Is Basque an Indo-European language or not?

Have we a regular chain of phonetic drifts common to something akin to reconstructed PIE and to reconstructed Proto-Basque, when common roots were supposed for some words?
What tell us the lexicon about family, body, basic verbs (among them the verb 'to be'), basic adjectives and pronouns?
At first sight, Basque seems very foreign to IE, even without to speak of grammatical structure.
It is not to contradict the possible fact that even Basque could come from East too at some stage, or had not been in contact with PIE somewhere somewhere...
 
Gianfranco Forni's text is one of the latest and most extensive work about this topic - it has some flaws, than can be defined as: data always can be bigger. John T. Koch bases his main defense that IE languages evolved from one node, which is not really true even according to the facts where IE languages are hybrid languages made from local and influx of new languages. Anyway, I would have expected some caution about this topic, than total dismissal.

The problem with current IE language model as something that evolved from one node is that the center of PIE is located around R1a and more specifically - E Europe and expansion of IE languages in Europe also coincides with R1a expansion. And most of R1b was already in Europe and became IE speaking by language and cultural shift. And one of those IE language groups - Celtic, share a lot with Basque - numerical system, based on 20(IE has 10based system), some vocabulary and grammar, that is not shared with rest of IE. I actually started to search for this question if Basque is related to IE after studying Gaelic, which is really strange language as IE language.

So, there are some questions about Basque language as very related to IE and it does not matter how this relatedness is defined - new IE branch or IE-Basque language family - as this dissolves current status of Basque as isolated language, that is not related to anyone near them.

Also, related to them is question about pre-Celtic languages in Italy, which might be distinct IE languages or might be belonging to proposed Tyrsenian language family. Anyway, if Etruscian is defined as nonIE language, even if Latin now contains some of vocabulary of it, it rather begs for different system on how to classify languages, as current is not precise and if IE contains wildly different language groups it doesn't makes sense to exclude someone who differ from other IE languages only a bit more.

Relativity
Let's take an example:
numerical system: Celtic (and French Celtic influenced) shows the superposition of both system (10 and 20) - technical loan rather than common origin of both families of languages - by the way, the 20 system can complete the 10 one! What a beautiful hazard which could explain the handy borrowing. Do notice that all Romance languages have also a specific name for 20 not formed on 10 as for 30, 40, 50 ASO ... an areal loan. To show the relativity of this argument weight, look at dozen en anglais (12) used to count in trade, translated by a word of latin or romance source in Germanic, Greek and Slavic languages; what does it prove about language as a whole?
and syntax can change by time, even more in contacts zones among bilingual or disglossic pops (for a time at least): less weight than the core vocabulary when we speak of far past of languages.
 
