The Basques call themselves euskaldunak, that is to say, the speakers of the Basque language. The Basque Country is in Europe, astride the Pyrenees, with one foot in the French and Spanish states. It lies beside the Bay of Biscay. In the distant past, the Basque language covered a larger area than it does at present: all Aquitaine the great region of Bordeaux is supposed to have spoken Basque or some language related to it. Basque is a sonorous and sweetsounding language, with five clearly defined vowel sounds and an extraordinarily regular verb system. It is also an islandlanguage, devoid of known relatives, and is classified as preIndoeuropean. It has no structural relationship with the Romance languages nor with the Germanic ones. Several hypotheses are put forward as to its origin: some say that Basque is the old Iberian language, while others associate it with Caucasian languages. Others think it may own its origin to a common SaharanBerber root.

Website: http://www.basquepoetry.net/index-i.htm