Basque, which in Basque is called Euskara, is the language of the Basque people, the inhabitants of the Basque Country (located in northeastern Spain and southwestern France). The French call the language Basque or Euskara, and the Spanish call it several ways such as el Vasco, la lengua vasca and el euskera.
Basque is considered a "language isolate", meaning it’s not related to any other language in the world, and it’s also the only surviving pre-Indo-European language in Western Europe, which makes it one of the oldest roots in this region.
According to a sociolinguistic survey of all Basque provinces of the year 2006, there are currently 850,000 Basque language fluent speakers and 515,000 passive speakers (they understand it but they hardly speak it).
In northern Spain, the Basque Country covers Navarre and some parts of the Spanish Autonomous Communities, and in France, it covers the western half of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department. In some of the Spanish Basque language speaking regions, the Basque has a co-official status, but in the French Basque Country territories it is not an official language.
In France, for example, French citizens who are Basque language native speakers can’t use their native language in court, while Spanish citizens are allowed to do it with a translator due to the co-official status of the language in their country. This is one of the reasons why Basque language translation and interpreting is so important, and why it has to be performed by true experts.
The Euskara has six main dialects, three in Spain and three in France: Bizkaian, Gipuzkoan and Upper Navvarrese in Spain, and Lapurdian, Zuberoan and Lower Navarrese in France. Laso, in the late 1960s, the Basque Language Academy developed a standardized form of the Basque language called Batua, which is majorly spoken by the inhabitants of the Spanish Basque Country.