Basque

Last Updated: 2020-06-29

Background

Language Family: isolate

• Basque is spoken in Basque Country, a region in western Pyrenees between France and Spain.

Phonology

Consonants

• /r/ and /ɾ/ only contrast intervocalically. Although this may be seen purely as a phonological process of /r/ becoming a flap, the flap is attested as an actual phoneme (Hualde 2004, 10).

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar
Stops	p b	t̪ d̪			c ɟ	k ɡ
Affricates		ts̻ ts̺		tʃ
Fricatives	f	s̻ s̺		ʃ		x
Nasals	m		n		ɲ
Flaps			ɾ
Trills			r
Appoximants			l		j ʎ
Note: For stop phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced. The dental affricates and fricatives are both voiceless, but those on the left are laminal and those on the right are apical. The palatal approximants are both voiced, but the one on the right is lateral.

Vowels

• Hiatus between vowels is generally avoided, so diphthongs and triphthongs occur regularly (Trask 2008, 12). The diphthongs below are treated as complex nuclei.
  • Sequences of three vowels also occurs; however, since the treatment of them varies, I have opted to still form diphthongs between two vowels (with /au/ and /ai/ taking priority) (Trask 2008, 31).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Diphthongs
/ai/, /ei/, /oi/, /ui/, /au/, /eu/

Alphabet

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
a	/a/
b	/b/
d	/d̪/
e	/e/
f	/f/
g	/ɡ/
h	Ø
i	/i/
j	/x/
k	/k/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/
ñ	/ɲ/
o	/o/
p	/p/
r	/r/; /ɾ/	/r/: word-initially; /ɾ/:intervocalically
s	/s̺/
t	/t̪/
u	/u/
x	/ʃ/
y	/j/
z	/s̻/
Digraph
dd	/ɟ/
tt	/c/
ts	/ts̺/
tz	/ts̻/
tx	/tʃ/
rr	/r/
ll	/ʎ/

Lenition

• Several lenition processes are noted in Saltarelli et al. (1988) :
  • /b/, /d̪/, and /g/ may spirantize to [β], [ð], and [ɣ], respectively, intervocalically, or following a tap or trill while also preceding a vowel.
  • /h/ becomes voiced intervocalically.
  • /s̻/ and /s̺/ become voiced following a voiced consonant.
  • /b/, /d̪/, /g/, and /ɾ/ may delete intervocalically.
  • /h/ deletes when preceded by an aspirated consonant or when followed by another /h/.

References

Hualde, José Ignacio. 2004. Basque Phonology. Routledge.

Saltarelli, Mario with Miren Azkarate, David Farwell, Jon Ortiz de Urbina, and Lourdes Oñederra. 1988. Basque. Croom Helm Descriptive Grammars. London: Croom Helm.

Trask, R. L. 2008. Etymological Dictionary of Basque. University of Sussex.