Origin of the Basques

Hi everyone,

As you know, -according to the lastest theories- our European languages come from a mother-language somewhere between Caucasus, Middle-East and India.

However, as you surely know it, a few still spoken languages existed before this Indo-European arrived: Basque, Hungarian, and the collection of Finno-Ugric and Baltic languages (see Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe).

Among these pre-Indo-European languages, the ones which are official and still spoken are studied except the Basque which is considered as a dialect: no money, no time...

If you are interested in this topic, here is a first page about the "Origin of the Basques".
Would you prefer French, read this: "Origines des Basques".
The article addresses people, linguistics, genetics.
Of course, many points are only hypothèses but all this is interesting ... Europe before Indo-European invasions, at the time of Cro-Magnon!

very interesting indeed   I don't know much about the origins of languages apart from our common indo-European language. I didn't know that basque and other languages existed before.

Muriel,


Thank you for your answer.

MurielB a écrit:... I didn't know that basque and other languages existed before.

Read Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe or bigger http://elms.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/lexical-distance-among-languages-of-europe/
You will see languages belonging to a group such as:
- Romance (9 languages + 1 ancient or dialect)
- Germanic (9 languages + 1 ancient or dialect)
- Slavic (9 languages + 2 ancient or dialects)


You will notice in-between languages such as ALBanian and GReeK


You will see the group "Celtic" group of 4 languages  dialects.

The above languages correspond to Indo-European languageds coming from the East and Far-East.

There are also isolated languages that are Pre-Indo-European ones:
- Hungarian
- Finno-Ugric (Fin, Est)
- Baltic (Lat, Lit).
The Basque dialect isn't on the diagram but it is another pre-Indo-European.
These la,guages have no close links with the Indo-Europeans though they were influenced by them.

~~ edit
Again, comments and question displayed at elms.WordPress are very interesting.

Basque and other pre-Indo-European tribes (in red) at the time of Roman arrival
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Basques )

Thank you Gérard for the very useful map.