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 [Note:  All Basque words are in Italics and Bold-faced Green]

 

SAHARAN LANGUAGE *

                                                                                              

A review derived from the following:

 

Nyland, Edo.  2001.  Linguistic Archaeology: An
Introduction.   Trafford Publ., Victoria, B.C., Canada.

ISBN 1-55212-668-4. 541 p.

 

----Please CLICK on underlined categories for detail [to search for Subject Matter, depress Ctrl/F ]:

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Introduction

 

          An ancient "Saharan Language", which was preceded many thousands of years by the Igbo Language of West Africa, is believed to have been used by linguists to invent "Indo-European" and Semitic languages, including  Ainu, Dutch, Egyptian, Engish,  Eskimo, German, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Sanskrit, Slavic group, Spanish, Yiddish, etc. (Nyland 2001). T  This was done with the use of different formulaic manipulations of the Saharan vocabulary, creating largely invented (non-genetic) language "families".  Nyland has now proposed several hypotheses and a theory on the origin of these languages (see Theory).  However, recent studies by Catherine Acholonu of Nigeria have revealed a precursor to "Saharan" that was developed in very ancient times by the Igbo people of West Africa.  In Genesis 11:1 this language is said to be spoken in the whole world, and therefore should be called the Universal Language, which had been the language of the first civilization on earth, located in Africa and the Near East. Indeed it may have been developed by the Igbo of West Africa (see (see Catherine Acholonu).  Forms of the languare are still spoken by the Dravidians of India, the Basques of Euskadi and the Ainu of Japan. In Genesis 11:7 we are told: "Come, let us confuse their language that they may no longer understand one another's speech". The clergy of both Judaism and Christianity considered this a biblical command and have spent an enormous, and long sustained effort to enforce this belief. The formula used by them in most of the artificially constructed vocabularies is called the "vowel-interlocking" or "VCV formula". Because the Basque language is the closest to the ancient Saharan language and has the best English dictionary, this will be called Basque from now on. In most cases, the first 2nd, 3rd or 4th letters of each Basque word were agglutinated into a new word (agglutinate = to unite or combine into a group) . After this was done, some or many of the vowels and h's were removed according to a plan to give the new words special characteristics. In Hebrew most, if not all, of the vowels were removed for writing, but not for speaking.  For example, Talmud, was spelled 'lmd' but pronounced 'tal-mud', from Basque tala - mudapen, watch out - alteration: "Watch out for alteration", which is basic to an oral law.

          It is the task of the linguistic archaeologist to look at languages before the invention of writing, to search the very roots of such languages; the subject could also be called pre-historical linguistics but that name would still be part of the fortress called linguistics. To make this process at least plausible, other disciplines such as religion, mythology, archaeology and historical linguistics must be included, while earlier research and hypotheses in this field should be carefully re-examined.

          Many languages, including such early languages as Hebrew and Sanskrit, were created by formulaic manipulation of Basque vocabulary. However, the name Basque, or more accurately Bask because there is no Q in the language, did not exist at the time this language invention was done. There must have been an earlier form of this language available to the linguists doing this manipulation. But where did it come from and what was it like?

          The research done by Dr. N. Lahovary and published in his book "Dravidian Origins and the West" shows conclusively that Basque and the old Dravidian languages of India are closely related. Nyland’s research into the Ainu language of Japan shows the same. The Ainu are thought to have been isolated in the Far East for as long as 8,000 years, yet they retain an early, non-agglutinated, form of Saharan, thus the original language must have been very old. These startling finds seem to indicates that the precursor of the Basque language was spoken very early in Europe, Africa and Asia, just like Genesis 11:1 tells us: "Now the whole world spoke one language". Nyland suggested that the forerunner of the Basque, Dravidian and Ainu languages was the Saharan language and that the language spoken in the beautifully painted cathedral caves in southern France and northern Spain was an early form of the same. However, this early form of the language cannot have been the one used by the early religious scholars doing the inventing of new languages such as Sanskrit. They used a later, manipulated, form that was constructed with agglutination.  It employed the vowel-consonant-vowel interlocking principle.