Most archaic IE language or macro-IE

Well, assuming Indo-European is valid, one of its most archaic language is clearly Hittite.
It is argued the wheel is an indo-european invention, and the word for "wheel" is known in Hittite, it is HURKIS.
Now, the word for "wheel" in Euskara (Basque) is GURPIL.
It is very easy to reconstruct KURKWITL, predecessor or HWEEL or WHEEL.
So we're left with those possibilities :
1 - Hittite wasn't Indo-European.
2 - Indo-European didn't invent the wheel, as Basque word GURPIL correlates with GURDI (cart).
3 - Proto-Basque and Hittite were related genetically.
Now, just take a look at Sanskrit KUMARA ("boy"), which is said to be pre-Indo-European substrate, well this is pure Basque KUME-ARA (child-male), "male child", the definition for "boy".
One interesting example is Latin CAVEMEN ("cavern, grotto, cave"), easily explained by GABE-MEN(DI) (hole-mountain), "hole in the mountain", the perfect definition for a cave. This is of interest since it traces a link back to paleolithic times, where our ancestors use to live in caves.
Now take a look at the numbers :
ZAZPI (Basque) and SISBI (Iberian) correlate very well with seven, sept (French) or sapta (Sanskrit), since SB does not exist in Indo-European, it makes sense it is linearized in ZAPIZ > ZAPTI (which can be nasalized in seven, no nasal sound in Basque united, but in some dialects they do exist).
You got the same with BéLTZ, as LTZ does not exist in Indo-European, the L glides after the B and you have old Norse BLATH and english BLACK. Just compare BELTZ KATUA and A BLACK CAT, you just have to put the A in the beginning in the sentence and this is copycat.
As for ZORTZI giving EIGHT or HUIT, ATTA etc... You simply have to delete the initial Z and you'll see it works perfectly.
BEDERATZI correlates to BERRI, as NINE is linked to NEW in every Indo-European language.
The link between FOUR and LAUR is easily explained with an initial KWAUR (with aspiration in middle KWA'UR, explaining Latin QUATUOR).
The same for HIRUR and THREE, by the way Zazaki (Persian) has the same form as Basque on this number. H was aspirated in Proto-Basque, so it is equivalent to THR.
BI(GA), the number TWO, is found as a noun initial meaning PARE / COUPLE in every Indo-European language.
Finally, the only oustiders left are ONE, FIVE and TEN.
But BAT have a different meaning in Basque, for the Indo-European cognate, juste take LEHENA(Z) (the first) : LEHENAZ > EENAZ > EINAS in Lituanian.
Now for BOSTEKOA giving FIVE, it requires more brain gymnastic, but is clearly feasible : BOSTEKOA > BEKWA > BEWA > FEWA.
HAMAR and TEN appear more problematic to reconcile, but in fact this works too : HAMAR > HAMR > HAN (pronounce THAN).
So we're left with total correspondence, and that can only make sense : Basque as a macro-Indo-European language, with a separation in Paleolithic times.
Or if you prefer, Basque was the first to branch off, before Hittite, before Armenian.
 
Proto-IE and Proto-Vasconic are descent from same language?
 
the reconstructions of between forms of Lambersky are imaginative but don't hold in serious linguistic. BTWN let's not confuse 'nasalisation' of vowels and sonnant nasals (concerning the case of 'seven')
 
