Languages tend to share common roots with one another. For example, the five romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian) were all derived from Vulgar Latin. Languages also like to blend with each other. English has borrowed plenty from Greek and Latin over the centuries. But there is one European language whose roots cannot be determined and whose purity and isolation is unmatched by most other languages worldwide, and is unmatched by any language in Western Europe. No, this language isn’t exclusive to a tiny remote island in the Mediterranean. This language is Basque (also called Euskera), and it is spoken only in the northeast of Spain (Basque country).
Virtually every language in Europe can be grouped into the ‘Indo-European’ family, but the Basque language is a rare exception. In fact, this language is the only one in all of Europe to be considered a ‘language isolate,’ which means that it can’t be grouped into any larger family (Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian belong to the Uralic family). This is especially surprising given that Spanish and French are spoken throughout all of the regions that border Basque country, and yet neither of these romance languages seem to have influenced Basque whatsoever. Looking just at the Iberian peninsula, traditional Spanish and Portuguese are much more similar to each other than either of them are to Basque.
What makes this whole situation even weirder is that there is no clear consensus on why exactly Basque developed so differently than other romance languages, or why it wasn’t Romanized like much of Europe was. One of the most obvious reasons to consider is the physical geography of the Basque country; the area is very mountainous (Pyrenees mountains), which makes it much easier for a group of people living there to be cut off from other groups. What’s interesting about the geography of the Basque country is that it’s actually affected the vocabulary of the language. For example, there are a plethora of ways and words that can be used to describe the mountainous peaks and deep valleys that surround the Basque people, more so than in traditional Spanish.
Weirdly enough, the only language in the world that shares any sort of similarity with basque is Armenian. Armenia is a small country located just to the east of Turkey and it is over 2,000 miles away from Bilbao (the capital of the Basque country). A study from 1998 identified over 600 shared words between the two languages. But, the strange links between Basque and Armenian are denied by pretty much every linguist. In order for there to actually be a shared origin between the two, a study must be done on the ancient forms of both languages. Unfortunately, this is difficult to do because there simply aren’t many records of the ancient forms of the two languages. So even with all of the strange connections between the two languages, no definitive theory can prove that they actually have the same origin, though it is cool to consider that it’s a possibility.
Over the last couple of decades, the Basque language has seen an uptick in usage. During Francisco Franco’s rule the language was put in real jeopardy due to Franco banning any use of the Basque language anywhere in Spain. But since then, the Basque people have made a real effort to keep the language alive and to grow it because of the strong identification their culture has with the language.