[Note: All Basque words are in Italics and Bold-faced Green]
THE
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BASQUE *
AND THE ESKIMO
LANGUAGE
(Contact)
INTRODUCTION
Many names in use by the Eskimo people of Arctic Canada
appeared to Edo Nyland to be related to Basque. The land north of the tree
line is called Ungava,
which in Basque would be Ungaba, Unagaba. Many Basque names are assembled
from several words by agglutinating the first letters of these words. Unagaba
sounded like it came from unagarri (boring) gaba (night).
Calling the long, dark, northern night, a "boring night" made very
good sense, but the apparent relationship with Basque seemed to be
accidental. The North American reindeer is called "caribou", spelled karibu in Basque; from kari-bu, kari (reason,
purpose, destination) burdun (roasting
spit): "Destination roasting spit" again made good sense. The
indigenous people of the Arctic call themselves the Dene; dena in Basque
means "all of us" and is the same word as in Denmark. Having been
alerted to the possibility of an unsuspected and unlikely link between Europe
and the eternally frozen land of the Eskimos, Nyland looked for a possible
path the Eskimo language could have taken. Both the names Alaska and Canada
looked promising; Alaska, alas-ka, from alatz (miracles) -ka (suffix
denoting continuous action, unending), "Miracles unending" is
exactly the reason why so many tourist ships cruise along the Alaska coast.
Canada, spelled Kanada in Basque, clearly is assembled with the
vowel-interlocking formula: .ka-ana-ada, akabu (ultimate, extreme end) anaitu (to get together) ada (noise of...), "At the far end we'll have a
noisy-get-together" i.e. "On the other side we'll have a
party".
HOW DID
"BASQUE" ENTER THE ESKIMO LANGUAGE?
The following may sound implausible, but this is how Edo
Nyland believes it could have happened. To answer the above question, it is
necessary to dig deep into the origin of the "Basque"
language. The story started during the Ice Age, which had peaked 16,000 bce.
(see Climate) The melting of the massive glaciers
covering the Alps had caused profound changes in air-circulation over North
Africa. It is estimated that by 10,000 bce. the effect was starting to be
felt by the people living in the central Sahara. By 8,000 bce. the
increasingly dry conditions caused serious droughts there, and by 5,000 bce.
the tribes living in the affected areas had to escape to the shores of
Africa, the higher elevation areas and the major river valleys like the
Senegal, Niger and Nile. Tribes that had traditionally lived along the ocean shores
of the Sahara had long been involved in long distance ocean travel and had
discovered many lands. They were also developing star navigation into a
science. While bringing this into
practice, they were well on their way to discover all the continents of the
world, with the likely exception of Antarctica. By the time the refugees from
the central Sahara reached the coast, the Sea Peoples
living there were ready to ferry them to new homes on the north coast of the
Mediterranean and to the fertile and beautiful lands around the Black Sea,
especially the Danube and Dnepr River valleys and also the Caucasus region.
The seafarers living along the coasts of Arabia and Mesopotamia had scouted
out the entire south coast of Asia and discovered Indonesia, Formosa (Taiwan)
and the Japanese islands. Around 6,000 bce., a Caucasian-like tribe which became the
Ainu of Japan probably sailed, probably from the mouth of the Euphrates
river, to settle on one or more of the beautiful and richly forested islands
of Japan (see Sea Peoples). A risky migration required
a strong commitment of support from the people back in Mesopotamia. There may
have been a good reason for this particular group to migrate so far away. The
Ainu had adhered to the extremely ancient religion of the bear worshippers,
evidence of which has been found as far back as 200,000 bce. [This date
certainly involved a precursor of Homo sapiens -- email].