          That many words in the Saharan/Basque vocabulary are artificially assembled is obvious from words like alkar, meaning mutual. It comes from three Basque roots: al-ka-ar:

al. - .ka - ar.
ala - aka - are
alai - akatsbako - arreman
happy - perfect - relationship
"A perfectly happy relationship".

            This is a very good definition of the meaning: 'mutual'. Applying the same system of analysis to other words, it becomes clear that thousands of Basque words have been similarly assembled using the VCV vowel-interlocking system, but not all. Underneath this artificial vocabulary lies a non-invented, non-agglutinated Basque language, but how can this be explained? Is it possible that this substratum Basque language is still spoken somewhere?

THE MEANING OF SAHARA

          The Basque word zahar means old, and the name Sahara could therefore be interpreted as "the old country", but the Basque ‘z’ and the ‘s’, which is pronounced as ‘sh’, are quite different letters so zahar may not be the origin of the name Sahara. However, there appears to be another meaning embedded in "Sahara". It is analyzed as:

.sa-aha-ara.
esa - aha - ara
esan - ahalguzti - aratz
to say/speak - Almighty - pure/refined
"The speech of the Almighty is refined"

          Could this interpretation of the name mean that the original language had been refined or developed by early linguists? The logical and highly organized structure of the Basque language surely seems to support this possibility. The name used by the Basques for their own language is "Euskera", analyzed as:

eu - us. - .ke - era
eu - usa - ake - era
euki - usaiako - akela - erabildura
to retain/preserve - usual/traditional - goddess - usage/speech
"We preserve the traditional speech of the Goddess".

          In order to bury the true meaning of the word, the Roman Catholic church changed the quite obvious ‘.ke’ for ‘ake’ to '.ka' so that now we have both Euskera and Euskara in the dictionary.  De Basaldua (1925) called his native language "Eskera" and explained the meaning as esk (hand) and the ending era as form, wave, grace, beautiful, good, and he pulled these words together to mean "way to move the hand; wave with grace" which, he said, was also called 'ademan' in Spanish, meaning gesture (see p. 55). This meaning is  difficult to accept because it appears to have little bearing on the language. Instead, we are apparently dealing here with words belonging to the first civilization on earth. This civilization had evolved so greatly that the substratum language was no longer adequate to describe their achievements in astronomy, mathematics, acoustics, navigation, religion etc.  Therefore, a system had to be found to expand the language. The VCV vowel-interlocking structure was the result of their search for a practical expressive language.

          There seems little doubt that the Basque language is a direct descendant of this original Saharan language and that this language has not changed very much for several millennia, probably because of the extremely careful oral transmission traditions used in their educational system, passing the language on from generation to generation without changes.

 

STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT OF BASQUE

          Many people have theorized about how language began, some suggesting that the first words used were imitations of spontaneous articulation of sounds in nature, such as animal cries, expressions of pain, happiness, fear etc. Others searched for the origin by studying the first utterings of small children. English possesses a large number of onomatopoeic words such as crack, bang, splash, splatter, bash, thrash, thump etc. It is certain that such onomatopoeia play a role in language formation but it is doubtful that such words are the origin or main source of the language. Basque contains more onomatopoeia than any other language but Paleolithic words such as aitz (rock, stone), ur (water), euri (rain), lur (earth, soil, floor), elur (snow) and izotz (ice) have no onomatopoeic origin.

          The well-known linguist Noam Chomsky reasoned that the structural facets of language, the ground rules of speech, had to be inborn. If that is the case, speech must be very old. Building on this thinking,, the Saharan language must have gone through at least three main stages such as:

          Stage 1) the basic, natural language evolved during the Paleolithic and early Neolithic, prior to ca 8,000 B.C. It appears that the words in this language mostly named tangible items.

          Stage 2) the perfection of clear vowel differentiation and the introduction of onomatopoeia, starting about 8,000 B.C. This non-agglutinated phase of the language was taken east to become the basis of the Ainu and Dravidian languages.  It is still spoken today by some 170 million people. This vocabulary included many intangible items.

