Basque is a language isolate spoken by roughly 806,000 people in the Basque Country, a region straddling the western Pyrenees across four Spanish provinces and three French territories, with about 94 percent of speakers on the Spanish side. It is the only surviving language isolate native to Europe and is widely regarded as a relic of the continent's pre-Indo-European linguistic landscape, though little is actually known of its origins. Numerous hypotheses have proposed links to Iberian, Kartvelian, the broader Caucasian languages, or a wider Dene-Caucasian macrofamily, but none of these connections has been accepted by mainstream linguists, and Basque remains classified as a language isolate.
Facts
RegionThe Basque Country, straddling the westernmost Pyrenees in adjacent parts of southwestern France and northern Spain 1 Speaker Count Proto-Language StatusNo proto-language: Basque is Europe's only known language isolate, with no demonstrated relationship to any other known language 1 Sources
1. Wikipedia: Basque Language
Wikimedia FoundationLead section, paragraph 1: geographic description sentence
is a language spoken by Basques and other residents of the Basque Country, a region that straddles the westernmost Pyrenees in adjacent parts of southwestern France and northern Spain.
Lead section, paragraph 1: total speaker count sentence
Basque has 806,000 speakers: 93.7% (756,000) are in the Spanish area of the Basque Country and the remaining 6.3% (51,000) are in the French portion.
Lead section, paragraph 1: language isolate sentence
Basque is Europe's only known language isolate (with no relation to any other known languages) and the only surviving language of Paleo-European origin.
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