_k--zuek_. The pronouns of the
third person are mere demonstratives. There are three: _hura_ or _kura_,
"that"; _hau_ or _kau_, "this"; _ori_ or _kori_, "this" or "that." Other
unexplained forms are found in the verbal inflexions, _e.g._ _d_, _it_, and
_t_, "I" or "me"; _d-akus-t_, "it see I" = I see it; _d-arrai-t_, "it
follows me." The demonstratives are used as articles: _gazt-en-or_, "this
younger one"; _andre-ori_, "this lady at some distance." The reflective
"self" is expressed by _buru_, "head." The relative does not exist, and in
its place is used as a kind of verbal participle with the ending _n: doa_,
"he goes"; _doana_, "he who is going"; in the modern Basque, however, by
imitation of French or Spanish, the interrogative _zein_, _zoin_, is used
as a relative. Other interrogatives are _nor_, "who"; _zer_, "what";
_zembait_, "how much," &c. _Bat_, "one"; _batzu_, "several"; _bakotch_,
"each"; _norbait_, "some one"; _hanitz_ or _hainitz_, "much"; _elkar_,
"both"; are the most common indefinite pronouns. The numeral system is
vicesimal; _e.g._ 34 is _hogoi ta hamalaur_, "twenty and fourteen." The
numbers from one to ten are: 1, _bat_; 2, _bi_; 3, _hiru_; 4, _lau_; 5,
_bortz_ or _bost_; 6, _sei_; 7, _zazpi_; 8, _zortzi_; 9, _bederatzi_; 10,
_hamar_; 20, _hogoi_ or _hogei_; 40, _berrogoi_ (_i.e._ twice twenty); 100,
_ehun_. There is no genuine word for a thousand.
The genders in Basque grammar are distinguished only in the verbal forms,
in which the sex of the person addressed is indicated by a special suffix;
so that _eztakit_ means, "I do not know it"; but to a woman one says also:
_eztakinat_, "I do not know it, oh woman!" To a man one says: _eztakiat_
(for _eztakikat_), "I do not know it, oh man!" moreover, certain dialectic
varieties have a respectful form: _eztakizut_, "I do not know it, you
respectable one," from which also a childish form is derived, _eztakichut_,
"I do not know it, oh child!"
The Basque conjugation appears most complicated, since it incorporates not
only the subject pronouns, but, at the same time, the indirect and direct
complement. Each transitive form may thus offer twenty-four variations--"he
gives it," "he gives it to you," "he gives them to us," &c., &c.
Primitively there were two tenses only, an imperfect and a present, which
were distinguished in the transitive verb by the place of the personal
subject element: _dakigu_, "we are knowing it" (_gu_, _i.e._ we), and
_ginaki_, "we w
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