#euskara

This shit is making me hate kids so much it’s curing my pregnancy kink

do I even have to comment on this

Centuries of Bretons died to keep their language and culture free from French, just so this kid could steal their face and tag his work “jiggle my balls”

These “fanfictions” are merely, as far as I can tell, copy-pasted articles about the WHO. Possibly conspiracy-based but I didn’t actually read them closely.

Are we for real

The only two fics in my beautiful Kernowek (…Poor Parnell! My dead king!). Neither in the language.

So as you can see this is all horrible slop and, I think, should be stopped. Obviously I will always love ao3 for being a semi-anarchistic archive but I think in cases of blatantly obvious linguistic mistagging it doesn’t hurt anyone to just slide the fic into the right language.

Okay, there are misconceptions here.

Full disclaimer, because I know how annoying it can be to us Greeks when foreign people make assumptions about us and our culture and they are often wrong, I am not an expert at any of the matters about to be discussed here and I might as well be wrong, but I am trying to answer as objectively as possible and with as much legit information I could gather.

So, first things first, the song is indeed very beautiful. The song is in Salentino, which is an Italian dialect. Salentino is clearly Latin / Italic but it does have Greek influence, mostly due to its proximity to the Griko and Grecanico dialects, the Greek dialects of South Italy. According to Wikipedia:

I tried to read the lyrics of the song. What I found is that it is quite distinct from Standard Italian but it is unmistakeably totally Latin and not Hellenic in its root. The only Greek influence I was most likely correct to trace was that the "ca me" (= and to me) is influenced by the Greek "ke / kai me / mou" and not the Latin "et me / mihi". I almost mistook "core meu" for a Greek reference ("kardiá mou"), until I remembered it's "cor meum" in Latin lol (I learned some Latin in Duolingo!)

Now, as for the pronunciation. Well, in the first video the song is performed by a Greek band and it sounding suitable in your ears could have been due to your familiarity with Greek pronunciation. However, you were not wrong in your observation that even when sang by an actual (local?) Italian as in the second video, it also sounded totally a familiar accent to Greek.

It is the Greek influence over Salentino (by the way I was able to also hear the Spanish influence a lot), as also confirmed by Wikipedia that Greek had particular impact on the phonology, but here's the thing: even Standard Italian does not have a huge difference from Greek pronunciation. We pronounce the vowels identically and many consonants pretty similarly. The differences are most notable in the rhythm and intonation as well as some distinct consonants each language has, but overall an Italian and a Greek pronunciation are vastly more similar than with a Germanic or a Slavic pronunciation.

And because the speech intonation and rhythm are diminished in a melody, these differences are weakened in songs. Listen to the following song for example. It's a song I love and it's Standard Italian. Don't you think you would pull it off perfectly with your Greek accent?

Just so I could make sure I was not pulling things out of my ass, I also checked a reddit thread with a question about how Greeks sound when speaking Italian. Most Italians answering confirmed that they can tell it's a foreigner speaking but with a very light accent, coming off as speaking Italian pretty well. (Okay obviously some other Italians may have a different opinion, I could only judge based on a few reddit answers.)

Going back to Salentino, the lyrics of the song were too few for me to determine how much Greek influence may or may not be there but my first impression is of very obviously Vulgar Latin / Italian with some Greek (and maybe also Spanish) flair. Perhaps the exact reverse of Griko and Grecanico, which are very obviously Greek with Italian influence.

Then you make some talk that is a bit too black and white and because I am neither knowledgeable enough nor a person from these regions, I feel like an opinion would matter only if coming from people of these regions directly or maybe a neutral scholar or something.

Catalá is a Latin / Romance language that has evolved completely independently from Spanish. It is and sounds Latin. I do not trace any more similarity to Greek in it than other Romantic languages may have to some degree with Greek. Ancient Greeks did settle in Catalan regions but it's a big stretch to trace their current accent to those ancient settlements.

Besides.................. you are forgetting the language that has the most auditory resemblance to Greek in the world... and that is.... Spanish. lol. Certainly Catalá sounds less like Greek than Spanish does so the theory doesn't work very well.

Occitan is also a Latin / Romance language and it has Germanic influence. True indeed, if you listen to it in videos and songs, the Germanic influence is very notable. I don't get any Greek-like sound from it at all. It is totally just Latin and Germanic sounding.

