A lesson in languages
I'm so excited that in just over a week I'm going to be back in Spain! I can't wait to meet my new host family this year and meet up with last years friends. So in preparation for this summer I'm going to teach you some basic but useful phrases in both Castilian (mainland Spanish) and Euskara (Basque).
The reason I'm choosing to give a Basque translation as well is because the family I Au Paired for last summer were Basque and spoke it at home and the village were all Basque speakers so from being around it for a while so I picked up quite a few words!
Hello Spanish - Hola Basque - Kaixo
Good morning Spanish - Buenos dias Basque - Egun on
How are you? Spanish - Que tal? Basque - Zelan zaude?
My name is... Spanish - Me llamo/nombre es... Basque - Nire izena da...
Goodbye Spanish - Adios! Basque - Agur
Please Spanish - Por favor Basque - Mesedez
Thank you Spanish - Gracias! Basque - Eskerrik asko
Yes Spanish - Si Basque - Bai
No Spanish - No Basque - Ez
Counting 1-10 Spanish - Uno, Dos, Tres, Cuatro, Cinco, Seis, Siete, Ocho, Nueve, Diez Basque - Bat, Bi, Hiru, Lau, Bost, Sei, Zazpi, Zortzi, Bederatzi, Hamar
So as you can see Basque is very different to Spanish, it is supposed to be one of the oldest European languages and has no roots to the romance languages either. You can already see differences with just these words, eg. they don't use C, its always K; they use a lot of Z and X and the sound 'ch' is spelt 'tx' (eg. Pintxos, similar to tapas). Update: In Euskara some letters don't exist in the languge V, C, Y, Q and X represents a 'sh' sound.
If you have any cool summer plans then it'd be awesome to hear from you!