           Stage 3) the invention of morphemic agglutination  (morpheme = a distinctive arrangement of sounds that contains no smaller meaningful parts; agglutinate = to unite or combine into a group) which resulted in the development of a greatly diversified vocabulary in which each one of the new words started with vowel-consonant-vowel (VCV), a process that was probably completed by 4,000 B.C.  Making a description or comment pertaining to the thought to be expressed created the new words, and the morphemes were then assembled to create words needed in science and technology. The earliest invented languages of the Near East, such as Hittite, Luvian, Palaic, and Sumerian etc. were later constructed out of this invented vocabulary, starting possibly shortly before 2,000 B.C.

          It may not be possible to reconstruct Stage 1, but the existence of the Dravidian languages with their well-established relationship to Basque, may make it possible to reconstruct many of the words and much of the grammar of Stage 2. Nyland’s (2001) work in linguistic archaeology up to now has mostly been based on Stage 3, because the built-in sentence in many of the agglutinated words, created with the VCV formula, can still be restored with his system of decoding. Research into the vocabulary and sentence structure of Stage 2, of necessity, will require a thorough knowledge of the Dravidian languages, such as Dr. N. Lahovary possessed.

 

MAGIC IN NUMBERS AND LETTERS

          Detailed study of the enormous stone monuments in Egypt have brought home the realization that sciences such as mathematics, astronomy and acoustics were highly developed and applied, long before the time of the Greeks and Arabs.  We also know that magic played a big role in the thinking of these people, which tended to promote dedication to the task at hand and resulted in superior achievements. The Ogam research by Anthony Jackson, anthropologist at Edinburgh University, shows that prime numbers, which are numbers that cannot be divided by any whole number, were ascribed superior magical properties.

          Another source of magical fascination was the mirror-like patterns in numbers e.g. 121, 87178, 1399931, most composed of odd-numbered digits. A special case is 'Pi' parsed here to make certain groups stand out more. Note in about 17 characters the combination 238-46-2-46-832 forms a typical sort of mirror-like characteristic:

3.14-15-926-535-89-793-238-46-2-64-33-832-795-02-88-41-9-71-69-
3993-751-0-58-2-09-749-44-592-3-07-81-640-628-620-8998-6280 etc.

 

          Searching in there, you see numbers like 793 and 795, 751 and 749, 582 and 592 and the sequence at the end where 640 links to 620 with an overlapping link of 628 and 6280 with 8998 in between. It is not surprising that 'Pi' was a major source of magical fascination for the mathematicians of the pre-patriarchal civilization.

 

          Another very important number in modern science and especially to the ancient Egyptians was the natural log E = 2.718281828459.... note the mirrored numbers 828-1-828. It is created by the series: 1 + 1/1! + 1/2! + 1/3! + 1/4! where the exclamation mark means "factorial". (4! means 4 x 3 x 2 x 1).

 

          Apparently, the early scholars developed a "symbolic mathematical language" that was embedded in their monumental structures. The measurements of the great pyramid at Gizeh show many such mirror-like numbers according to Jim Branson in Idaho, who studies the acoustical characteristics of the spaces in the pyramid.  This mathematical language magic was also used in the formation of Stage 3, the improved and enriched Saharan language we know today as Basque. The mirror-like VCV pattern became the basic structure of the new morphemes. These were used to construct the new vocabulary that has vowel interlocking as the main rule. Where vowel interlocking is interrupted, a break in the word is required which usually means that a new word begins.

 

 

VOWEL INTERLOCKING

 

          Vowel interlocking may have been another form of magic with letters and, thanks to it, the hidden sentences in many Saharan/Basque words can be recovered. This system proved to be so successful that the scholars who made up the new Semitic and Indo-European languages, adopted the practice of abbreviating the word to be used to the first three letters, of which the last vowel of the first VCV had to be the same as the first vowel of the to be agglutinated VCV:

VCV1 - V1CV2 - V2CV3 - V3CV4 - V4CV

          The Sanskrit language was made up almost entirely out of that half of the Saharan language which starts with VCV, while the scholars creating the Romance languages and English used the same system as a priority but quite often felt obliged to use a CV word for the first morpheme. For the Semitic and Germanic languages the entire Saharan/Basque vocabulary was used and a new letter, the ‘w’, a letter without meaning or Saharan origin, was introduced.