Changing times and religion in Mesopotamia may have caused them to
leave civilization to seek a country where they could practice their bear
sacrifices without obstruction. Trade prospects may have had something to do
with the support they received from the mercantile class back home. The
Japanese islands, which were already sparsely populated, must have appealed
to these intrepid pioneers. The newcomers, with their superior technical and
linguistic skills taught their Saharan language, boat building, leather
tanning, ocean navigation etc. to the native population with whom they appear
to have been on generally good terms. The long ocean voyages necessary to stay in touch with the
homeland, as well as their long discovery trips in the Pacific, required an
active boat-building and sail-making industry. Wood was no problem in Japan,
the country was full of it in all sizes and qualities. The problem was skins
for sails. These people were still hunter-gatherers and wove no cloth, so
leather was the best alternative. Back home in the Sahara, this problem had
been solved by the Berbers who set up a large hunting camp in Arctic Norway
near Mount Komsa in Finnmark around 8,000 bce. There they annually took large numbers of reindeer out of the
herds migrating through the area and sent the skins to the oak forests of southern
Sweden and Conamara in Ireland for tanning with oak bark. This example was
followed by the Ainu whose scouts had discovered the astonishing wildlife
riches of Alaska, especially the many herds of caribou migrating through
Alaska and the Yukon. Their numbers
were in the hundreds of thousands. Camps were established in the arctic
tundra of Alaska and the hunt began. The skins were either tanned locally
with the brain of the killed animals, or taken back to Japan and possibly
Korea for bark tanning. Thus equipped they explored everywhere and it is
likely that the west coast of North America was discovered by Caucasian type
people long before the east coast was. It is well possible that the west
coast of America was reached by 8,000 bce. [see Climate
for conditions at the time] THE ESKIMO RELIGION
The hunters, who later became the Eskimos, do not appear
to have established a religious center similar to Mount Komsa in the
Norwegian Arctic. The people involved in this hard work were mostly the
native population of the Aleutian Islands, who did not share exactly the same
religious traditions with the Ainu. However, both the Ainu and the Eskimos
practiced the ancient religion of the Goddess, who
represented the life-generating and nurturing powers of the earth. In other words, the Goddess was nature as
created and sustained by the living earth. To the Ainu black was the color of
life, the rich black soil that sustained all living things and in itself was
alive. Black was also the holy darkness of the sacred cave, regarded as the
womb of the Goddess, the central point of their worship. However, the
eternally frozen earth of the Arctic and the absence of caves was not
representative of the Goddess and thus required an adaptation in belief. In
the Arctic it was not the land, but the ocean which was vibrantly alive and
which provided all the riches necessary to sustain life in the far north. To
this day some Eskimo elders teach that the Goddess "Sedna" lives at the bottom of
the Arctic Ocean. The Goddess
controls the seals, the Beluga whales, the arctic char swimming up the rivers
to spawn, the drifting ice floes and the winter storms. In Alaska, this
Goddess is known as Nulirahak
and in the Central Canadian Arctic as Nuliaguk. The Eskimo did not
worship her exactly as the Ainu did, but they had great respect for her,
trying to secure her cooperation and goodwill by persuasion and sometimes by
threats. There is little doubt that some Ainu individuals were
among the hunters and that Ainu blood became mixed in during the long and
dreary Arctic nights. Although living conditions were difficult, once the
housing and travel problems had been solved the population thrived because
there was abundant food in the ocean. The skin boat technology developed by
the Sea Peoples of North Africa was adapted to
arctic conditions by the Eskimos and has been maintained up to now, both for
the one-man kayak and for the large family boat, the umiak. As the
population grew, the people became more confident of their ability to cope
with the extremely uncooperative climate and the annually repeated extended
periods of darkness. Then the
population spread ever farther eastward until they had populated the entire
arctic coast of North America from the Bering Strait to Labrador and
Greenland, where they met seafarers speaking Basque. To the surprise of the
Basques they found they could communicate with the Eskimos to some extent.
The language had traveled clear around the earth, carried by population
migration. No people on earth ever had to do more creative adapting to their
environment than the Eskimos. It must be clear by now that the language at the root of
the Eskimo language cannot be Basque because these seafarers were never
active in the northern Pacific. Instead, the relationship lies with the Saharan language from which Ainu, Basque, Eskimo and
a host of other languages derive. The name Inuit, which many Eskimos prefer
for themselves, may come from inu-it, inular (sunset, low-angle sun) itsu (blind), sun-reflection blindness, or
"snow-blind". Their reputation of staunch independence and high
self-esteem may have given the Eskimos their name "ezki-mo", from ezkibel (easily
offended) molde (manner,
