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The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

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Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#31
post #24
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what would have happened if someone murdered a person before 2015 on Iceland who happened to be Basque (due to some other disagreement perhaps). Then in court, the accused would claim innocence due to the legal right that in fact was still in existence. Would he walk?

leges posteriores priores contrarias abrogant The Icelandic legal system operates on the well-established principle that later laws implicitly repeal earlier ones if they conflict[1]. So no, killing a Basque person would have been legally no different than killing anyone else. There was also a law on the books until 1991 that you could legally kill Turks on sight, due to an incident that didn't even involve Turkish p…

> an incident that didn't even involve Turkish people to begin with

At the time, Algeria was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire

Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#32
post #28
post #4

I'm Basque, I'm a very long time HN regular, and I love linguistics related topics. So I'm keen to see this, but I still don't fully understand how this makes it to the front page :)

Is the Icelandic connection somehow linked with the Basque national dish (and seeming national obsession) salted cod baked in olive oil? I went once and we were literally served it for every meal except breakfast. We visited a lot of different places and our hosts were always very proud of their particular method for making it and keen to show off their skills, but they didn't realise the last people we had been to s…

My guess is that cod is widespread in countries around the North Atlantic. Hospitality in a bit of an excessive degree and bordering on comical annoyance due to unawareness is an even more widespread phenomenon around the world, as attested, among other, by many Hollywood comedies such as "My great Greek wedding" and others :)

Very glad you enjoyed it, and if you drop by Barcelona where I live now, I'll happily make sure you try 4 or 5 instances of the single best paella in the world.

Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#33
post #10

From the refs: Iceland revokes 400-year-old legal right in Westfjords district to kill Basques on sight https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/iceland-revo...

Phew! Finally it's safe for Basques to visit Iceland again! :D Jokes aside, Iceland is a very interesting place, not just because of its incredible nature, but also its history and language, especially due to their very interesting and well preserved old texts, and also because they're so remote and insular. It's a treasure trove for etymologists and laypeople alike. It's also quite interesting to track the etymologi…

> Phew! Finally it's safe for Basques to visit Iceland again!

¡Ahí Va La Hostia Pues, Inaki!

Europe has so many of these small disputes and treaties that make absolutely no sense what so ever if solely looked at through a modern lens and with no context. As a person born in the US to a European parent it was so odd to see these little details when visiting, even within Spain itself.

Specifically, and relevant to this topic, the Basque Country which has a long history of secession from the Spanish Kingdom. Catalunya is another as is Valencia, due to the horrible violence of the Spanish Civil War, but I had known of that already.

The notion of Autonomous communities is almost antithetical to a nation state/uniter kingdom model, and yet you have it and it exists within the EU. And then when it tries to to exercise those rights it gets people thrown in jail as seen with the successful 2017 Catalan separation vote, that saw its proponents get thrown in jail, beaten and chased by secret police from Madrid and saw its leader Carles Puigdemont fled to Brussels where he still has standing as a member of Parliament somehow. He recently spoke out about the CCP's brash and belligerent violence in Hong Kong, and sought to enact legislation to curtail it.

And then in the South you have Gibraltar, a part of the UK, which is some how autonomous but still physically in the Iberian peninsula.

I wonder if there will be a time when the whole UK vs Iceland thing over Icesave will come up in some obscure way, as the UK put Iceland as a rouge nation on the terrorist watch-list for their refusal to bailout them out in the 2008 financial crises [0].

0: https://www.icelandreview.com/news/iceland%E2%80%99s-preside...

Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#34
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

leges posteriores priores contrarias abrogant The Icelandic legal system operates on the well-established principle that later laws implicitly repeal earlier ones if they conflict[1]. So no, killing a Basque person would have been legally no different than killing anyone else. There was also a law on the books until 1991 that you could legally kill Turks on sight, due to an incident that didn't even involve Turkish p…

> an incident that didn't even involve Turkish people to begin with At the time, Algeria was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire

> At the time, Algeria was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire

Seems the original Vikings were afraid of being Viking'd themselves and put into Law?

Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#35
post #28
post #4

I'm Basque, I'm a very long time HN regular, and I love linguistics related topics. So I'm keen to see this, but I still don't fully understand how this makes it to the front page :)

Is the Icelandic connection somehow linked with the Basque national dish (and seeming national obsession) salted cod baked in olive oil? I went once and we were literally served it for every meal except breakfast. We visited a lot of different places and our hosts were always very proud of their particular method for making it and keen to show off their skills, but they didn't realise the last people we had been to s…

The Portuguese are also mad for salt cod. There's a dish called bacalhau à brás which is shredded salt cod, grated potato, and sliced onion, bound up with eggs and cooked to a scrambled consistency, and is one of my all time favourite dishes:

https://www.mulherportuguesa.com/receita/bacalhau-a-bras-tra...

Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#36
Did some googling, and came across this article about this Basque Pidgin https://core.ac.uk/reader/230764570. It contains many interesting facts. Including the passage:

"Certain surprising similarities among pidgins and creoles spoken in places distant from each other and with different linguistic components in their formation have led some linguistic to formulate a monogenetic theory that would trace many pidgins and creoles to a common ancestor: A Portuguese based pidgin or even to the Lingua Franca or Sabir spoken in the Mediterranean Basin from the Middle Ages (Whinnom, 1977)."

Even after the middle ages Portuguese seems to be an especially common source of pidgins, found in South east Asia, Africa and the Caribbean (curiously, in now Dutch territories) among other places.

Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#37
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently discovered and started frequenting all the internet resources that have grown around the language learning community (there's a lot of websites, youtube channels with polyglots showing off, etc). As a Spaniard, it was really surprising to see how popular the Basque language is around those circles. I think it's a mix of the historical quirkiness of it being a pre-roman western European language, and the br…

Yes, that's true. I also think this is due the history of linguistics itself as a field. Until the 19th century, I think scholars focused on european languages. Nearly all of them of indoeuropean origin: Maltese probably just ignored, Finnish and Hungarian found to be distantly related (I never saw Estonian mentioned in older texts), and Basque was "the mysterious isolate". Please share with me some links to those si…

https://www.italki.com/ – I've heard from language learners that it's actually a very good way of learning, if you can't do full immersion (compared to stuff like srs, duolingo, grammar books, etc.)

Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#38
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phew! Finally it's safe for Basques to visit Iceland again! :D Jokes aside, Iceland is a very interesting place, not just because of its incredible nature, but also its history and language, especially due to their very interesting and well preserved old texts, and also because they're so remote and insular. It's a treasure trove for etymologists and laypeople alike. It's also quite interesting to track the etymologi…

> Phew! Finally it's safe for Basques to visit Iceland again! ¡Ahí Va La Hostia Pues, Inaki! Europe has so many of these small disputes and treaties that make absolutely no sense what so ever if solely looked at through a modern lens and with no context. As a person born in the US to a European parent it was so odd to see these little details when visiting, even within Spain itself. Specifically, and relevant to this…

> when it tries to to exercise those rights it gets people thrown in jail as seen with the successful 2017 Catalan separation vote

That is a really biased, inaccurate way to describe the legal ramifications of the Procés. I won’t hijack the conversation but people, don’t store this as fact without reading more about it. It’s quite a convoluted situation but it is pretty clear imho that just painting it as “Spain is an oppresive state” is a ridiculous simplification.

Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#39
post #19

On a related note, there was also a Fench-Icelandic pidgin https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/jpcl.4...

Weird. The few lines on preview page look like Danish, except "runet" which looks like English "run" with a Danish past participle ending. I don't see anything that looks French. I would read the next to last line as: "you have run ashore?"

For Google Translation, a slightly different sentence is Danish.

ju haber runet på den lange

Re: The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin

#40
As a side note, the basques are a crazy and lovely bunch, and they party like there's no tomorrow.

I lived in Spain for 5 years, and 4 out of those 5 I dated a basque girl.

Basques are really proud of their culture and specially their language that is, at the same time, highly "dialectal" (If there's such a word). My gf at the time was from San Sebastian, but lived in a small town near Bilbao called Amorebieta.

She studied in the university of Pamplona, Navarra; she had a roomate from Vitoria, the capital of Álava province (One of the 3 provinces that make Euskadi, the basque country * .) and there were many occurrences where one had to explain to the other the meaning of a word they used. They also are a bit wary of the "euskara batúa" (The "standard" basque) although it worries them more the fact that it seems the language is slowly being lost.

I picked several words along the way and I also asked her to teach me some phrases, one in particular that I still remember (although may be not 100% accurately):

    Nirea da printxesen artean politena
(Mine is the most beautiful among all them princesses)

and she would scream in joy when I'd repeat that in front of her female friends.

* Navarra also has a strong basque heritage, but is not considered part of the basque country due to events in the spanish history were it would negotiate some political rights separately, and is a "principado" (principality? Princedom?).

They are also very, very tight knit families - Basques are somehow highly matriarchal - and they take proud in remembering all their "8 last names" (Specially if they all are of basque origin). Friend groups are also very tight knit, and a lot of people keep friendships they developed at an early age through their whole life.

Basques are also incredible loyal and hardworking people; but they also party like no one.

In Amorebieta a the time - ~2005 - I think there were only 4 or 5 bars, and on weekends people would go rotating constantly through them all (This was not particular to the town, but something that was normal for basques). On Sundays and holidays it was normal to find in the afternoon entire families having a drink at the sidewalk in the bars.

I know people from the UK had a certain fame about drinking, but let me tell you _nobody_ drinks & party like the Spaniards, and basques are at the top 3 of the Spanish nationalities of the list.

There's a rather entertaining book called "The Basque History of the World" [0] that claims, among other things, that the basques were also in America before Columbus and that more or less we own them the invention of salted cod that made possible the long journeys around the globe.

I left Spain 13 years ago, and to this day one of the things I miss the most is my basque family.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Basque-History-World-Story-Nation/dp/...

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