ere knowing it"; in the intransitive by a nasalization of
the radical: _niz_, "I am"; _nintz_, "I was." In modern times a conjectural
future has been derived by adding the suffix _ke_, _dakiket_, "I will,
shall or probably can know it." No proper moods are known, but subjunctive
or conjunctive forms are formed by adding a final _n_, as _dakusat_, "I am
looking at it"; _dakusadan_, "if I see it." No voices appear to have been
used in the same radical, so that there are separate transitive and
intransitive verbs.

In its present state Basque only employs its regular conjugation
exceptionally; but it has developed, probably under the influence of
neo-Latin, a most extensive conjugation by combining a few auxiliary verbs
and what may be called participles, in fact declined nouns: _ikusten dut_,
"I have it in seeing," "I see it"; _ikusiko dut_, "I have it to be seen,"
"I will see it," &c. The principal auxiliaries are: _izan_, "to be"; and
_ukan_, "to have"; but _edin_, "to can"; _eza_, "to be able"; _egin_, "to
make"; _joan_, "to go"; _eroan_, "to draw," "to move," are also much used
in this manner.

The syntax is simple, the phrases are short and generally the order of
words is: subject, complement, verb. The determining element follows the
determined: _gizon handia_, "man great the"--the great man: the genitive,
however, precedes the nominative--_gizonaren etchea_, "the man's house."
Composition is common and it has caused several juxtaposed words to be
combined and contracted, so that they are partially fused with one
another--a process called _polysyntheticism; odei_, "cloud," and _ots_,
"noise," form _odots_, "thunder"; _belar_, "forehead," and _oin_, "foot,"
give _belaun_, "knee," front of the foot. The vocabulary is poor; general
and synthetic words are often wanting; but particular terms abound. There
is no proper term for "sister," but _arreba_, a man's sister, is
distinguished from _ahizpa_, a woman's sister. We find no original words
for abstract ideas, and God is simply "the Lord of the high."

The vocabulary, however, varies extremely from place to place and the
dialectic varieties are very numerous. They have been summed up by Prince
L. L. Bonaparte as eight; these may be reduced to three principal groups:
the eastern, comprising the Souletine and the two lower Navarrese; the
central formed by the two upper Navarrese, the Guipuzcoan and the
Labourdine; and the western, formed by the Biscayan, spoken too in Al