ABSTRACT
The origin of Basque is a principal issue in Basque studies. Basque and its precursors managed to stay alive despite pressure from Indo-European languages, Latin, and the dialects that emerged from Latin, including Occitan, Navarrese Romance, French, and Castilian. Basque has persisted despite geographic shrinkage, social marginalisation, profound changes in its internal structure, and extreme dialectal fragmentation. People in some border regions that were not administratively part of the Basque Country spoke Basque. In 1937, the Dutchman Nicolaas Deen published an extensive vocabulary of Basque-Icelandic Pidgin, including entire sentences in the language. Starting in the sixteenth century, the Basque language suffered a never-ending series of setbacks, especially in Araba and Navarre. As far as the southern provinces are concerned, Basque had no place at all in teaching until 1960, with the exception of some sporadic and unstable experiments. The Catholic Church has been one of the few institutions, if not the only one, to have supported Basque.
