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RE5TE t1_iwj68el wrote

Reply to comment by joseba_ in Irulegui Hand: Researchers claim to have found earliest document written in Basque 2,100 years ago by IslandChillin

> Euskera was a very free form language, mostly relying on spoken word

> the euskera spoken in the early 20th century should be really similar to whatever version of it they were speaking 2000 years ago

Those are opposites.

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Important_Collar_36 t1_iwk3gwi wrote

Well in 2000+ years the pronunciation of this particular word stayed the same, the only thing that changed was the actual spelling.

It sounds like there were very few literate speakers until the language was fully codified recently. Meaning that it was free in that perhaps different families or communities had slightly different pronunciation of various words but could understand each other easily despite that fact.

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