Basque is very hard and other falsehoods

There are some who say that Basque is almost impossible to learn. An old legend tells that the devil spent seven years among us and only managed to learn the words EZ (no) and BAI (yes).

The thing is, Basque is not directly related to any other European language, and probably doesn’t sound much like anything you’ve heard before. The difficulty of learning a language depends to a great extent on how similar it is to the languages the learner already knows. In any case, Basque has some features, like the lack of distinction between genders or fairly simple verb tenses, that mean it can be considered quite a straightforward language.

Your first contact with Basque may be at big traffic signs or other information boards, which are generally bilingual. Look carefully at them and try to draw your own conclusions.