Yes

Yes they are, that is obvious.
1- It is first proven by Genetics (Haplogroup R1B-M269 for Y-DNA).
Guess who was R1B-M269? Tutankhamun, Akhenaten (his father) and Amenhotep (his grandfather).
Now 90% (up to 95%) of Basque and Irish males are R1B-M269.
As Irish is considered to be Indo-European, it leaves only 3 possibilities :
- Celtic do not belong to IE.
- Centum and Satem are two different families.
- Basque is macro-IE.
R1B is 18000 years old, which means Indic (Brahmans are R1A) separated from west europeans at the beginning of the magdalenian era.
This means proto-IE is 18000 years old, which correlated well with 445 languages (for example, Dravidian is 4500 years old and is constituted by 25 languages).
2 - It is proven by rituals : Cantabri and ancient Basque people had the same custom of couvade.
The bear cult, equally, was practised by Basques, Celts, Britons, Thraces, Daces and Getes (proto-celtic Harzh is quite identical to modern Basque Hartz(a)).
3 - It is proven by core vocabulary : for example, gibel and liver stem from TLiWETL ; emazte and woman from WEAMANTLE ; bide and way from WAITLE ; bihotz and heart from BIHEOTL ; nahi and want from WANATLI ; beste and else from HETLE ; hlore and flower from HLOWETL ; azukre and sugar from AZUKEATL, ibili and walk from AIWAILIGI ; hontz and owl from HOWTL ; oila and fowl from HOIWTLA ; ehun and hundred from EHUNTLETL ; ohe and bed from OHETL ; amets and dream from TLEAMETL ; hari and wire from HAITLI ; aizkora and axe from AITLKORAI ; peace and bake from WEATLE ; boz and voice from WOITL ; seme and son from SEOMBE ; arrasto and track from ATLASTLO, baizik and but from BAYTLIK ; adimen and mind from ADIMEINTL ; hotz and cold from HOLTL ; berro and warm from WEATLOW ; zu and you from TLU ; hemen and here from HEWENTL ; saldu and sell from SEALTL ; taula and table from TAWTLA ; bizkar and back from BAITLKATL ; atzera and rear from ATLEATLA ; lege and law from LEAWTLE ; jaungoiko and god from JAWNGOITLO ; trumoi and thunder from TLUMTLOI ; zeru and sky from ZEUTLI ; Eguberri and Yule from ETLUWETLI ; Mundua and World from WUNLTLUA ; zoru and soil from ZOITLU ; hesi and fence from HENTLI ; pareta and wall from WATLETLA ; anitz and many from HANITL ; sega and scythe from TLEITLA ; zaldi and horse from TLAWLTLI ; txakur and dog from TLAWTLUTL ; mantxango and monkey from MAWNTLAINTLO ; afer and ape from AWETL ; turtube and turtle from TLURTLUBE ; dortoka and tortoise from TLORTOITLA ; zabal and broad from TLABLAWTLA ; potolo and fat from WAWTLAWTLAW ; erle and bee from AWBEITLE ; orein and deer from TLEOTLEIN ; denbora and time from TLEINWOTLAITL ; ordu and hour from HOULTLU ; urte and year from TLEAWTLE ; Izar and star from ITLATL ; beltz and black from BEALTL ; suge and snake from TLAWTLE ; beldar and caterpillar from TLAWTLETLWITLATL ; mendi and mount/mound from MEOWNTLI ; tapoi and top from TAWPAWTLI ; pentoka and beorg from WENTLOTLA ; zuku and juice from TLUITLU ; hegi and edge from HETLI ; golko and cove from KWOTLKWO ; badia and bight from BAITLIA ; erreka and creek from KWETLEKWA ; gatz and sealt/salt from TLEATL ; irla and island from ILTLANDA ; urdin and blue from HTLULTLIN ; euri and rain from EUTLEIN ; tsitlarra and heather from TLEATLEATLA ; haize and wind from HAINTLE ; korapilo and knot from KWOTLAPITLO ; oihana and forest from HOITLANTLA ; begi and eye from WEITLI ; bisaia and face from WAITLATLA ; mingain and tongue from KWOINKWAIN ; mutur and mouth from MUTLUTL ; esan/erran and say from ETLAIN ; sudur and nose from HOTLUTLUTL ; adar and antler from ANTLEAR ; belarri and eare/ear from HEATLATLI ; hirri and city from HITLI ; oso and all from AWTLAW ; zilar and silver from TLITLABEAR ; hill and die from TLIETL ; heldu and hold from HEWLTLU ; eta and and from EANTLA ; erro and root from ETLUTL ; etxe and house from HEUTLE and so on...
A very interesting one is arrano (pronounced "arranio", meaning eagle) : arn in old english, arend in Dutch, haaran in Hittite.
Titmouse is TSIMURUNTSA in Basque, reel is HARIL, car is GARROI, bare is BILUZIK, map is MAPA ; card is KARTA ; cork is KORTXO ; up is AUPA ; easy is AISE ; end is URHENTZE ; ochre is OKRE ; carry is EKARRI ; apart is APARTE ; rock is ARROKA ; chip is TXIPA ; start is HASTE-ARTE ; March is MARTXOA ; April is APIRILA ; land is LANDA ; universe is UNIBERTSOA (verse is BERTSOA) ; mess is NAHAS-MAHAS ; tin is EZTAINU ; mare is ZAMARI ; ass is ASTO ; person is PERTSONA ; tide is ITSASALDI ; sea is ITSASOA ; minute is MINUTUA ; ruby is ERRUBI ; tuna is ATUNA ; tor is TONTOR ; machete is MATXETE ; knife is KANIBET ; ash is hautsa ; gimlet is GINBALET ; bank is BANKU ; lake is LAKUA ; ice is IZOTZ ; bean is BABARRUN ; fruit is FRUITUA ; colore is KOLOREA ("with flower") ; air is AIRE ; taste is TSASTATU ; reality is ERREALITATE ; evil is GOIBEL, the list is infinite...
But what is more important, you'll always find the same associations, for example sunflower is eguzkilore (sun-flower) ; laur is related to hlore, as four is linked to flower ; and as eight is related to light and night, zortzi is related to ortzi and sortzi ; ostegun (thursday) have the same meaning of god's day as in IE ; tomorrow is bihar (two is bi and har is cognate with mor-) ; bizitza (life) is connected to bihotz (heart), as life is correlated to liver ; as Night relates to Nil/Naught, Gaba/Gaua is linked to Gabe.
4 - The more you'll get to proto-IE level, the most you'll reach Basque.
For example, Arkwi was "white" in Tocharian ; in Basque, ARGI means "light".
UITSA or UITLA, the basque word for "water", is very close to proto-IE reconstructed form (the same for ITSASOA 'the sea').
Sometime, the sense is displaced : from example ERRIBERA means "bank of river" (BANKU is more local, ERRIBERA follows all the stream), nevertheless it is very cose to the reconstructed proto-IE form for "river".
 
