Basque alphabet
Basque alphabet is Basque Latin alphabet, 32 letters. 27 letters, all Latin — only eight of them must not be read the Spanish way. The characters are grouped: two s-sounds and three affricates, 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.
Two s-sounds and three affricates
The heart of Basque phonetics: s and z are two different s-sounds. Each has its own "ts" (ts and tz). And x and tx give "sh" and "ch". Native ears separate them effortlessly, and these six signs unlock half the vocabulary.
The two main traps
h is silent almost everywhere but the norm requires writing it, and j sounds different in every corner of the 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 the only way to begin a word with a trill: a single r never starts a word.
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: camera, kiwi, video, wifi, yoga. You need them only to read a sign with a borrowing on it.
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. It usually falls on the second syllable from the end, and the hint on each word takes it apart. 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 put it into the norm so that the historical shape of the word is preserved, and in the north-east of the Country, where it is pronounced after all, this letter comes alive.
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 it softens almost to "dy"
- 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 “y as in yes (dialects: zh or kh)”?
One letter, three sounds, depending on the valley. For speaking, learn the mild "y" variant first
- Which character reads as “m as in map”?
A regular "m"
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 32 signs in one sitting.
Frequently asked
How many letters in the Basque alphabet?
32 letters — Basque Latin 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.