Basque

Also known as: Basque, Euskara

Basque (Euskara) is a language isolate — not demonstrably related to any other living language family — with ~750K speakers in the Basque Country spanning northeastern Spain (Hegoalde: Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa, Araba, Navarre) and southwestern France (Iparralde: Lapurdi, Lower Navarre, Soule). It is co-official with Spanish in the Basque Autonomous Community and Navarre. As the only surviving pre-Indo-European language of Western Europe, Basque predates Latin in the region (Roman-era Aquitanian inscriptions are likely a Basque ancestor). Linguistically distinctive for ergative-absolutive case marking (rare in Europe), polypersonal verbal agreement encoding subject, direct object, and indirect object simultaneously, and SOV word order. The standardized form Euskara Batua was developed by the Royal Academy of the Basque Language (Euskaltzaindia) starting 1968, drawing primarily on the central Gipuzkoan dialect. Strong revitalization since the 1980s through ikastolak (Basque-medium schools).