"Do not hold in serious linguistics"?
Well, how about this one :
Iberian sisbi "seven" sis-bi (2nd six).
English seven se-ben (2nd six, just look at (t)wen-ty = 2 ten).
 
Lambersky, what you write is funny, full of all directions research and imagination, but only funny. No debate. No offense.
 
Normal

Well that is normal that you should write this because you don't know nothing about Basque, as do every indo-europeanist.
I can destroy indo-european hypothesis in a few line.
 
You communicate what I took for comparisons supposed to convince us about closeness of words. You failed complitely, at the linguistic comparative level. To see that doesn't need knowing a lot of basque language, in my opinion at least. No offense.

PS some of the curious words you put are they ancient or proto-basque rebuilt?
 
Looks like Gianfranco Forni should get back into the oven as he is underdone. This is where people who go on about haplogroups are so far up their rear ends. The male Basques may be high in R1b. So what? They have Steppe herder ancestry like most Europeans, and in most cases, language is passed on by mothers. It is called our mother tongue for a reason, and our fatherland for another, the male ancestry of Basques being Steppe herder. R1b may be very old, but in Europe it was mostly introduce in the Bronze Age. The Hunter Gatherers were mainly I2, though maybe one Villabuna WHG was R1b, but the Villabuna Hunter Gatherers had Near Eastern like ancestry.
 
Looks like Gianfranco Forni should get back into the oven as he is underdone. This is where people who go on about haplogroups are so far up their rear ends. The male Basques may be high in R1b. So what? They have Steppe herder ancestry like most Europeans, and in most cases, language is passed on by mothers. It is called our mother tongue for a reason, and our fatherland for another, the male ancestry of Basques being Steppe herder. R1b may be very old, but in Europe it was mostly introduce in the Bronze Age. The Hunter Gatherers were mainly I2, though maybe one Villabuna WHG was R1b, but the Villabuna Hunter Gatherers had Near Eastern like ancestry.

You run fast and far.
Language passed by mothers? a shortcut. Maybe the husbands (rather than fathers?) language passed by mothers?
I think things are not always so straightaway. What is not to say that Basques could'nt have inherited their language from mothers lines. We have to wait more clues here, the question is not answered.
Villabruna HG's with Near Eastern ancestry? rather a common one, inherited in both regions from a previous source uneasy to trace back precisely for geography. It depends at what age of Paleolithic.
Not that I've something against near-East 'per se': I suppose a lot of our ancestors came to Europe through Near East or Caucasus or Western Central Asia (peri-Black Sea-Caspian regions) what doesn't exclude other ways for some others (Central North Asia at some stage). All depends of time.
 
