MemeMachineGo!

The Basque language seems to have no relatives. This has resulted in some fanciful theories as to its origins and significance. On Larry Trask’s Basque page , he generously offers to take a shot at answering people’s questions on Basque, but notes:

I do not want to hear about the following: Your latest proof that Basque is related to Iberian / Etruscan / Pictish / Sumerian / Minoan / Tibetan / Isthmus Zapotec / Martian. Your discovery that Basque is the secret key to understanding the Ogam inscriptions / the Phaistos disc / the Easter Island carvings / the Egyptian Book of the Dead / the Qabbala / the prophecies of Nostradamus / your PC manual / the movements of the New York Stock Exchange. Your belief that Basque is the ancestral language of all humankind / a remnant of the speech of lost Atlantis / the language of the vanished civilization of Antarctica / evidence of visitors from Proxima Centauri. I definitely do not want to hear about these scholarly breakthroughs.

It must get awfully lonely in that ivory tower.

My surname, Lopez, is from my Basque great-grandfather. I’ve always meant to get around to learning more about the Basque language and culture… or at least enough to write that science fiction novel with my crackpot theory of Basque’s origins and significance. But I know mine is fiction. Or at least I think it is. As Tim Powers notes regarding writing stories that suppose fanciful theories to link and explain strange facts:

Pretty soon, it becomes an exercise in resisting paranoia because you’ll find that your research genuinely does seem to support whatever goofy theory you’ve come up with.

(Larry Trask quote via this Guardian article by way of Follow Me Here )