This is a super basic explanation for people who know very little about linguistics but are curious about the origins and evolution of languages.
A friend asked me what’s so special about Basque and here is what I said:
Basque happens to be the #1 most interesting language to linguists because it’s a "language isolate," meaning that it is related to no other language, now or ever. They call this a genetic relationship within language families just like we refer to humans in families.
For example, Ukrainian is related to Russian because they are both Slavic, and related to Spanish because they are both Indo-European, and furthermore, related to all of the languages of India for that reason (Indo-Euro).
But Basque is not even related to Spanish, yet it is spoken in Spain. It developed in a secluded area in the Pyreness mountain region that never had contact with other cultures, including trade or war, the two agents of change in language evolution.
It’s a huge mystery and anomaly, a unicorn of languages. Even the most obscure languages are related to something, which was related to something, which was related to something.
