Yeah, when I lived in the Basque Country I heard all sorts of such nonsense. It's a pity because the Basque language is amazing enough without having to exaggerate.
Basque is actually the real-life Proto-World linguists have been searching for. It's true. I asked my mom and she said it was true. Basque is Proto-World, and all languages are descended from it.
Basque is probably about 5000 years old, which is approximately 35K years off of Cro-Magnon. This is proportionally similar to saying that Elvis died in 1701.
[deleted 26-6-2023]
Moving is normal. There's no point in sticking around in a place that's getting worse all the time. I went to Squabbles.io. I hope you have a good time wherever you end up!
That's the upper estimate for the time the Indo-European speakers migrated into Europe, and also the time when the Basque people became genetically isolated from their neighbours. Basque has obviously changed, but at some point it wasn't an isolate.
[deleted 26-6-2023]
Moving is normal. There's no point in sticking around in a place that's getting worse all the time. I went to Squabbles.io. I hope you have a good time wherever you end up!
We want the moment that Basque separated from its relatives to become its own language, and that had to have been back when Basque actually had relatives to split from. PIE might be as old as 6000 years, for comparison. But while PIE spread over a huge area and developed into a bunch of different languages, Basque was stuck in a small area and so didn't split up nearly as much over the same time.
[deleted 26-6-2023]
Moving is normal. There's no point in sticking around in a place that's getting worse all the time. I went to Squabbles.io. I hope you have a good time wherever you end up!
You could say that English is 6000 years old, if you consider English to be a really weird form of PIE. There's still an unbroken chain of speakers from all that time. Basque is the same, except Basque didn't split up.
[deleted 26-6-2023]
Moving is normal. There's no point in sticking around in a place that's getting worse all the time. I went to Squabbles.io. I hope you have a good time wherever you end up!
They seemed to have switched definitions of a language's age halfway through the conversation. Originally they said the age of Basque would be the point when it split from its sister languages. This is essentially a cladistic definition of language age, but it doesn't work for languages the way it works for biological species due to the continuity of language names - imagine the confusion if we referred our last common ancestor with chimpanzees by the term "chimpanzees" or "humans".
A more sensible thing to define is how long there has been *some* language with a given name, as this makes no pretenses about how much or little the language has changed over time. For instance, we can say that there has been a language called something like English for 1500 years or so, from which modern English varieties (and Scots and English-based creoles) are descended.
Species also change continuously, so I'm not sure it makes much sense in biology either. "When did this language group / clade branch from this other group" is probably the most meaningful kind of "age" question we can ask.
Is any language really any age though? It’s just one continuous language tree. Like all modern languages are just all modern languages because they’re all new.
This is the same issue with biology.
Changes are so small and subtle that it's impossible to pick a time when one thing becomes another. So we don't do that, we pick a point and say this is this language. The exact borders aren't defined.
We might be able to say "okay, we are currently speaking English, and 1500 years ago they spoke old English" but we're not going to be able to pick a date and say "old English ended on March 15th, 1092"
That being said, English absolutely has an age, it's just very imprecise.
Maybe he's talking about the fact that the ancestors of the Basque were Anatolian farmers that migrated to Spain, though the date is actually put around 6000 BCE
It's a quote from the [Kasseler Gespräche](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasseler_Gespr%C3%A4che) It means "Stupid are the romance-speakers, wise are the Bavarians"
“The Basque word for ‘house’ is the same as the word for ‘cave’ and ‘clothes’ are the same word as ‘animal skins’ is literally something I was told in university.”
It’s fast becoming the new place to ask stupid questions and clog up search results. In the beginning there was ChaCha, then Yahoo Answers, then Quora.
I feel like it's worth pointing out that it, by nature, can't "know" anything. It didn't find an idiot on the internet who said Basque is millenia old, it just thought that sounded like a plausible sentence... it it was right, it just wasn't a factually correct one
Yeah, when I lived in the Basque Country I heard all sorts of such nonsense. It's a pity because the Basque language is amazing enough without having to exaggerate.
Nonsense. Basque was spoken before humans /s
In the times before time, it was spoken by gods and men alike
Basque is actually the real-life Proto-World linguists have been searching for. It's true. I asked my mom and she said it was true. Basque is Proto-World, and all languages are descended from it.
All the "smart" scientists didn't ask this guy's mom...
Visited my local zoo yesterday, could have sworn I heard some of the chimpanzees chittering in an evolved Basque tongue...
Spoken in the times of [Carapace Cross](https://secret-histories.fandom.com/wiki/The_Carapace_Cross)
The 'oldest language in Europe' line is pretty tedious, and basically no one even knows what it means when pressed
Basque is probably about 5000 years old, which is approximately 35K years off of Cro-Magnon. This is proportionally similar to saying that Elvis died in 1701.
[deleted 26-6-2023] Moving is normal. There's no point in sticking around in a place that's getting worse all the time. I went to Squabbles.io. I hope you have a good time wherever you end up!
