6 ms·

Basque and Armenian share a baffling litany of words and grammatical elements

85 points by Phithagoras 7y ago

kace91 7y ago
As a spaniard, I checked out the topic of Euskera's origin for a bit after several trips to the area left me a strong curiosity in the topic. What I found out is pretty much that every bit of information has to be taken with a grain of salt, because there is a very strong amount of urban legends, fringe historians supporting outlandish theories with just a bit of anecdotal evidence like the ![vasconic substrate hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasconic_substrate_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasconic_substrate_hypothesis), and bad pseudohistory. There's always claims of mountains of evidence of which just one or two (usually already debunked) examples are provided. It is somewhat comparable to the pseudo history that's sometimes seen in the African American comunity in the US (like the black egyptian hipothesis, the idea that Jesus was black, etc). The issue is a mix of lack of well funded investigation, distrust of mainstream authorities by the people affected and local pride (that causes good sounding stories to be spread without much research).
- chrstphrhrt 7y ago
  Reminds me of the Irish Chronicles that say the people came from Galicia in northern Spain, before that from northern Africa (possibly Phoenicians), all the way back to Scythia (the horse archers who smoked weed in tents). Seems like a stretch but I think there have been some DNA studies that confirm parts of it, but my understanding is the medieval monks who compiled the stories were trying to claim a link to the Mediterranean/holy land in order to connect their identities to the Bible. Maybe they were mixing up multiple different migrations to fit the narrative. I'm curious about what real historians/scientists think about it.
  - arethuza 7y ago
    Also the Scots who presumably inherited these myths from Ireland via Dalriada: "...we find that among other famous nations our own, the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown. They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous. Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to their home in the west where they still live today." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Arbroath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Arbroath
  - elliekelly 7y ago
    I know next to nothing about religion/the Irish Chronicles but I did hike the Camino de Santiago which ends in Galicia and my favorite pit stop along the way was Sierra de Atapuerca[1] and the Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos. The museum (I assume deliberately) avoids any mention of religion whatsoever but my recollection[2] of the tour at the dig site was that they had found evidence of early humans migrating to northern Spain from northern Africa. I would be curious to know if it was a happy accident that medieval monks stumbled into a somewhat correct explanation or whether they had some evidence to support their theory. [1] http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/989 http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/989 [2] In Spanish and I am barely conversational so it’s very likely that I missed some important details.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    Yep, DNA fits with the people who lived in the Fertile Crescent way back.
  - mig39 7y ago
    The Celtic connection to the Iberian Peninsula is probably a bit more complicated, but the Celtiberians and Celtic people in Ireland have common ancestors. Both being the results of Celtic migrations westward. So I'd say that instead of Irish people coming from Spain and Portugal, it would be fairer to say both are Celtic and leave it at that :-)
    - asveikau 7y ago
      And worth noting that parts of today's modern northern Italy and France also had Celts. Though I also read another claim that Romans just over-applied the term "Celt" to foreign people. (Like the grandparent states, there seems to be a lot of conjecture and folk opinion on these subjects.)
      - weberc2 7y ago
        The Celts used to live all over Europe; they were displaced and assimilated during various migrations, especially the Germanic tribes migrating south. "Ancestral Journeys" by Jean Manco provides a great overview based on linguistic, archeological, and historical evidence.
- twic 7y ago
  > there is a very strong amount of urban legends, fringe historians supporting outlandish theories with just a bit of anecdotal evidence [...], and bad pseudohistory. There's always claims of mountains of evidence of which just one or two (usually already debunked) examples are provided. Hey, maybe the Voynich Manuscript is written in Basque!
- Kinnard 7y ago
