Category Archives: Euskara

Basque Fact of the Week: Sounds in Euskara

One day, we were all sitting around the table listening to stories from dad. I’m not quite sure how it came up, but he made a sound of a rooster. Instead of our cock-a-doodle-doo, his rooster said kee-keeree-kee-keeree-coo. His rooster spoke Euskara instead of English! I guess it should have been obvious that animal sounds […]

A Bit of Basque Miscellany

Today, I’m sharing a number of interesting items that have been sent to me over the last… well, I don’t dare say, as some of these have been sitting in my inbox for far too long. I hope you enjoy these!

Basque Fact of the Week: Good Birds to You!

Happy holidays! Merry Christmas! Feliz Navidad! Hanukkah Sameach! However you celebrate, the holidays are upon us. In Basque, it is traditional to say Gabon Zoriontsua! or Eguberri On! Sometimes you’ll hear the ubiquitous Zorionak! But where does this word, used in so many situations, come from…? Primary source: Euskal Hiztegi Historiko-Etimologikoa, Euskaltzaindia

Making Basque Identity Cool: An Interview with John Ysursa

John Ysursa is near-omnipresent in the Basque community of the United States. He’s seemingly at every festival, he’s a central part of Boise State University’s Basque program, and he has authored a book on Basque dance. His enthusiasm for all things Basque – particularly how to get others excited about the Basque culture – is […]

Basque Fact of the Week: The Hand of Irulegi, the Oldest Text in Euskara

On Monday, my feeds blew up. A new discovery – a bronze relic dating back some 2100 years – shook the Basque world. This relic – of a hand, likely an amulet of good fortune – had words written on it in (an ancestor to) Basque in a unique runic script. This discovery – the […]

Basque Fact of the Week: Napoleon’s Nephew was a Linguist who Studied Basque

How does an aristocrat – a man born into privilege and titles, the nephew of one of the most powerful leaders of Europe – become one of the most important researchers of the Basque language? Louis Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon’s nephew, extensively studied the regional variations of Euskara, establishing a critical map of the dialects. While […]

Basque Fact of the Week: Euskalkiak, the Dialects of Basque

One of the challenges I had when I tried to learn Euskara in Donostia was that I was learning Batua but when I went to visit my dad’s family, they spoken the Bizkaian dialect and I had a hard time understanding them. When I told my dad about it, he nodded, saying he couldn’t understand […]

Basque Fact of the Week: Numbers and Counting in Basque

Counting is one of the most elementary human tasks, one of the first things we learn as children, rattling off numbers as we hold up our fingers to record our count. In most of the western world, we count by tens, a natural extension of our ten fingers (and thumbs). Basque is different, with a […]

Basque Fact of the Week: Possible Basque Origins for the Names of Several Native American Tribes

It is now well established that the Basques, if not the very first Europeans to set foot on the North American continent, were among the first. Of course, there were already a large number of thriving peoples living there when they arrived, and the Basques certainly interacted closely with them, even developing trading pidgins. None […]

Basque Fact of the Week: Days of the Week in Basque

When we think about what we call the days of the week, how many of us think about the fact that Monday is named after the moon, Wednesday is Odin’s day, and Thursday is dedicated to the Scandinavian god Thor? Where do these names even come from? They’re just names, and we’ve lost, for the […]