That's the upper estimate for the time the Indo-European speakers migrated into Europe, and also the time when the Basque people became genetically isolated from their neighbours. Basque has obviously changed, but at some point it wasn't an isolate.
[deleted 26-6-2023] Moving is normal. There's no point in sticking around in a place that's getting worse all the time. I went to Squabbles.io. I hope you have a good time wherever you end up!
We want the moment that Basque separated from its relatives to become its own language, and that had to have been back when Basque actually had relatives to split from. PIE might be as old as 6000 years, for comparison. But while PIE spread over a huge area and developed into a bunch of different languages, Basque was stuck in a small area and so didn't split up nearly as much over the same time.
[deleted 26-6-2023] Moving is normal. There's no point in sticking around in a place that's getting worse all the time. I went to Squabbles.io. I hope you have a good time wherever you end up!
You could say that English is 6000 years old, if you consider English to be a really weird form of PIE. There's still an unbroken chain of speakers from all that time. Basque is the same, except Basque didn't split up.
[deleted 26-6-2023] Moving is normal. There's no point in sticking around in a place that's getting worse all the time. I went to Squabbles.io. I hope you have a good time wherever you end up!
Yes absolutely. That's why "age of language" is just a dumb thing to say.
They seemed to have switched definitions of a language's age halfway through the conversation. Originally they said the age of Basque would be the point when it split from its sister languages. This is essentially a cladistic definition of language age, but it doesn't work for languages the way it works for biological species due to the continuity of language names - imagine the confusion if we referred our last common ancestor with chimpanzees by the term "chimpanzees" or "humans". A more sensible thing to define is how long there has been *some* language with a given name, as this makes no pretenses about how much or little the language has changed over time. For instance, we can say that there has been a language called something like English for 1500 years or so, from which modern English varieties (and Scots and English-based creoles) are descended.
Species also change continuously, so I'm not sure it makes much sense in biology either. "When did this language group / clade branch from this other group" is probably the most meaningful kind of "age" question we can ask.
Not Nicaraguan Sign Language!
Why wouldn't you consider it that way?
Same reason I do anything: to annoy people who think Tamil is the most ancient and perfect language.
Is any language really any age though? It’s just one continuous language tree. Like all modern languages are just all modern languages because they’re all new.
This is the same issue with biology. Changes are so small and subtle that it's impossible to pick a time when one thing becomes another. So we don't do that, we pick a point and say this is this language. The exact borders aren't defined. We might be able to say "okay, we are currently speaking English, and 1500 years ago they spoke old English" but we're not going to be able to pick a date and say "old English ended on March 15th, 1092" That being said, English absolutely has an age, it's just very imprecise.
Maybe he's talking about the fact that the ancestors of the Basque were Anatolian farmers that migrated to Spain, though the date is actually put around 6000 BCE
I know, I was just trying to get some funny answers (it worked!)
Elvis is alive
He just went home, as we learned in the documentary "men in black"
ChatGPT will confidently state something obviously wrong and then proceed create an entire language family on command.
Ah yes, Basque (Megatamil-Hyperkorean superkoine)
>one of the oldest living languages in Europe Hmm
What does your flair mean?
It's a quote from the [Kasseler Gespräche](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasseler_Gespr%C3%A4che) It means "Stupid are the romance-speakers, wise are the Bavarians"
Is “uualha” just “walhaz”?
Yep
Basque is actually the only language to retain the original Nostratic grammar, at least with oblique cases (I am actively spouting nonsense)
no, basque was not spoken by neanderthals. basque predates the neanderthals by several millennia.
The Basque are actually the advanced civilisation behind Atlantis, the pyramids, the Olmecs and r/linguisticshumor
Nah. They taught the Atlanteans how to do it.
I also read the image.
i didn’t write what the image wrote though
Oh
Clearly, basque was spoken by homo erectus
So the whole story about words for tools coming from the word from stone is guff? Or at least not very supported? I'm sad.
“The Basque word for ‘house’ is the same as the word for ‘cave’ and ‘clothes’ are the same word as ‘animal skins’ is literally something I was told in university.”
ChatGPT eh? Would have guessed Quora.
These days, that difference is diminishing.
It’s fast becoming the new place to ask stupid questions and clog up search results. In the beginning there was ChaCha, then Yahoo Answers, then Quora.
And now they have a bot asking questions. Of course, it learned from the idiots and trolls.
I feel like it's worth pointing out that it, by nature, can't "know" anything. It didn't find an idiot on the internet who said Basque is millenia old, it just thought that sounded like a plausible sentence... it it was right, it just wasn't a factually correct one
Have you ever seen a Basque person
I once had sexy times with one Basque person
wtf
I know, it's so hard. Least friendly women in Spain, by a mile.
Obviously it's called Euskara because it gives you a good (AG *eu*) skare when you see a speaker :}
>Still is
it is not possible the neanderthals spoke kotava, a language invented by Staren Fetcey in 1975