  What's the 'black Eegyptian hypothesis'? That Egyptians in fact are not/were not ever Scandinavians as they are portrayed today? How are you able to ascertain Jesus' complexion? "What Did Jesus REALLY Look Like?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPRnrfTHeL4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPRnrfTHeL4 "How Jesus Became Widely Accepted as Being White": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfJCyDmTwyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfJCyDmTwyg "There Is No White Jesus": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APMu32sC2nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APMu32sC2nM (This one is the best!) I'm detecting bias . . .
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > What's the 'black Eegyptian hypothesis'? That Egyptians in fact are not/were not ever Scandinavians as they are portrayed today? No, it's more than that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Egyptian_hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Egyptian_hypothesis
  - kace91 7y ago
    wikipedia has a pretty deep explanation of the black egyptian hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Egyptian_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Egyptian_hypothesis And in case it's even needed to say so, I don't believe in egyptians or the historical jesus being white - I don't think anyone does outside of American media. As for my personal bias, I have no dog in this fight. I'm in the very edge of what could be considered white, being from a country with more than half a millenia of Arabic influence, and the concept of race doesn't exist here with the clear divisions and strong connotations existent in America (not that racism doesn't exist of course).
    - coldtea 7y ago
      >And in case it's even needed to say so, I don't believe in egyptians or the historical jesus being white - I don't think anyone does outside of American media. Who is considered white has a social (non-racial) element, e.g. middle eastern and balkan immigrants weren't considered "white" by Americans early on, where white meant "looking like English/German/Nordic people" in their minds. They became "white" (in the degree that they did) only after they were more integrated into US middle class. That said, Jesus certainly wasn't WASP-white, but he also certainly (to the degree that he existed) was of mediterranean complexion and thus non-black (in the same sense that Jews, Greeks, Lebanese, Souther Italians, Egyptians, and so on were not and are not black).
roywiggins 7y ago
> Though their languages indicate no superficial resemblance – even the scripts look comparatively alien to one another well that's hardly dispositive, lots of similar languages use completely different scripts, and dissimilar languages borrow scripts from each other all the time
GCA10 7y ago
The linguists of Quora had a similar discussion a while back about the putative similarities between Hebrew and Navajo. Basic conclusion: if you accept loose pairings (shoe/boot) you can find "inexplicable" coincidences anywhere you want.
- Phithagoras 7y ago
  Good point. Do you have the link to the Quora discussion? I'd be curious to see it. There's a relatively small number of words that are common to human life around the world and of course there's going to be some coincidences. From the BBC article: >linguists identified almost 600-shared parallel words between the two languages... the Armenian and Basque languages have a number of almost identical words relating to agriculture 600 seems a little high to be completely random coincidence and the article refers to a paper describing grammatical similarities, which makes stronger and stranger case than shared words alone.
mhermher 7y ago
It seems likely that we will be able to go back only so far using language as a tool for history. I think the origin of Basque is probably beyond that boundary. There are some parts of history that we will probably never know. But no, it seems extremely unlikely that Armenian and Basque have anything to do with each other.
- jacobush 7y ago
  Why extremely? They came from somewhere. Also history is full of languages picking up nomenclature from each other while they were in touch for centuries or millennia, then moved on.
zazpiak_bat 7y ago
