which is again subdivided into the districts of Cize, Mixe, Arberoue, Ostabaret, and the valleys of Osses and Baigorry. This was originally the sixth merindad of Navarre, a kingdom which extended into Spain as far as the Ebro, from Garde and Cortés on the one side to Vera and Viana on the other. Basque is still spoken along the French frontier and in several valleys forming the upper part of the territory. Guipuzcoa contains the cantons (partidos) of St. Sebastian, Tolosa, Azpeitia, and Vergara. Biscay comprises all the territory between Ondarroa and the river of Sommorostro, between La Carranza and the Peña de Gorbea.
The dialects do not correspond exactly to the territorial subdivisions whose names they bear. Thus the Western Lower-Navarrese is spoken in a part of the ancient Labourd; the Biscayan in Guipuzcoa. Lastly, on the Spanish maps, there is another Basque province, Alava; but Basque is scarcely spoken there, excepting in a narrow strip along the northern frontier. The dialect of these Alavese districts is included in the Biscayan. To resume, the Biscayan dialect is now spoken in Alava, Biscay, and the western third part of Guipuzcoa, in Vergara, and in Las Salinas; the Guipuzcoan in almost all the rest of Guipuzcoa; the Northern Upper-Navarrese in some villages of Guipuzcoa on the French frontier, in Fontarabie, Irun, and in the northern part of Navarre; the Southern Upper-Navarrese in the rest of Basque Navarre; the Labourdine in the south-western part of the arrondissement of Bayonne; the Western Lower-Navarrese in the north-eastern part of the same arrondissement; the Souletine is spoken in the two cantons of Mauléon and Tardets, and at Esquiule in the arrondissement of Oloron; the Eastern Lower-Navarrese extends into the arrondissement of Bayonne as far as St. Pierre d’Irube, by Meharrin, Ayherre, Briscous, Urcuit.
Of these arrondissements, of these provinces, none is entirely Basque in a linguistic point of view, except Guipuzcoa. Navarre is only half so, Alava only a tenth part. A little less than a fourth part has to be subtracted from Biscay, and certain Gascon villages from the arrondissements of Mauléon and Bayonne in France. Neither Bayonne, nor Pampeluna, nor Bilbao are Basque.[4] And, moreover, skirting the districts where the Basque is the native idiom of the majority of the inhabitants, on many points there is an intermediate zone in which Basque is known only by a minority of the population; nevertheless, this zone must be included in the geographical area of the idiom, since the persons who speak Basque in it know it as their native language, and have never learnt it. This zone is most extensive in Navarre, but exists also in Alava and in Biscay. In France there is no analogous mixed zone; and, as M. P. Broca remarks (“Sur l’Origine et la Repartition de la Langue Basque,” Paris, 1875, p. 39), “the demarcation is brusque, and may be indicated by a single line.” The Basques, moreover, in this respect, present some curious points for study. “In the valley of Roncal the men speak Spanish together; with the women they speak Basque, as do the women to each other. A similar state of things is to be observed at Ochagavia in Salazar. But this custom is not observed in the Roncalese villages of Uztarroz and Isaba, where the men among themselves speak indifferently Basque or Spanish.” (Prince L. L. Bonaparte, “Etudes sur les Dialects d’Aezcoa,” &c., p. 3).
The preceding description justifies the opinion advanced at the beginning of this notice. The Basque is an agglutinative idiom, and must be placed, in a morphological point of view, between the Finnic family, which is simply incorporating, and the North American incorporating and polysynthetic families. But we must not conclude thence that the Escuara is a near relation either of the Finnic or of the Magyar, of the Algonquin or of the Irokese. The relationship of two or more languages cannot, in fact, be concluded merely from a resemblance of their external physiognomy. To prove a community of origin, it is indispensable that (if compared at the same stage of development) their principal grammatical elements should not only be analogous in their functions, but should also have a certain phonetic resemblance, in order to render the hypothesis of their original identity admissible. It is better to abstain from asserting that such languages are derived from the same source, if the significant roots—which, after all, constitute the proper basis, the true originality of a language—should be found to be totally different. At present, no language has been discovered which presents any root-likeness to the Basque, analogous to that which exists between the Sanscrit, Greek, and Gothic, or between Arabic and Hebrew.
Nevertheless, there are in the world minds so devoted to the worship of their own fixed ideas, so smitten with their own metaphysical dreams, so full of faith in the necessity of the unity of language, that they have acquired the habit of torturing the radical elements of a language, and of making them flexible and variable to an inconceivable degree. They pass their lives in seeking etymologies, such as those which Schleicher calls “Etymologizerungen ins blanc hinein,” and in discovering phonetic miracles—worthy children of those students of the last centuries who, in the general ignorance of the science of language, traced up all languages to Hebrew. The adventurous spirits to whom I allude have invented a theory of languages in which the vocabulary is incessantly renewed, and have formed the great “Turanian” family, in which everything which is neither Aryan, nor Semitic, nor Chinese, must be perforce included. In this olla podrida, where the Japanese elbows the Esquimaux, and the Australian shakes hands with the Turkish, where the Tamul fraternizes with the Hungarian, a place is carefully reserved for the Basque. Many amateurs, more daring still, have wedded the Escuara, or at least those who speak it, to the soi-disant Khamitic tribes of Egypt; others have united them to the ancient Phœnicians; others have seen in them the descendants of the Alans; others again, thanks to the Atlantides, make them a colony of Americans. It is not long since it was seriously affirmed, and in perfect good faith, that the Basques and the Kelts, the Welsh or Bretons, understood each other, and could converse at length, each using his native tongue. I refer these last to the poet Rulhière:
“La contrariété tient souvent au langage:
On peut s’entendre moins parlant un même son,