behaviour), "They are easily offended" a name likely given to them
by the Basques in Labrador. A BASQUE PIDGIN IN EASTERN CANADA
For at least 500 years, the Basques have been fishing the
Grand Banks of Newfoundland for cod, while their whalers were actively
harpooning off Labrador. Many early visitors had commented over the years
that the indigenous people living south of the St Lawrence estuary and the
Eskimos living to the north used a Basque pidgin language to communicate with
the visitors. The pidgin's existence was explained by the many years of
contact with Basque fishermen and whalers. This could have been the case with
the indigenous people. However, the Eskimos, generally, kept their distance
and avoided unnecessary contact. Yet, they could also talk with the Basques. A linguist from
the University of Amsterdam, Peter Bakker, documented historical and
linguistic evidence of the Basque elements he found in the pidgin and
published this in the fall 1989 issue of "Anthropological
Linguistics". His article was entitled "The Language of the Coast
Tribes is Half Basque", which was an exaggeration because he gave only a
handful of examples. Edo Nyland suggested to him that he could have found
many more Basque-related words in the Eskimo language spoken all the way to
Alaska, thousands of miles to the west, but he wouldn't hear of it. This left
Nyland no choice but to document the existence of Basque throughout the range
of the Eskimo language and to provide an explanation for this startling
phenomenon. To show that
Basque vocabulary can also be recognized in the high Western Arctic, where no
other races ever came, Nyland examined two dictionaries for Basque-related
words. He could not have found a more isolated and unaffected part in the
north:
THE ESKIMO
LANGUAGE
Linguists have been at a loss to explain the development
of the language. The Eskimo people have a rather small population, totaling
about 100,000 in 2004. These are scattered over an enormous area from Eastern
Siberia to Greenland. The number and diversity of Eskimo dialects and
sub-dialects surely points to centuries, if not millennia, of groups living
in isolation. Even dialects spoken in relatively close proximity, such as the
two named above, show extreme differences. Ronald Lowe writes about one of
them: "Siglitun seems to belong to no recognized family of Eskimo
dialects and its loss would mean the permanent loss to the Eskimo language of
those characteristics that are uniquely Sigliq". The speakers often have
difficulty communicating with nearby tribes. Therefore, it is surprising that
some Eskimo words like amaruq (wolf) have survived almost unaltered through
the millennia; in Basque the word amarruki means
"cunningly". Another obvious one is aqittuq (weak), in Basque akitu(tired); also ipun (ear) and ipuin (story).
ESKIMO - BASQUE
VOCABULARY COMPARISON
Eskimo English Basque English aliak to please alaia pleasing amaamak mother ama mother amaruq wolf amarruki cunningly aming skin for kayak mintz skin angi tall andi tall angiak spirit of a murdered child angaila stretcher angun man ango native person ania brother anaia brother aninga her brother anaia brother ano dog harness ano dog feed apumang gunwhale apurkor fragile aqittuq tender, weak akitu tired aqu stern of the boat akulu to push, to prod ataatak grandfather, father aita father atiq name, namesake atikidura family tie arautaq snow beater arrau-taka oar-to hit, hit with the oar aulajursiutuk anemic aulaldi period of weakness Inuit Eskimo inu-itsu snowblind ikumajaq lamp ikusi to see iloga my friend ilagun friend ipiutaq chain to tie a boat down ipini to put on, to tie ipun ear ipuin story isumairutivuq mad isurikatu to spill blood isurtuq water isuri to flow ituk milk itukin outflow kallupilluk monster kalte to hurt, to harm kangaq ankle anka foot kayak kayak ekai-akitu work-tiring kukiktuq to steal kukuka to conceal makitauti support makila stick, cane mamitsiarittuq properly healed mamitu to coagulate pallu handle palu stick piliutiva play a game pilota handball po to blow poker to belch, to burp tainiq to name bataiatu to baptize tamaryangayuk retarded, stupid tamalez unfortunately ublik water coming to the surface ubil whirlpool uluriahuktuq feel a pain uluka wailing umiak family boat umeak children unaguiqhituq to rest unatu to get tired uqaqtigiya talked with him ukakor pessimistic talk
THE ESKIMO -
AINU RELATIONSHIP IS NOT OBVIOUS
During the thousands of years that
the Eskimo have lived in the Arctic, they have created a very special society
in a most hostile environment. Their civilization and art are so unique that
nothing on earth compares with it.
Therefore, it is not surprising that it is a more time-consuming process
to find Basque-related words in the Eskimo language than in the Ainu
language. As the Saharan language was introduced
to the people who later became Eskimos, those words that still resemble
Basque, must have been brought to them by the Ainu people at a very early
time. Trying to show this relationship has been a rather time-consuming task.
To finish the above comparison would be a good project for a linguistics
student. |
==========================================
For further detail, please
refer to:
Nyland, Edo. 2001. Linguistic Archaeology: AnIntroduction. Trafford Publ., Victoria, B.C., Canada.
ISBN 1-55212-668-4. 541 p. [
see abstract & summary]
Nyland, Edo. 2002.
Odysseus and the Sea Peoples: A
Bronze Age History of Scotland Trafford Publ., Victoria,
B.C., Canada.
307 p. [see
abstract & summary].
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