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thepriceofaslave t1_iv6fkhu wrote

I thought Basque wasn't Indo-European?

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BLAZENIOSZ OP t1_iv6hhp6 wrote

It's not, the basque region believe it or not, is majority Spanish Speaker.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_Country_(greater_region)#Demographics

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thepriceofaslave t1_iv6ry1r wrote

Aw that's a pity. It is a really unusual linguistic anomaly in Europe

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Volcic-tentacles t1_iv9bse3 wrote

It's not an "anomaly". Languages were much more varied before the ear of European imperialism and colonialism. The Europeans murdered so many people across the globe that vast numbers of languages were simply lost.

Language isolates are much more common than you think.

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MannAusSachsen t1_iv9ipiq wrote

Calm down down, they are right. It is a really unusual linguistic anomaly in Europe. As in: Languages spoken in Europe today dominantly derive from the indo-european language family.

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Volcic-tentacles t1_iv9k30h wrote

Basque is a language isolate, though some speculate that it is related to Caucasian languages, there is no consensus. But it's not an "anomaly" at all. This would suggest that it is unexpected. It is not unexpected: Basques have been living in that part of the world, speaking that language for as long as we have records. Nothing anomalous about them.

As a linguist I can tell you that language isolates are common across the globe, largely because of the damage wrought by European imperialism - they didn't just murder people, they murdered languages.

Worse, in London alone you can hear over 200 languages being spoken today. So your view of Europe and languages spoken in Europe is about an uninformed as it could be and obviously rooted in unexamined imperialist and colonialist attitudes.

You should go back to commenting on cat videos.

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MannAusSachsen t1_iv9kkyr wrote

Fine, an isolate then. Why didn't it suffice to make this distinction with three sentences, instead you had to derail in a condescending manner?

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robert1005 t1_iv9lss3 wrote

Name me some other examples of languages in Europe like the euskara then. Name me examples in Europe of languages that go back millenia that have stayed relatively isolated and became their own language group. Because that was the original topic in this comment threat.

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ElJanitorFrank t1_iv9sg6q wrote

You're a rude self-righteous preachy person. You've effectively squashed that person's interest in this subject, which I'm assuming you're invested in as a self titled linguist.

How terrible that London is so diverse that more languages are spoken there than anyone can even name. Get off your high horse and treat people with respect, dick.

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Aprokind t1_iv9xayf wrote

As a non linguist, you are kinda annoying and condescending. Sneed.

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argwiththem t1_ivamr9u wrote

Then you shouldn't use any other colors for the Russian Federeation. There is no region except probably Caucasus where the majority speaks on aboriginal for the territory language. For example, the Resp. Bashkortostan are colored brown, but Bashkir language are currently used by only 1.4 million people in the world while the whole population of the Resp. is 4 million people.

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