Native Basque speaker here. Happy to see an article about my mother tongue in HN! It is indeed quite a mystery the origin of Euskara, many hypotheses but no clear winner. Gladly, most of us were thaught that diversity of theories in school instead of being hammered the official/most popular of the hypotheses at the time. A curious feature of Euskara is linked to the geography of most of the Basque Country: lots of mountains and lots of smallish towns. This helped develop subtle differences between towns just a few kilometers apart, to the point of most native speakers being able to accurately pinpoint another native speaker's hometown. These differences grow bigger the farther apart the speakers' origins are. I am aware this happens in practically all the languages but to have it occur in distances of a few kilometres instead of hundreds is quite incredible. I wonder if millennia ago proto-euskara was spoken all the way from the current Basque Country to Armenia, those subtle dialectal differences would have been huge, to the point of being unable to understand each other. Sadly, Euskera is less and less heard in big cities where most of the inhabitants or their ancestors come from other parts of Spain and saw no need to bother with the local language. This also happened in a time where nothing but spanish (Castilian) was allowed in Spain under Franco. The recent permanent ceasefire of E.T.A. has been crucial in making our little country attractive for tourism and commerce again. I am confident in our collective willingness to extend the usage of Euskara and with the plethora of activities and projects undertaken for this goal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilometroak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilometroak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korrika https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korrika https://www.hellabasque.org/euskaraldia/ https://www.hellabasque.org/euskaraldia/ edit: added some links
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  I'm curious. I presume you also speak Spanish? (And, clearly, English.) If you don't mind saying, which is the language of your heart? When you are alone and think, which language do you think in?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - zazpiak_bat 7y ago
NelsonMinar 7y ago
This theory is complete nonsense, right? I mean far be it from me to cast aspersions on a BBC Travel writer, but if there were actual real linguistic connections (ie, grammar) or genetic connections or cultural connections, surely there'd be more written about that? Armenia and the Basque region are not exactly obscure places.
- ummonk 7y ago
  That's not necessarily true. There aren't enough linguists out there (especially those fluent in any given language pair) to be able to vet such purported connections. That said, it's very common for people to notice superficial word coincidences in modern languages and think it implies a relationship. To demonstrate an actual relationship you need to go back to early versions of the two languages, come up with clear sound change rules for how words in one correspond to words in the other (languages change pronunciation over time and words shift in ways that are regular to the language; it's highly unlikely for words to stay identical across two related languages; instead you tend to have a set of sound change rules that tell you how to transform words from one language to get what the corresponding word in the other language is mostly like).
petjuh 7y ago
Armenian is an Indo-European language, Basque is not, so I am not sure how they can be related.
- chr1 7y ago
  Armenian has large Hurro-Urartian influence, so many armenian words are not related to the Proto-Indo-European, and there have been ancient migrations from Anatolia to Britain through Iberia https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47938188 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47938188. Of course there doesn't seem to be enough evidence that the languages are related, but the hypothesis is not trivial to prove false either.
DylanBohlender 7y ago
After an unplanned Wikipedia binge about Armenian history, I stumbled upon this interesting fact: in antiquity (~300 BC to ~600 AD), there was a kingdom established near the location of present-day Armenia called the Kingdom of Iberia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Iberia_(antiquity) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Iberia_(antiquity) Iberian peninsula in the west, and a Kingdom of Iberia in the east? Yet another very strange coincidence, it seems.
- inawarminister 7y ago
  Nope, (Caucasian) Iberia is Georgia, not Armenia. The Urartu (linked with Hurrians of East Anatolia/North Syria) are old old old though, already mentioned by surrounding people's by 2000BCE, and seems to be the direct ancestors of Armenians with some Indo-Iranian injections.
russnewcomer 7y ago
Not a linguist, but isn’t the influence of Arabic on both languages at around the same time seem worthy of considering? There seem some similarities with some of the words they mention as similar between Basque and Armenian (note, also not an actually speaker of any Arabic dialect) like txar for evil in Armenian and sharun is evil in some dialects of Arabic. Again, not a linguist, but loanwords from languages at the same time period make sense to me.

