The Language and Origin of the Basques

Abstract

THE Basques or Euskaldunak (i.e. “the Men”), as they call themselves, are a most remarkable people who have long been an interesting problem to ethnologists. The most anomalous point about the Basques is their language, which is as typically agglutinative as any Asiatic or American tongue. Ripley, in his fine book “The Races of Europe,” points out that the verb habitually includes all pronouns, adverbs and other allied parts of speech; as an example of the appalling complexity possible as a result, Bladé gives fifty forms in the third person singular of the present indicative of the regular verb “to give” alone. Another often quoted example of the effect of such agglutination occurs in a reputed Basque word meaning “the lower field of the high hill of Azpicuelta,” which runs,