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Euskara is Europe's oldest language, yet is teetering on the brink of extinction. Spoken in the autonomous communities of Navarre in northern Spain and the Basque Country across northern Spain and south-western France, Euskara is a linguistic mystery: it has no known origin or relation to any other language, an anomaly that has stumped linguistic experts for ages. The distinct language is a point of pride for Basques. An estimated 700,000 of them, or 35% of the Basque population, speak it today. Euskara has been shaped over time by the Basques' close contact with nature. The language contains varied vocabulary for landscapes, animals, the wind, the sea ‒ and about 100 ways to say 'butterfly'. The language may still be around, in part, because its early speakers were geographically secluded from the rest of the world by the Pyrenees.

euskara, basque: thought to be the closest to Stone Age Indo-European language, still spoken today