85 points by Phithagoras 7y ago

As a spaniard, I checked out the topic of Euskera's origin for a bit after several trips to the area left me a strong curiosity in the topic. What I found out is pretty much that every bit of information has to be taken with a grain of salt, because there is a very strong amount of urban legends, fringe historians supporting outlandish theories with just a bit of anecdotal evidence like the ![vasconic substrate hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasconic_substrate_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasconic_substrate_hypothesis), and bad pseudohistory. There's always claims of mountains of evidence of which just one or two (usually already debunked) examples are provided. It is somewhat comparable to the pseudo history that's sometimes seen in the African American comunity in the US (like the black egyptian hipothesis, the idea that Jesus was black, etc). The issue is a mix of lack of well funded investigation, distrust of mainstream authorities by the people affected and local pride (that causes good sounding stories to be spread without much research).

chrstphrhrt 7y ago
Reminds me of the Irish Chronicles that say the people came from Galicia in northern Spain, before that from northern Africa (possibly Phoenicians), all the way back to Scythia (the horse archers who smoked weed in tents). Seems like a stretch but I think there have been some DNA studies that confirm parts of it, but my understanding is the medieval monks who compiled the stories were trying to claim a link to the Mediterranean/holy land in order to connect their identities to the Bible. Maybe they were mixing up multiple different migrations to fit the narrative. I'm curious about what real historians/scientists think about it.
- arethuza 7y ago
  Also the Scots who presumably inherited these myths from Ireland via Dalriada: "...we find that among other famous nations our own, the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown. They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous. Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to their home in the west where they still live today." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Arbroath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Arbroath
- elliekelly 7y ago
  I know next to nothing about religion/the Irish Chronicles but I did hike the Camino de Santiago which ends in Galicia and my favorite pit stop along the way was Sierra de Atapuerca[1] and the Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos. The museum (I assume deliberately) avoids any mention of religion whatsoever but my recollection[2] of the tour at the dig site was that they had found evidence of early humans migrating to northern Spain from northern Africa. I would be curious to know if it was a happy accident that medieval monks stumbled into a somewhat correct explanation or whether they had some evidence to support their theory. [1] http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/989 http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/989 [2] In Spanish and I am barely conversational so it’s very likely that I missed some important details.
- jacobush 7y ago
  Yep, DNA fits with the people who lived in the Fertile Crescent way back.
- mig39 7y ago
  The Celtic connection to the Iberian Peninsula is probably a bit more complicated, but the Celtiberians and Celtic people in Ireland have common ancestors. Both being the results of Celtic migrations westward. So I'd say that instead of Irish people coming from Spain and Portugal, it would be fairer to say both are Celtic and leave it at that :-)
  - asveikau 7y ago
    And worth noting that parts of today's modern northern Italy and France also had Celts. Though I also read another claim that Romans just over-applied the term "Celt" to foreign people. (Like the grandparent states, there seems to be a lot of conjecture and folk opinion on these subjects.)
    - weberc2 7y ago
      The Celts used to live all over Europe; they were displaced and assimilated during various migrations, especially the Germanic tribes migrating south. "Ancestral Journeys" by Jean Manco provides a great overview based on linguistic, archeological, and historical evidence.
twic 7y ago
> there is a very strong amount of urban legends, fringe historians supporting outlandish theories with just a bit of anecdotal evidence [...], and bad pseudohistory. There's always claims of mountains of evidence of which just one or two (usually already debunked) examples are provided. Hey, maybe the Voynich Manuscript is written in Basque!
Kinnard 7y ago
What's the 'black Eegyptian hypothesis'? That Egyptians in fact are not/were not ever Scandinavians as they are portrayed today? How are you able to ascertain Jesus' complexion? "What Did Jesus REALLY Look Like?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPRnrfTHeL4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPRnrfTHeL4 "How Jesus Became Widely Accepted as Being White": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfJCyDmTwyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfJCyDmTwyg "There Is No White Jesus": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APMu32sC2nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APMu32sC2nM (This one is the best!) I'm detecting bias . . .
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > What's the 'black Eegyptian hypothesis'? That Egyptians in fact are not/were not ever Scandinavians as they are portrayed today? No, it's more than that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Egyptian_hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Egyptian_hypothesis
- kace91 7y ago
  wikipedia has a pretty deep explanation of the black egyptian hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Egyptian_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Egyptian_hypothesis And in case it's even needed to say so, I don't believe in egyptians or the historical jesus being white - I don't think anyone does outside of American media. As for my personal bias, I have no dog in this fight. I'm in the very edge of what could be considered white, being from a country with more than half a millenia of Arabic influence, and the concept of race doesn't exist here with the clear divisions and strong connotations existent in America (not that racism doesn't exist of course).
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >And in case it's even needed to say so, I don't believe in egyptians or the historical jesus being white - I don't think anyone does outside of American media. Who is considered white has a social (non-racial) element, e.g. middle eastern and balkan immigrants weren't considered "white" by Americans early on, where white meant "looking like English/German/Nordic people" in their minds. They became "white" (in the degree that they did) only after they were more integrated into US middle class. That said, Jesus certainly wasn't WASP-white, but he also certainly (to the degree that he existed) was of mediterranean complexion and thus non-black (in the same sense that Jews, Greeks, Lebanese, Souther Italians, Egyptians, and so on were not and are not black).

roywiggins 7y ago

> Though their languages indicate no superficial resemblance – even the scripts look comparatively alien to one another well that's hardly dispositive, lots of similar languages use completely different scripts, and dissimilar languages borrow scripts from each other all the time

GCA10 7y ago

The linguists of Quora had a similar discussion a while back about the putative similarities between Hebrew and Navajo. Basic conclusion: if you accept loose pairings (shoe/boot) you can find "inexplicable" coincidences anywhere you want.