As for Euskara, the Basque language, it is a mystery of linguistics. It is a complete isolate. It is not Latin. It has zero similarity to Greek and it's not even Indo-European! It is strongly believed to be pre-PIE! While Greek has incorporated a significant pre-PIE influence (known as the pre-Greek substratum), possibly from the language of what we call "the Pelasgians" in the Aegean, still the pre-PIE language here in the Aegean was too far from the ancestor of Euskara to be able to trace any similarities whatsoever nowadays. Let alone that pre-Greek words in Greek are so seamlessly incorporated that it is virtually impossible to tell which word is PIE and which is pre-PIE unless you are a professional linguist. So, Euskara, not at all like Greek or any other language. And the Basques are not even Mediterraneans and they do not have a Mediterranean pronunciation so I am not sure where you got that from.

That's Basque. I haven't heard a language more different than Greek or Latin lol

Long story short:

Salentino does have particular Greek influence, more than other Italian dialects.

Catalan and Occitan neither have more connection to Greek than any other Latin ethnic language has, nor more auditory similarities.

Northern Mediterranean languages in general have a similar standard way of sounding, apart from the peculiarities of each language. This does not necessarily indicate some Greek influence or special ancient Greek connection. The reason for these perceived similarities in sound is that Greek and Latin preserved more archaic PIE sounds compared to Germanic, Celtic and Slavic which underwent more radical phonological changes over time. Therefore they sound more alike than with the others.

Euskadi Barty.

It just makes so much sense in my mind. His mum would be from the basque country, fled Spain after she left school because of the dictatorship and went to England, marrying Bartemius Crouch Senior.

In a muggle Spain au Bartemius Sr. would be from Madrid and him and Barty's mother would have some sort of Romeo and Juliet romance okay trust.

And then just the language is so perfect, like imagine Barty telling Evan "Maite Zaitut" some random day and Evan, who has studied every possible European language and can make out what the ones he hasn't studied are saying using common roots, is just utterly perplexed because Euskara has no common roots with any other language, it's an isolated language and a mystery regarding where it came from, not to mention the opression of any languages in Spain other than Spanish led to there being little to no books on Euskara, so Evan barely even knew it existed.

Liricas Analas- Lungatg (in Romansh, spoken in the Swiss Alps)

Kneecap- H.O.O.D (in Gaeilge, spoken in Éire/ Ireland)

ZIFSI & KBEK- Parats Com Cau (in Gascon, spoken in Gascony, Southwestern France)

Manau- La tribu de Dana (in French and a bit of Breton, from Breizh/ Brittanny) (this one doesn't really count but it's still a banger)

Llwybr Llaethog- Tour de France (in Cymraeg/ Welsh, spoken in Cymru/Wales)

Yungmiqu- Muital (in Sámi, spoken in Sápmi, stretching across contemporary Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia)

bonus- the Sámi have an entire rap festival!

Negu Gorriak- Radio Rahim (in Euskara/ Basque, spoken in Euskal Herria/ Basque Country, in northern Spain and south-western France)

Acros- Escruire Amb La Sang (in Català, spoken in Catalunya, Spain)

Doctors De Trobar- Me'n Bati (in Occitan/ Lenga D'òc, spoken in Occitanie, Southern France)

Los Serenos Sefarad- La Rosa Enflorese Ladino (in Ladino, spoken... all over the world! Jewish Diaspora languages do be like that- though this particular group is from Seattle)

[ENGLISH UNDER THE CUT / ESPAÑOL TRAS EL CORTE]

Fallout telesailaren bigarren denboraldia gaur estreinatu da Prime Videon! 🥳

Berriz ere, Deluxekin batera egin dugu lan euskarazko azpidatziak eskaintzeko, baina meritua ez da gurea. Leire Chertudi Ozamiz, Ilargi García Barrena (eta, oker ez bagaude, Leire Arrillaga Zabaleta) izan dira azpidatzien sortzaileak; guk itzulpena eta terminologia gainbegiratu baino ez dugu egin.

Telesail ikaragarria da hau, eta euskaraz gozatu ahal izatea (oinarri dituen jokoak ez bezala) oso garrantzitsua da. Goza ezazue!!