Re: Interactions between languages & loan words

Scotto Hlad wrote:
>
>Well, I'm not sure if the subject is clear enough so let's see if I can
>explain my question. With my new language Pilovian being surrounded by many
>other Romance languages, I'm sure that I can develop the Romance part of it
>quite well which will be evident, (I hope) when I post the Babel text. My
>concern is that in the area of the Pyrenees mountains there is also the
>Basque language. In my design, I'd like to have some interaction between
>Basque and Pilovian but I'm not sure how. I'd like to have words enter
>Pilovian from Basque, but I have no idea what parameters to set. According
>to Wikipedia, the Basques are historically great mariners and so I would
>certainly want to borrow heavily from Basque to influence any maritime
>vocabulary.
>
>Any suggestions?
Perhaps if the Basques inhabited the region first (as would be likely),
there will be toponyms-- mountains, rivers, maybe even towns and regions,
etc.-- that would be Basque names. This is the case IIRC in Spain.  Trask's
_History of Basque_ might have a listing of Basque > Spanish loans and/or
place names; plus vocab. items from which you could create your own and work
sound-change magic :-))))

The only Basque loans in Spanish I can think of offhand are _izquierdo_
'left' < esker or sim. and IIRC cachorro 'puppy' and the province of
Navarra.  I've always thought it odd that they'd borrow "left", but who
knows why...........