Recently I've decided to seek out some youtube clips in Basque (euskera) for the first time, and what surprised me a bit was how similar the intonation of the language seems to be to the intonation of Spanish (Castellano). Not identical, of course, but there are definitely striking similarities in intonation for two completely different and non-related languages. The similarities might be easier to notice to people who are not native speakers of either. Or, who knows, maybe I'm just imagining things
Anyway, my question is: if there really are similarities, how come? Is it due to Castellano influencing Basque? Or is it maybe due to Basque influences on Vulgar Latin and Old Castillian during the development of the Castillian language?
The first option sounds much more likely, but I do remember being told that it was Basque influence that caused the dropping of the "f", which other Romance languages still retain, in the beginning of many words in Spanish, so I'm curious about what other influence Basque might have had in those early stages. But then again, it was only spoken in a relatively small area even back then, wasn't it? Or was the Basque-speaking area much larger pre-Romanization? And speaking of Romanzation, how much do we know about other Iberian pre-Romance languages,apart from Basque? I think some of them were Celtic? And the others? Could some of them have been related to Basque, maybe?
The first option sounds much more likely, but I do remember being told that it was Basque influence that caused the dropping of the "f", which other Romance languages still retain, in the beginning of many words in Spanish, so I'm curious about what other influence Basque might have had in those early stages. But then again, it was only spoken in a relatively small area even back then, wasn't it? Or was the Basque-speaking area much larger pre-Romanization? And speaking of Romanzation, how much do we know about other Iberian pre-Romance languages,apart from Basque? I think some of them were Celtic? And the others? Could some of them have been related to Basque, maybe?