ORGANIZATION OF THE VCV SYLLABLES

 

          The reorganization of the Saharan language, done millennia ago, was so far-reaching that even today half of the Basque vocabulary is made up of the Saharan scholars’ invented words. The basis for the VCV structure was the 16 consonants, each flanked by two vowels. Starting with B the first VCV would be ABA which was subdivided into five syllable groups, ABA, EBA, IBA, OBA, UBA , each of which was composed of five syllables: ABA, ABE, ABI, ABO, ABU / EBA , EBE, EBI, EBO, EBU / IBA, etc., 25 in all. Each of the 15 consonant therefore was associated with 25 VCV syllables for a grand 400 syllables. In addition there was the double RR (pronounced as a rolling R), with 25 VCCV morphemes, ARRA, ARRE, ARRI etc. making a total of 425 different roots. Most of these morphemes were assigned groups of related words, others had only a single meaning (e.g. EBO for: ‘to develop’ or UTO for ‘utopia’) and a large number was left free for future expansion of the language (e.g. EBU, IMO). A great deal of thought must have gone into the composition of these word groups because even today it is not difficult to select from them the correct word which was used in the make up of the hidden sentence. As is usual with invented words, some of these over time may have been dropped or forgotten through non-use, which would have freed some of the VCV’s for other words or non-use. For instance, one of these may well be the verb ulatu, which still is used in some Polynesian languages as hulatu, meaning 'to welcome'. Hula girls dancing a welcome meet visitors to Hawaii at the airport. It appears that the system was never completed because there are still about 106 out of 425 VCV’s without vocabulary designations. See the VCV Dictionary.

          The basic idea for bringing about this mass language conversion project came from the marvelously organized Saharan/Basque language itself (Stage 3). Here follow some of the words and names used by the Basques themselves, which show the VCV manipulation process of the original language

SAHARAN / BASQUE, AN AGGLUTINATED LANGUAGE

          Webster's dictionary defines "agglutination" as: " to unite or combine into a group ". This is a rather inadequate definition because not only whole morphemes, but also parts of morphemes, as small as one or two letters, and whole words were being agglutinated and fused. In this text, Nyland used dots to replace the letters that were removed. In the case of double vowels an 'h' is often omitted. The 'rr' morphemes are classed with the VCV's.

Combining complete words:

jokaleku (playing field)
joka - leku
hitting, striking - place, location
"place of hitting (the ball)"

gurdibide (cart path)
gurdi - bide
cart - path

Combining only VCVs:

ainguratu (to anchor)
ai - in. - .gu - ura - atu
ai - ine - egu - ura - atu
ai - inertia - eguzkisarrera - urandi - atxurbegi
I hope - inertzia, tied down - sunset - ocean - hole in the anchor stone
"I hope to be tied down to the hole in the anchor stone when sun sets on the ocean".

errukizko (merciful)
er. - .ru - uki - iz. - .ko
ere - eru - uki - iza - ako
erresumina - erruki - ukitu - izan - akorduan euki
charity - compassionate - to touch - to be - to remember
"He was remembered for his touching compassionate charity".

ezpatalari (swordsman)
ez. - .pa - ata - ala - ari
eze - epa - ata - ala - ari
ezereztu - epaitu - atalbanatu - alabeharrez - arimagalduko
to extirpate - to slash - to cut into pieces - fatally - merciless
"He extirpates by slashing and cutting into pieces, fatally and mercilessly".

izigarrikeria (atrocity)
izi - iga - ar. - .ri - ike - eri - i.a
izi - iga - ara - ari - ike - eri - iha
izi - igarrezin - arakintza - arrigarrizko - ikertu - erio - ihaurri
fright/horror - unpredictable - massacre - awful - to investigate - deaths - many
"They investigated the many deaths and the unpredictable horror of the awful massacre".

laranja (orange)
.la - ara - an. - .ja
ala - ara - ano - oja
alaitu - aratz - ano - oian
to fill with joy - pure - juice - forest, trees
"Pure juice from the trees fills us with joy".

mendebaleko (of the west)
.me - en. - .de - eba - ale - eko
ume - ena - ade - eba - ale - eko
umel - ena - adelatu - ebakin - ale - ekoiztu
overripe - (superlative) most - to prepare - to produce - grain - to produce
"They prepare to produce a most prolific grain harvest".

