ntry Eskual-Herria.

_Language_.--The original and proper name of the language is Eskuara
(euskara, uskara), a word the exact meaning of which has not yet been
ascertained, but which probably corresponds with the idea "clearly
speaking." The language is highly interesting and stands as yet absolutely
isolated from the other tongues of Europe, though from the purely
grammatical point of view it recalls the Magyar and Finnic languages. It is
an agglutinative, incorporating and polysynthetic system of speech; in the
general series of organized linguistic families it would take an
intermediate place between the American on the one side and the Ugro-Altaic
or Ugrian on the other.

Basque has no graphic system of its own and uses the Roman character,
either Spanish or French; a few particular sounds are indicated in modern
writings by dotted or accented letters. The alphabet would vary according
to the dialects. Prince L. L. Bonaparte counts, on the whole, thirteen
simple vowels, thirty-eight simple consonants. Nasal vowels are found in
some dialects as well as "wet" consonants--_ty_, _dy_, _ny_, &c. The
doubling of consonants is not allowed and in actual current speech most of
the soft consonants are dropped. The letter _r_ cannot begin a word, so
that _rationem_ is written in Basque _arrazoin_.

Declension is replaced by a highly developed postpositional system; first,
the definite article itself _a_ (plural _ak_) is a postposition--_zaldi_,
"horse," _zaldia_ "the horse," _zaldiak_, "the horses." The declensional
suffixes or postpositions, which, just like our prepositions, may be added
to one another, are postponed to the article when the noun is definite. The
principal suffixes are _k_, the mark of the plural, and of the singular
nominative agent; _n_, "of" and "in"; _i_, "to"; _z_, "by"; _ik_, "some";
_ko_, "from," "of" (Lat. _a_); _tik_, "from" (Lat. _ex_); _tzat_, _kotzat_,
_tzako_, "for"; _kin_, _gaz_, "with"; _gatik_, "for the sake of"; _gana_,
"towards"; _ra_, _rat_, "to," "into," "at," &c. Of these suffixes some are
joined to the definite, others to the indefinite noun, or even to both.

The personal pronouns, which to a superficial observer appear closely
related to those of the Semitic or Hamitic languages, are _ni_, "I"; _hi_,
"thou"; _gu_, "we"; _zu_, "you" in modern times, _zu_ has become a polite
form of "thou," and a true plural "you" (_i.e._ more than one) has been
formed by suffixing the pluralizing sign