Basque
Euskara, known in English as the Basque language, is a linguistic marvel. Unlike any other known language, it stands alone and is primarily spoken in the Basque Country, a region straddling the border between Spain and France in the Pyrenees.
Through centuries of challenges and suppression, Euskara has endured, reflecting the strength and spirit of the Basque people. Learning Euskara isn’t just about picking up a new language—it’s about connecting with and helping preserve a unique and ancient cultural legacy.
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In Basque, the word order is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV). This is quite flexible, though, and can often change depending on the context or the emphasis desired by the speaker.
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Basque uses ten basic tenses: present, past, future, imperfect, pluperfect, conditional, potential, immediate future, future in the past, and hypothetical future.
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Basque verbs are conjugated for not just the subject, but also for the direct object and sometimes the indirect object. This is known as polypersonal agreement.
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Basque language uses an ergative-absolutive case system. In this system, the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb are marked in the same way (absolutive case), while the subject of a transitive verb gets a special marking (ergative case).
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In Basque, nouns can take on a variety of suffixes to denote the role they play in a sentence. This results in a total of 12 cases, including nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, allative, ablative, instrumental, inessive, and others.