view from this perch

So this girl in my room (age unknown - guessing between 24 and 35 so not THAT young, but it makes a better title), has been teaching English here and there and traveling around.

She started with the insistence that they do NOT speak spanish in basque country. Implication is that they don't even know Spanish. We'll see. My emails in Spanish have been answered in Spanish.

She also then vehemently insisted (which led to her mentioning the English teaching background) that Basque and Celtic are related. Basque is not Indo-European, Celtic is. Then she was quibbling about whether Celtic is a dead language. When I said there's a revival in Wales and parts of Ireland still speak Irish, she started making the point that languages evolve, so she doesn't mean the several modern languages, only the ancient original Celtic.

Still that's not related to Basque either.

She said her Irish friends talk about their having come from Spain and I did allow that the Book of Invasions mentions such. Quite likely the Irish are related to the Basques from a pre-Celtic time. The book of invasions involves 5 waves of invasions after all. (btw when I had a coworker from Dublin he insists they were taught the Book of Invasions as history in school)

So sure the people in the remaining Celtic countries - Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, Man (there's another, what am I forgetting?) may be biologically related to the Basques (http://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10/lingland/faqbadcelt.html), but the Celtic language is definitely indo european, look at the numbers! (http://rjschellen.tripod.com/CelticNums.htm)


Next she'll be telling me the basque druids built stonehenge? She knows cuz like she's an English teacher!