Steppe ancestry? Ha ha ha, Basque people never lived east to the place where they live now. This is obvious as there is no linguistic connexion in the whole of Eurasia (except Japanese, but that is another topic and Basque is even older than the whole of japanic).
You're just a parrot man, no offense, you keep on retelling the same old bull**ies over and over again (which were never proved, often controversial, and still now are heatly debated).
Basque have more R1B than any steppe-herder descendant, much more. The map is clearly speaking of a western origin, not an eastern one.
As for the mtDNA, again ancient Basque had more X than any steppe-herder or other eurasians, except maybe Druze... but are you going to take Druze people for steppe pastorialists ???
Those two haplogroups combined are the one at the basis of agriculture and your whole civilization, I know that hurts but there is nothing you can do about it. Your "steppe people" were mere savages in front of Basque ancestors.
The closest languages to Basque are obviously on the atlantic side and they are Latin, spanish obviously, french, italian, celtic and germanic (and even slavic, greek, albanian, armenian, but again the whole spread from west, not east).
I will just take three examples, speaking of tool.
1 – Ginbalet / Gimlet : there is no chance, not even one, this is not the same word, the english one being simplest, and this means two things :
- Gimlet have existed since palaeolithic times ;
- English substrate is proto-Basque. This is not the place, but I have a never-ending list of core english words directly coming from Basque (or proto-Basque if you want but you've got to know the power of Basque is its conservativeness).
2 - Altxarrastelu(a) means "rake" in Basque, from this you'll easily derivate the word "plough" in most IE languages (Italian "aratro", Spanish "aradro", Portuguese "Arado", Bulgarian "ralo", Welsch "aradr", Breton "arar", Latin "arare", Romanian "ara", Belarussian "arać", Greek "arotro"...), those very languages being associated with said "inventors of agriculture". That means that the spread of agriculture wasn’t from the sinkhole which is middle-east as you were told, but from Iberia.
3 - The wheel, I suppose you use it in everyday life. Not only Basque "Gurpil(a)" and Hittite "Hurkis" are cognates but they obviously stem from the same very word THLULKWITHL, compare with Greek "Kyklos" if you're not convinced. That means that the wheel was conceive by Proto-IE-Iberian people, again this means Iberia. Hittite is quite similar to proto-IE isn't it? How do you explain Hittire being so close to Basque?
In conlusion, if Basque people wouls have come from steppe, you'll be still living in a cave, eating game food only (if not raw meat).
 
R1b has been in Europe for many thousands of years before Indo-European languages arrived.


The Basque language is not considered Indo-European. Gianfranco Forni is just one of many amateur linguists who writes amateur studies that have no credibility.
 
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Nota Bene : Everywhere I have written TL you shall read THL (I couldn't write the "plain L" on this thread). This sound do not exist in IE, and even in Basque it is intuitive (for example “to say”is “esan” and “erran”), but have been lost millenias ago. The fact that you don't understand linguistics does not prove my reconstructions are false, even if some are to be improved (for example proto-word for face is not WAITLATLA but WEITHLAITHLI, thus correlated to proto-word for eye WEITHLI.
 
Well somehow Italic languages sound a lot like Basque, so I can understand. His appoach is interesting, as setting Basque appart from Indo-European studies is immature.
 
Well somehow Italic languages sound a lot like Basque, so I can understand. His appoach is interesting, as setting Basque appart from Indo-European studies is immature.

You amaze me, indeed. You go further than any other linguistics lovers here and elsewhere on fora and blogs.
And I have some doubts concerning the "ethny" (true or psychologic) and the country of residence you are showing here.
Maybe I am wrong? This debate level is too high for me.
 
Ahhhhh...yet another ethnocentric discussion about the origin of...well everything. This time, Basque nationalists. It could have been Greek nationalists, Albanian nationalists, Northern Macedonians, you name the nationalist group and the words are the same. The world began with their group and the rest of the languages came from their mother tongue. So, so predictable.
 
Well that is normal that you should write this because you don't know nothing about Basque, as do every indo-europeanist.
I can destroy indo-european hypothesis in a few line.

Can you actually present a coherent argument? Or will you keep deflecting and asking others to disprove Forni? Pro-tip the onus is on him.


Ahhhhh...yet another ethnocentric discussion about the origin of...well everything. This time, Basque nationalists. It could have been Greek nationalists, Albanian nationalists, Northern Macedonians, you name the nationalist group and the words are the same. The world began with their group and the rest of the languages came from their mother tongue. So, so predictable.

Never fails. It will always involve haplogroups in the discussion too.
 
I'm out here for linguistics (tired by people like that). Just a point: even nationalism doesn't allow to distort things in so a way!
 

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