I thought that Basque wasn't related to any other language in the world. If this is so, why do they use the same alphabet as English, Spanish, Latin, etc.?
2006-09-03 19:26:16 · 3 answers · asked by ¿Qué sé yo? 6 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
Because it is there. The language was around when writing came in to play. It is just very convenient to use what comes around.
2006-09-03 19:32:29 · answer #1 · answered by Puppy Zwolle 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
A language doesn't have to be related to other languages in order to use the same alphabet. Hungarian and English are two completely different languages and still use the same alphabet. Russian and Czech a closely related languages and don't use the same alphabet.
It's not that long since people started to write compared with for how long languages have existed. Although some languages have existed for thousands of years they weren't necessarily written until just a few hundred years ago (some were written early on, some late). I guess nations just chose which alphabet to use and those who didn't have an ancient tradition of using any alphabet mostly went with the one that is generally used in their region. So the Basques use the same one like the French and the Spanish.
2006-09-04 03:09:05 · answer #2 · answered by undir 7 · 3⤊ 0⤋
Alphabets have absolutely NOTHING to do with linguistic relationships. For example, English, Indonesian, and Turkish are ALL written with the Roman alphabet and they are all completely and totally unrelated to one another. Arabic and Persian are written with virtually the same alphabet and they are completely and totally unrelated to one another. Urdu and Hindi are so closely related that some linguists refer to them as the same language, but they are written with completely different alphabets.
2006-09-04 04:25:47 · answer #3 · answered by Taivo 7 · 4⤊ 0⤋