Vitoria,
ibi - ito - ori - ia
ibili - itoaldi - orrits - iaio
to be - to laugh a lot - celebration - cheerful
"There was a lot of laughter at the cheerful celebration"
(Two vowels together often means that an 'h' was omitted.)

merezi (merit)
ome - ere - ezi
omendu - eredu - ezinobe
to honor - example - excellent
"Honor the excellent example".

Combining a VCCV with VCV's.

ospegabeko (unknown) (was: otspegabeko)
ots. - .pe - ega - abe - eko
otse - epe - ega - abe - eko
otseintza - epel - egarri - ebegikortasun - ekoiztu
subjection - timid - strong desire - hospitality - to acquire
"With timid subjection (he/she) had a strong desire to acquire hospitality".

ustekabezia (unforeseen)
uste - eka - abe - ezi - i.a
ustekeria - ekarri - aberekeria - ezinukatuzko - ihabali
prejudice - to bring/cause - brutality - ezinukatuzko - ihabali
"Prejudice can cause undeniably frightening brutality".

Combining a full word and VCVs:

larkeria (excess)
lar ' .ke - eri - i.a
lar ' oke - eri - iha
lar - okerrez - erion - ihaurri
too much - mistakenly -  to spill - to scatter
"Too much was mistakenly spilled and scattered".

zabaltasun (openness, honesty)
zabal - al. - .ta - asu - un.
zabal - ale - eta - asu - une
zabal - alegeria - eta - asuri - une
sincere - rejoicing - abundance - new born lamb - place
"There was sincere rejoicing at the place with the abundance of newborn lambs".

zorigabeko (dismal)
zori - iga - abe - eko
zori - igarri - abereretsu - ekonomo
fate - to predict - brutal - administrator
"The fate of the brutal administrator was predicted".

Combining CV and VCV morphemes:

Bizkay,
bi- iz.-.ka-ai
bi - ize - eka - ai
bidegaitz - izentxar - ekaizpera - aipu
dangerous crossing - bad name - stormy - reputation
"It is a dangerous crossing and has a bad name because of its stormy reputation."

Zuberoa,
zu-ube-ero-oa,
zue - ubel - erro - oartu
all of you - purple, royal - origin, descent - to perceive
"All of you are perceived to be of royal descent".

Pyrenees,
pi - ire - ene - es
pikaldi - irestzaile - enetan - eskerga
clearing the forest - destructive - always - enormously
"Clearing the forest (with fire) is always enormously destructive".

kaiku (wooden bowl for boiling milk)
ka - iku
kaldatu - ikusbera
to heat up - watchful
"Be watchful while heating".

Using a combination of CV, VCV and VCCVs such as in: Gipuzkoa

.gi-ipu-uz. ' ko-o.a
egi-ipu-uzka ' ko-oha,  
egin - ipurterre - uzkali '  kontrako - oharkabe
to be - impatient - to overthrow - enemy - spontaneously
"We are impatient to overthrow the enemy spontaneously".
(A break in the word is necessary because the vowel interlocking was broken.)

Bask,
.ba-ask.
eba - aska
ebatzi - askatasun
to decide - freedom
"We decided to be free".

aritz (oak tree)
ari - itza
arrigarri - itzalesko
marvelous - majestic.
"Marvelous and majestic".

gorputz (body)
go - or. - .pu - utz.
go - ori - ipu - utzi
gogor - orriztatu - ipurtmami - utzi
ruthless - to cover with leaves - rump, corpse - to abandon
"Ruthlessly they covered the corpse with leaves and abandoned it".

          Recently encoded words lack the interlocking structure.  For example,  maribidetako, which has to be a new word because prostitution probably only came into being when the male dominated religion arrived. The ancient VCV word construction system had apparently been forgotten or abandoned.

maribidetako (prostitute)
.ma - ari ' bide ' tako
emagalkeria - arriskudun '  -bide ' takoidun oinetakoak
prostitution - dangerous - occupation - high heeled shoes
"Prostitution is a dangerous occupation in high-heeled shoes.

