Basque/French Age (Split from: French National Assembly passes bill for the protection and promotion of minority languages)

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Basque/French Age (Split from: French National Assembly passes bill for the protection and promotion of minority languages)

Postby Dragon27 » Wed May 26, 2021 6:47 pm

How old is Basque, though? At what (approximate) point in the past history did the local language spoken in that area turned into something that could be considered a stage of the modern Basque language, rather than a different language (a predecessor of Basque)? How far back is the Basque language attested (in writing, obviously)?
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Re: French National Assembly passes bill for the protection and promotion of minority languages

Postby Lianne » Wed May 26, 2021 7:02 pm

Dragon27 wrote:How old is Basque, though? At what (approximate) point in the past history did the local language spoken in that area turned into something that could be considered a stage of the modern Basque language, rather than a different language (a predecessor of Basque)? How far back is the Basque language attested (in writing, obviously)?


That's difficult to say, because there's only written material from the last few hundred years. So from before that, it's hard to separate modern Basque from its earlier forms.

But if we're being generous and saying Old French counts as French, then surely we should also count earlier forms of Basque as Basque, right? I'm inclined to say that Basque is the older language.
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Re: French National Assembly passes bill for the protection and promotion of minority languages

Postby tungemål » Wed May 26, 2021 7:04 pm

By the way, it is interesting the fear the French (and other countries) have for influence from English. Language influence has always happened. The "pure" language that the French are so proud of, started as a mix of latin and celtic, and was heavily influenced by Germanic languages. Later French heavily influenced English. And now English influences French again.

It is a cauchemar (nightmare) - a word made from Latin calcare and Germanic mare. And a word that Polish borrowed. All languages are a mix.
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Re: French National Assembly passes bill for the protection and promotion of minority languages

Postby tractor » Wed May 26, 2021 7:12 pm

How old is Basque? How old is French? How long is a rope?
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Re: French National Assembly passes bill for the protection and promotion of minority languages

Postby Dragon27 » Wed May 26, 2021 7:29 pm

Lianne wrote:then surely we should also count earlier forms of Basque as Basque, right? I'm inclined to say that Basque is the older language.

Latin is an earlier form of French, should we count Latin as French? We obviously have to stop at some point or we could go on to Proto-Indo-European and beyond, and in order to do that... what criteria we shall use? Mutual intelligibility? The name of the language passed down through generations? Whatever criteria we choose, we must have some historical information to apply it to. But it seems to me that we don't have any hard data on this pre-roman Basque language family. Earliest written piece of prose is 16th century, says Google. Is that correct? Do we have anything earlier than that (besides reconstructions)? If we don't have any actual information of what Basque languages were like in Early Middle Ages and/or Antiquity, then all we left with are just personal beliefs, that shouldn't be confused with well-substantiated claims.
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Re: French National Assembly passes bill for the protection and promotion of minority languages

Postby Le Baron » Wed May 26, 2021 7:40 pm

tractor wrote:How old is Basque? How old is French? How long is a rope?

French's history has been investigated. There are 1001 books about the the history of French. Basque's origins are unknown.
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Re: French National Assembly passes bill for the protection and promotion of minority languages

Postby Le Baron » Wed May 26, 2021 7:48 pm

Dragon27 wrote:How old is Basque, though? At what (approximate) point in the past history did the local language spoken in that area turned into something that could be considered a stage of the modern Basque language, rather than a different language (a predecessor of Basque)? How far back is the Basque language attested (in writing, obviously)?


This is not really relevant because existing Basque is there because of previously-existing Basque, whose origins are unknown but it is attested as being present in Europe before the development of Romance languages ever occurred from Latin. That latter occurrence is a documented phenomenon. The languages derived from the spread Latin happened after Latin spread, so they are obviously posterior events. French is not Latin.

I can't understand why this is even a question.
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Re: French National Assembly passes bill for the protection and promotion of minority languages

Postby Lianne » Wed May 26, 2021 8:07 pm

Dragon27 wrote:
Lianne wrote:then surely we should also count earlier forms of Basque as Basque, right? I'm inclined to say that Basque is the older language.

Latin is an earlier form of French, should we count Latin as French? We obviously have to stop at some point or we could go on to Proto-Indo-European and beyond, and in order to do that... what criteria we shall use? Mutual intelligibility? The name of the language passed down through generations? Whatever criteria we choose, we must have some historical information to apply it to. But it seems to me that we don't have any hard data on this pre-roman Basque language family. Earliest written piece of prose is 16th century, says Google. Is that correct? Do we have anything earlier than that (besides reconstructions)? If we don't have any actual information of what Basque languages were like in Early Middle Ages and/or Antiquity, then all we left with are just personal beliefs, that shouldn't be confused with well-substantiated claims.

That was a very strategic place to cut off my quote, lol. I said that if we are to consider Old French to be French, then some amount of earlier Basque should also be considered Basque. Of course it's harder to draw the line because of our lack of written evidence of the history of Basque.

Anyway, this is all quite the tangent from the original topic.
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Re: French National Assembly passes bill for the protection and promotion of minority languages

Postby Dragon27 » Wed May 26, 2021 8:37 pm

Le Baron wrote:This is not really relevant because existing Basque is there because of previously-existing Basque, whose origins are unknown but it is attested as being present in Europe before the development of Romance languages ever occurred from Latin.

And what did this previously-existing Basque look like? Can it still be considered Basque or is it to Modern Basque as Latin is to Modern French (i.e. different to the point of not being the same language)?

Lianne wrote:That was a very strategic place to cut off my quote, lol. I said that if we are to consider Old French to be French, then some amount of earlier Basque should also be considered Basque.

I just didn't see the point in bringing in more to the quote. Obviously we should include some of the past form of the language into the Basque language, otherwise we might as well just cut everything off at the current year. But how far back should this inclusion go is a very subjective decision. With French and Latin we do have tradition and history that allow us to separate the languages without too much controversy. Not so much with Basque.
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Re: French National Assembly passes bill for the protection and promotion of minority languages

Postby nooj » Wed May 26, 2021 8:59 pm

Linguists don't say that languages - except for the exceptions that Saim mentioned - are older or younger than each other. French is a descendent of PIE, and thus a form of PIE (it's the same logic behind saying that birds are dinosaurs, because birds ARE dinosaurs). And Basque is a descendent of proto-proto-Basque in the same way. Go back in time and you'll find that the ancestors of 'French' and 'Basque' existed at the same time, even if they only started sharing the same geographical space recently. 1000 years ago? The ancestor of Basque was there, somewhere in Europe...and so was the ancestor of French. 2000 years ago? The ancestor of Basque was there, somewhere in Europe...and so was the ancestor of French. 4000 years ago? The ancestor of Basque was there, somewhere in Europe...and so was the ancestor of French.

And so forth, until you reach the last reconstructed ancestors of Basque and French that we are able to reach with the reconstructive method, 6,000-8,000 years ago.

From that point, if you say that Basque is older than French as a language, it's possible that's true. Maybe PIE was a conlang created by aliens whereas Basque goes back ultimately to a proto-World language (if there ever was such a thing). In which case, yeah, Basque would be older than French. But there's no evidence for that, so you have no way of telling which is ultimately older/younger than the other.
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