LingoflyBasque alphabet
The Basque alphabet is the Basque Latin alphabet: 27 letters. 27 letters, all Latin — only eight of them must not be read the Spanish way. The characters are grouped: z, s, x and their pairs, the two main traps, vowels: exactly five. Every character on this page can be played: the sound is stored as a file and does not depend on the voices installed on your system.
All 27 letters in one list
a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z
The tables on this page also include rr, ts, tx, tz and tt: they are needed for reading but do not count as letters of the alphabet.
z, s, x and their pairs
The heart of Basque phonetics: three sounds, z, s and x, and each has its own "ts": tz, ts and tx. z is a plain English s, s has a hint of "sh" in it, x is simply "sh", and tx is "ch". Native ears tell all six apart.
The two main traps
h is silent almost everywhere but the norm requires writing it, and j sounds different in every corner of the Basque Country.
Vowels: exactly five
a, e, i, o, u sound the same stressed or unstressed, and double vowels are almost nonexistent. The easiest layer of the language.
Soft sounds and the trill
ñ and tt are palatal sounds with a y-glide; they grew out of baby talk and affectionate speech. A matching pair for tt exists for d too, but it is met only a handful of times. rr is a trill between vowels. No word begins with a trill. Native words never start with r, and borrowed ones get a vowel in front — errege, arrosa.
Read as they look
Nothing to learn here: each sound is exactly the one you expect.
For foreign words
Five letters native words never use. They live in foreign names and a few words like wifi and yoga. Most borrowings are spelled with Basque letters: kamera, kafe, bideo.
What to know about this Latin script
The basic alphabet was fixed by Euskaltzaindia, the language academy: 22 native letters plus c, q, v, w, y for loanwords. The course follows the standard Batua norm — the one used in schools, on EiTB radio and on every sign. Stress is never marked in writing, and the norm sets no firm rule for it. In the central dialects it usually falls on the second syllable from the start and is weak. A misplaced stress does not break understanding. And one habit to unlearn: English swallows unstressed vowels, Basque does not. The five vowels have one value each and keep it everywhere — «egunero» is e-gu-ne-ro with four clear vowels, not «uh-guh-neh-ruh». Basque has no schwa to fall back on.
Where this script came from and why it looks the way it does
The letter “h” in Basque must be written even though it is almost never sounded. The Euskaltzaindia academy kept it in the norm for the sake of the north-east of the Basque Country, where it is pronounced: the common language was not meant to take their sound away from the northern dialects.
R. L. Trask, «The History of Basque», Routledge, 1997
Test yourself
Five characters at random. No need to answer aloud — just pick; the answer appears at once.
- Which character reads as “a as in father”?
A clean "a" — unstressed syllables keep it too; there is none of the reduction English vowels drift into
- Which character reads as “d as in door”?
A regular "d"; between vowels the tongue does not fully close and it weakens to a soft sound like the th in "this"
- Which character reads as “always hard g, as in go”?
There is no soft g before e or i, ever: gela is "ge-la", hard g every time
- Which character reads as “k as in key”?
A plain "k", with no puff of air after it
- Which character reads as “n as in net”?
A regular "n"
How to learn letters so they stay
You cannot learn a table by staring at it. What works: see a character, try to recall its sound, get it wrong, see the right answer — and come back to that character in a day, not in an hour.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
That is why the alphabet in the app is learned a few characters at a time, not all at once: nobody holds 27 signs in one sitting.
Frequently asked
How many letters in the Basque alphabet?
27 letters — Basque Latin alphabet: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z. The tables on this page also include rr, ts, tx, tz and tt: they are needed for reading but do not count as letters of the alphabet. The characters have capital and small forms.
Can I listen to how the Basque letters sound?
Yes. 32 signs on this page have sound: click a character to hear it. The sound works on any phone, and nothing needs to be installed.
How long does it take to learn the Basque alphabet?
A few characters a day — one to two weeks, if you come back to what you covered. The whole alphabet crammed in an evening is remembered for an evening: without reviews the next day and three days later, the characters are almost entirely gone.
Where to start: letters or words?
Both at once: you can already read this script, so a separate letters course is not needed — a reference table is enough.