Basque is the language isolate spoken in the western Pyrenees, along the border of Spain and France.
A language isolate has no demonstrated living relatives in a recognized language family. Basque is therefore unusual in Europe, where most languages belong to Indo-European or Uralic families. Scholars have proposed connections with several ancient or neighboring languages, but none has been proven conclusively.
Basque is known to its speakers as Euskara. It has several dialects, and the standardized variety called Euskara Batua was developed in the 20th century for education, publishing, and public administration. Basque grammar differs sharply from Spanish and French; it uses an ergative-absolutive structure and commonly places the verb near the end of a clause.
Basque remains co-official with Spanish in parts of Spain, while France does not grant it the same official status nationally. Its survival reflects strong cultural and educational institutions as well as community use.