Locale Eu 001

Reference data for the Basque locale — endonym Euskara, written in the Latin script, left-to-right (LTR).

Identifiers

• BCP 47 tag: eu-001
• ISO 639-1: eu
• ISO 639-3: eus
• Script: Latn (Latin)
• Region: 001 (World)
• Text direction: ltr — left-to-right (LTR)

Speakers (approximate)

• L1 (native): 750,000
• L2 (additional): 250,000
• L1+L2 (total): 1,000,000

Regional variants

This is the base/macro locale for Basque. Region-specific variants in this dataset:

• Locale Eu Es (Basque (Spain))

Pluralization

CLDR plural categories for this locale: one, other (2 forms).

• one — n = 1 (e.g. 1)
• other — everything else (e.g. 0, 2~16, 100, 1000, …)

See Unicode Messageformat for writing plural messages using these categories.

Translating into this locale

Basque (euskara) is a language isolate with a unified standard, Euskara Batua, set by Euskaltzaindia (the Royal Academy of the Basque Language). Translate the idea into Basque grammar rather than copying Spanish or English structure.

Translate ideas, not words.

• Basque is verb-final (SOV) and agglutinative; case endings are attached to the last word of a noun phrase ("etxe handi batean", "in a big house"). Reorder English sentences and move the verb to the end.
• Basque is ergative: the subject of a transitive verb takes the ergative "-k" ("Zuk fitxategia ezabatu duzu"). Check which noun takes which case.
• The auxiliary verb agrees with the subject, the direct object, and the indirect object; the conjugation encodes all three. Machine translation often gets the auxiliary wrong.
• Basque uses postpositions and case suffixes instead of prepositions, so "to Bilbao" is "Bilbora", "from Bilbao" is "Bilbotik".
• Re-express idioms by meaning; calques from Spanish deserve checking by a native editor.

Grammar.

• After a numeral the noun stays singular: "bi liburu" (two books), not a plural.
• The definite article is a suffix ("-a"): "liburua"; the plural definite is "-ak" ("liburuak").
• There is no grammatical gender for nouns, but informal verb forms (hika) distinguish masculine and feminine addressees.
• Focus position: the focused element sits immediately before the verb.

Register.

• "Zu" is the standard second-person form used in UI and writing; "hi" (hika) is the informal intimate form (rarely written in UI); "berori" is a very formal form that is almost never used in products.
• Use the verbal noun ("-tzea"/"-tea") or the imperative for UI commands, following the project convention.

Orthography and typography.

• Digraphs "tx", "ts", and "tz" stand for single sounds and are not split. The letter "ñ" appears; "c", "q", "v", and "w" occur only in loanwords and names.
• Quotation marks: guillemets or standard double quotes are used; follow the project's convention.
• Numbers: decimal comma and period for thousands in most publications; dates "2026ko urriaren 17a" with the genitive suffix and the definite article.
• Use official Basque terminology from Euskaltzaindia and the Basque Government's term bank (Euskalterm).

Common pitfalls

• Translating word by word and keeping English or Spanish word order.
• Using the wrong case or an incorrect auxiliary.
• Pluralizing nouns after numerals.
• Mixing Batua with dialect forms.
• Using "euskera" instead of "euskara" (the Batua form).

Learn more

• Locale for BCP 47 identifiers, locale-sensitive formatting, pluralization, and text-direction concepts that apply across all locales.
• Unicode Messageformat for writing plural/selection messages correctly for this locale's grammar.
• Euskaltzaindia, Euskaltzaindiaren Hiztegia (https://www.euskaltzaindia.eus)
• Microsoft Localization Style Guide, Basque (https://aka.ms/basque-styleguide)