Phithagoras 7y ago
Good point. Do you have the link to the Quora discussion? I'd be curious to see it. There's a relatively small number of words that are common to human life around the world and of course there's going to be some coincidences. From the BBC article: >linguists identified almost 600-shared parallel words between the two languages... the Armenian and Basque languages have a number of almost identical words relating to agriculture 600 seems a little high to be completely random coincidence and the article refers to a paper describing grammatical similarities, which makes stronger and stranger case than shared words alone.

mhermher 7y ago

It seems likely that we will be able to go back only so far using language as a tool for history. I think the origin of Basque is probably beyond that boundary. There are some parts of history that we will probably never know. But no, it seems extremely unlikely that Armenian and Basque have anything to do with each other.

jacobush 7y ago
Why extremely? They came from somewhere. Also history is full of languages picking up nomenclature from each other while they were in touch for centuries or millennia, then moved on.

zazpiak_bat 7y ago

Native Basque speaker here. Happy to see an article about my mother tongue in HN! It is indeed quite a mystery the origin of Euskara, many hypotheses but no clear winner. Gladly, most of us were thaught that diversity of theories in school instead of being hammered the official/most popular of the hypotheses at the time. A curious feature of Euskara is linked to the geography of most of the Basque Country: lots of mountains and lots of smallish towns. This helped develop subtle differences between towns just a few kilometers apart, to the point of most native speakers being able to accurately pinpoint another native speaker's hometown. These differences grow bigger the farther apart the speakers' origins are. I am aware this happens in practically all the languages but to have it occur in distances of a few kilometres instead of hundreds is quite incredible. I wonder if millennia ago proto-euskara was spoken all the way from the current Basque Country to Armenia, those subtle dialectal differences would have been huge, to the point of being unable to understand each other. Sadly, Euskera is less and less heard in big cities where most of the inhabitants or their ancestors come from other parts of Spain and saw no need to bother with the local language. This also happened in a time where nothing but spanish (Castilian) was allowed in Spain under Franco. The recent permanent ceasefire of E.T.A. has been crucial in making our little country attractive for tourism and commerce again. I am confident in our collective willingness to extend the usage of Euskara and with the plethora of activities and projects undertaken for this goal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilometroak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilometroak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korrika https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korrika https://www.hellabasque.org/euskaraldia/ https://www.hellabasque.org/euskaraldia/ edit: added some links

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
I'm curious. I presume you also speak Spanish? (And, clearly, English.) If you don't mind saying, which is the language of your heart? When you are alone and think, which language do you think in?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- zazpiak_bat 7y ago

NelsonMinar 7y ago

This theory is complete nonsense, right? I mean far be it from me to cast aspersions on a BBC Travel writer, but if there were actual real linguistic connections (ie, grammar) or genetic connections or cultural connections, surely there'd be more written about that? Armenia and the Basque region are not exactly obscure places.

ummonk 7y ago
That's not necessarily true. There aren't enough linguists out there (especially those fluent in any given language pair) to be able to vet such purported connections. That said, it's very common for people to notice superficial word coincidences in modern languages and think it implies a relationship. To demonstrate an actual relationship you need to go back to early versions of the two languages, come up with clear sound change rules for how words in one correspond to words in the other (languages change pronunciation over time and words shift in ways that are regular to the language; it's highly unlikely for words to stay identical across two related languages; instead you tend to have a set of sound change rules that tell you how to transform words from one language to get what the corresponding word in the other language is mostly like).

petjuh 7y ago

Armenian is an Indo-European language, Basque is not, so I am not sure how they can be related.

chr1 7y ago
Armenian has large Hurro-Urartian influence, so many armenian words are not related to the Proto-Indo-European, and there have been ancient migrations from Anatolia to Britain through Iberia https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47938188 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47938188. Of course there doesn't seem to be enough evidence that the languages are related, but the hypothesis is not trivial to prove false either.

DylanBohlender 7y ago

After an unplanned Wikipedia binge about Armenian history, I stumbled upon this interesting fact: in antiquity (~300 BC to ~600 AD), there was a kingdom established near the location of present-day Armenia called the Kingdom of Iberia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Iberia_(antiquity) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Iberia_(antiquity) Iberian peninsula in the west, and a Kingdom of Iberia in the east? Yet another very strange coincidence, it seems.

inawarminister 7y ago
Nope, (Caucasian) Iberia is Georgia, not Armenia. The Urartu (linked with Hurrians of East Anatolia/North Syria) are old old old though, already mentioned by surrounding people's by 2000BCE, and seems to be the direct ancestors of Armenians with some Indo-Iranian injections.

russnewcomer 7y ago

Not a linguist, but isn’t the influence of Arabic on both languages at around the same time seem worthy of considering? There seem some similarities with some of the words they mention as similar between Basque and Armenian (note, also not an actually speaker of any Arabic dialect) like txar for evil in Armenian and sharun is evil in some dialects of Arabic. Again, not a linguist, but loanwords from languages at the same time period make sense to me.