1946: Basque Loan-Word Apr 13, 2020

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Basque, spoken mostly in Spain, is not related to any other known language, but being once surrounded by Celtic languages, and for the last 2,000 years or so, Romantic ones, it has picked up a few loan words. For instance, the word for silver is 'zilharr' which was thought to come from a West Germanic root—the same as with English—but some have claimed that in fact the Germanic version cane from an older Iberian loan instead. There will be more on this tomorrow. For more on languages with no relatives, check out the new post on patreon.

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