Were the Picts of Scotland ethnically or linguistically related to the Basques?

Question

basen on availble scant evidence

Answer 1

This seems to be a subject on which everyone has a different opinion!  

The Basque History of the World:  Written by Mark Kurlansky

A brief attempt to tie the Basques to the Picts, ancient occupants of Britain who spoke a language thought to be pre-Indo-European, fell apart when it was discovered the Picts weren't non-Indo-European at all, but were Celtic. If, as appears to be the case, the Basque language predates the Indo-European invasion, if it is an early or even pre-Bronze Age tongue, it is very likely the oldest living European language.

Some writers describe Pictish as a Celtic language with an admixture of some non-Celtic substrate. The amount of Celtic influence on the recorded forms of Pictish names is considerable (about which, more later). In some cases, the influence may have been on the actual names themselves, but in many it can be demonstrated to be a later scribal artifact only affecting the recorded forms, similar to the recording of many vernacular names in Latinized forms. It is certain that whatever non-Celtic element existed in Pictish eventually disappeared. What is in question is whether that element had been reduced to mere vocabulary items in a Brythonic matrix by the time of the earliest records or whether non-Celtic Pictish was still a viable language at that point, although with significant Brythonic borrowings. The best argument for the presence of non-Celtic Pictish at a fairly late date comes from the Ogham inscriptions of the 8-9th century in which some non-Celtic element appears to be strongly present.

Of the non-Celtic element in Pictish, the best conclusion is that it is a remnant of one of the no-doubt numerous languages prevalent in Europe before the spread of the Indo-European language family. Basque is the only remnant of this type surviving today, although there are early records of others, such as Etruscan, that did not survive. (Other modern non-Indo- European languages such as the Finno-Ugric group arrived later than the Indo-European spread.) For this reason, some writers have tried to relate Pictish to Basque directly. There seems to be no direct evidence for this, and to assume a relation simply based on being non-Indo-European is nonsensical. The origins and relations of the Pictish language may never be known, short of the discovery of some bilingual "Rosetta Stone".

http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/tangwysty...

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The Symbol Stones of Scotland, by Anthony Jackson (Orkney Press 1984).

The author of the article says: I do not agree with Jackson's conclusions, which are that the inscriptions are not writing at all but were used for counting says (i.e. the were calendars). Jackson claims that the Picts were Celts who spoke a language related to Welsh. There is no dispute that they spoke a P-Celtic language in addition to another, non Indo-European language. It is this other language that is written in the inscriptions.

All of the inscriptions are written in a known alphabet (Ogham), most are pronounceable and some have common elements (e.g. maqq/meqq, nehht/nahht, -ors). The only other sources of information on Pictish are the lists of kings and a very few inscriptions in the Roman alphabet: "resad fili spusscio", "drosten ipe uoret ett forcus" and "pidarnoin". Many of the Pictish names are not Indo-European, e.g. Usconbuts, Canutulachama, Spusscio. I would guess that, since the first N Pictish kings on one of the list were all called Brude followed by another name, that Brude is the Pictish for king.

Unfortunately there are too few inscriptions, no Rosetta Stone, no languages desended from Pictish and no known relatives (Basque has been mooted as a possibility). This means that, unless something turns up (like a long inscription accompanied by a translation into Latin), it is unlikely that the inscriptions will ever be deciphered. It is possible that there are some words borrowed into Gaelic or Scots, but I wouldn't count on it. After all, Ancient British hasn't exactly made it into English in a big way. The "Pit-" element in many Scottish place names has been related to the Welsh "peth" and Gaelic "cuid", and so may be Celtic.

Pictish Ogham Inscriptions:  There have been many fanciful attempts to translate the inscriptions based, for example, on the assumption that they are a form of Basque. My own attempt is less ambitious. It is generally believed that maqq/meqq means son and was borrowed from Gaelic. The inscriptions are often accompanied by symbols (animals or abstract designs) which are believed by Dr Ross Sampson to be (stand clear of the pun) pictograms. One of these accompanies similar inscriptions ("eddarrnonn" in Ogham and "pidarnoin" in Roman scripts: Ogham has no letter P).

http://web.onetel.net.uk/~hibou/Pictish%...  (interesting link)

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GUITER (Bull. Soc. vascongada, 1968) shows convincingly that the inscriptions found in the British Isles do not differ any more from Basque than a dialect. This is not to say that the Picts were Basques, but simply that the Basques, a people of navigators, had left their traces in this country (as they have in America). Pict is without any relation to “Pictones” the ancient name of the inhabitants of Poitou, France.

http://michel-desfayes.org/whatarethepic...

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Separate comments from a forum:

I had read that we europeans have all a basque gene in our blood, the basques are our ancestors. A german linguist Theo Vennemann showed that the toponyms of Europe can be explained and translated by using basque language. So it's not a surprise if the Picts are basque.

They seem to be shrouded in mystery as a race of people and nobody is exactly sure where they originated from, but they were pre-Roman inhabitants. Some think they were a form of Celtic tribe, but others that they were Scythian in origin, from the Southern part of Europe, hence the Basque connection. The Basques themselves are supposed to be one of the oldest of European races are they not? Anyway, that would explain the reputed short stature and dark colouring of the Picts, similar to modern day Basques.

The last I read, only 14 inscriptions in the Pictish language have been found. Some written in the Irish Ogam script; some in the Roman script. Their meanings are uncertain at best. While they don't tell us a whole lot about the Pictish language they tell us enough to discern that it was not Celtic or even Indo-European. The language appears to have survived until about 1000 A.D. and disappeared due to the twin threats of Celtic Christianity coming from the Irish and Scots and from the Viking invasions where the Norse temporarily occupied the last Pictish strongholds in the Orkneys and the adjacent areas on the Scottish mainland.

While the ethno-linguistic affinity of the Pictish language is not none for sure the most commonly suggested ones are Iberian and Basque. A few have suggested even Eskimo.

http://www.antimoon.com/forum/posts/8550...

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Forum comments:

Q. Some years ago I dimly recall hearing that Pictish was related to Basque, but I don't recall the source of this theory. I once read that there was a systematic campaign of destruction of Pictish writing and cultural relics by the conquering English. The Scots and the Picts did form some kind of union treaty.

A. Some dimwit or other has tried to prove a relationship between Basque and every other known or half-known language in history; to date, they have all failed. An attempt to link Pictish to Basque has nothing whatever to recommend it.

http://www.omniglot.com/forum/viewtopic....

Answer 2

The Basques are a completely separate linguistic oddity, with no connection to any other language group.  Little is known of the picts, but there is no reason to suppose that they were in any way linked.