 

 

WORDS WITH "UR" (WATER)

 

          The re-organization of the language was consistently done in groups of related words. In the Basque language almost all words connected with water contain the root 'ur' (water). Descriptive terms were then attached to designate the kind of water. A small sampling is given and compared here with the English equivalents, many of which appear strangely unconnected and artificial among them.

 

uraldi

flood

alditxar = misfortune

urandi

ocean

ndi = enormous

uraz garbitu 

to wash

azal = skin, garbitu = to wash

urazpil

washbasin

azpil = large dish

urbide  

canal

-bide = route

ureztaketa

irrigation

eztasun = scarcity, -keta = quantity

urgarri

water soluble

-garri = suffix which denotaes cause

urgeldi

stagnant water

geldi = quiet, stagnant

urgora

high tide

gora = high

urjauzi

waterfall

jauzi = to leap, jump

urlamia

waternymph

lamia = gnome, troll

urlurrin  

steam

lurrin egin = to vaporize

urmargo 

water color

margo = color

urodi  

irrigation canal

odi = pipe

urtatu

to soak

-eztatu = to cover with

urtzulo 

waterhole

txulo = little hole

 

 

 

 

urzozo

water ouzel

zozo = blackbird

euri

rain   

e = exclamation to draw attention

 

 

          The only way to explain the reason for the English words to be so very different and unconnected among themselves is to show the way in which they were constructed with the use of the vowel-interlocking VCV formula, which can then be used to restore the hidden meaning in most of the words (see English Etymological Vocabulary).

 

 

BASQUE, A VERY ORGANIZED LANGUAGE

          Although the grammar of Basque is complicated, difficult to learn for an English speaker and obviously evolved over a long time, the vocabulary is so well organized, even regimented, that it cannot have evolved naturally over time into this condition and obviously has been scholarly arranged in a fairly short time. As all the early-invented languages such as Sumerian, Hebrew, Sanskrit etc. use this VCV system, the agglutination of the Saharan language must have been done first, since 3,000 bce. Almost exactly half of the Basque vocabulary starts with vowel-consonant-vowel or VCV, two vowels flanking one consonant. Some of these vowels may be omitted in the word invention process, but the consonant is always retained. One exception is the consonant 'h' which may or may not be shown in the dictionary or used in the invention process e.g. both andi and handi (large, enormous) are found in the dictionary, or elberri and helberri (newly arrived); the 'h' is often removed from words, even dialects.

          The Benedictine clergy, who created all the west-European languages, were at first instructed in the word invention science by the people who worked on the Latin language in Rome and had been developing it into the liturgical language of the Roman Catholic church. These highly educated and dedicated clergy then fanned out over western Europe, established mission stations with scriptoria, created libraries and started the language invention process. For over 1000 years they employed non-Benedictine grammarians who spoke the Saharan/Basque language, probably originating from Liguria in the Alps and from Euskadi in the Pyrenees region. In the clergy' writings it is often indicated that there are children in the monasteries; most of these belonged to the families of the grammarians. In addition, young boys were sent by their parents to the monastery residential school, to be trained as deacons, clergy and linguists just like Alcuin had been, a practice still followed in several Benedictine monasteries to this day.

MODIFYING  THE  LANGUAGE

          The monk-linguists used a large number of tricks to make the languages they created sound very different. First the periphrastic word order of Basque was completely reversed, which created a fundamental difference and became the main characteristic of the Indo-European "family" of languages. Samples borrowed from Aulestia (p. a30):

negation+auxiliary verb+complements+ main verb
1     2      3       4      5
Ez naiz zurekin etorriko
I am will not come with you
   2     5    1     4      3     3  
-----------------------------
1     2     3     4      5
Zu bezain ona naiz ni
I am as good as you
5   4   2    3    2    1
----------------------------
1   2   3   4    5   6   7   8
Ikusi duzun mutila Jon da
John is the boy that you have seen
7    8     6    5    4     3    2     1
-----------------------------
1     2         3       4       5   6
Zu baino jakintsuagoa naiz ni
I am more intelligent than you.
6   5     4          3          2     1  

          The intellect that invented this reversal of the ancient periphrastic word order created the basic structure of the "Indo-European languages".

          For English, the pronunciation of the alphabet was changed from the usual Latin to the "English" sound, which instantly caused the words to be pronounced very differently. Relatively few vowels were removed from the Latin agglutinations, but many more from the English ones, giving it a very different 'feel'. Most languages received newly invented "characteristic" letters, ô, ü, ř, ö, ń, č, etc. and/or unusual combinations of letters such as 'eau' in French pronounced 'o', or the Dutch 'ui' pronounced something like 'oi' but can only be said properly by a Dutchman. No doubt intended as a joke, Dutch also ended up with the embarrassing deep throat scrape, written as 'g' or 'ch' such as in Scheveningen, schaap, gaan, gooien, a sound that the clergy probably borrowed from Hebrew and tossed it into Dutch.

 

          Thank goodness the Benedictines resisted these peculiar urges when they created English, which therefore became the simplest of all to learn and speak, and eventually became England's most successful export, in spite of its often ridiculous pronunciation. To some languages the clergy assigned a gender (male, female or neuter)  for each word e.g. in French and German, which led to dumb cases such as the 'soldier on guard duty' who is female: "die Schildwache" in German and "la sentinelle" in French. Holland is one of the few countries that rid itself in this century of this incredible gender nuisance; retaining today only the neutral form 'het' e.g. "the horse" is not "de paard" but "het paard". Grammatical rules for each language were invented, some more appropriate and more easy to use than others.   Only German ended up with endless and ungainly lists of "Ausnamen", exceptions to the ungainly grammatical rules. However, none of these languages was saddled with grammatical rules as complicated as the Basque grammar possesses, although Latin came close.

 

          In English, the original verbs were separated e.g. the 'tu' at the end of zerbitu (to serve) became 'tu zerbi' (b = v): to servi and 'to serve' in English, 'te dienen' in Dutch and 'zu dienen' in German. In English the original 'i' was maintained in the word 'service', broken down into zerbi-ike, serbi-ikerlari, serve-the visitor. English is full of such Benedictine tricks. Other examples which show that the 'tu' at the end of the Basque verbs became the 'to' before the English verb: begitu (to look), apurtu (to break, destroy), kisitu (to whitewash), neurriratu (to regulate) etc.

RETURN TO A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

          From Nyland’s (2001) work with the following languages, it appears that all highly developed languages, without exception, were invented by linguists; some languages turned out more elegant and useful than others. If this is indeed the case, then we should be entitled to start facing out some of the unnecessary and dying ones, such as Celtic, Friesian, Wallonian, Flemish, Catalan etc. Danish and Norwegian are almost the same so why not combine them, as the Basques did with their seven languages, which are now together called Euskera Batua or Unified Basque. Ukrainian and Russian, Galician and Portuguese, Finnish and Estonian, Polish and Kashubian, Czech and Slovak, Macedonian and Bulgarian etc. all can be combined with a bit of good will. Why treasure something as artificial and unauthentic as the many unnecessary and people-dividing Benedictine language creations that we are now stuck with?

 

          Nyland (2001) noted that the European nations were making tremendous strides to unify under one government, one monetary system, one army, no boundaries, and now it is time to simplify the church-caused language bewilderment and start working toward a Unified European language, which we could call Euro Batua, which could be English or Spanish, but not German. The third millennium A.D. could be celebrated by starting to work toward the Universal language, it is long overdue. It is a pity that this Universal language cannot again be the Saharan of our ancestors.  It is just too complicated and too difficult to learn.  Nevertheless, Nyland hoped that the oldest highly developed language in the entire world should not be allowed to die. Let Latin and Greek and Sanskrit only be remembered in books, we can well do without them, but the Basque language must survive and be spoken by a vibrant population, if necessary through the creation of a United Nations Heritage Region called Euskadi. Nyland thought that it would be a worthy project for the U.N.

 

 

     Bibliography