Basque makatz “wild fruit tree, etc”

Azkue lists the following:

makatz (AN-Lezaka, B-Markina, G) “wild fruit tree”, (B) “wild pear tree”, (B?) “all pears in general”, (G-Itziar) “species of cherry”, (G-Andoain) “wild chestnut tree”.

So Basque makatz, now concentrated in Western dialects, is capable of referring to a variety of wild fruit trees, and also to the fruit itself. It can in addition be used as the second part of a compound that specifies that a fruit tree or fruit is wild, eg, madarimakatz “wild pear tree” and sagarmakatz “wild apple”.

(I am not quite sure what a wild chestnut tree is. All chestnut trees in Euskal Herria are non-native, having been introduced during Roman times. Hence the absence of a native word for “chestnut tree”.)

It is not unknown for languages to use the same word to refer both to a fruit tree and to the fruit itself (though English does not do this). For instance, Latin malus “apple tree” and malum “apple” (a word of probable Italian Vasconic origin). All that distinguishes the one from the other is the different grammatical gender.

Is Basque makatz “wild fruit tree, etc” related to mahats “grape?

It would seem so. Basque mahats is common to all dialects, though it lacks the medial /h/ in Southern dialects, and has a nasalised variant in Souletin. It is somewhat surprising that Basque has a native word for a non-native agricultural plant that was probably not actually cultivated in Euskal Herria until Roman times. What seems to have happened is that one particular Basque dialect adapted makatz (more properly, its Iberian antecedent) to mean “grape”. The adapting dialect would have preferred the consonants that developed into medial /h/ and final /ts/ in the modern language to those that developed into /k/ and /tz/. They were very similar and probably merged in and out of each other from village to village, valley to valley.

How should Basque makatz be analysed?

The initial /m/ is rather clearly the fossilised phytonymic class prefix, m=, while the final –tz is likely to be the sibilant suffix. Both these markers are common to all Vasconic languages. Other examples of the sibilant suffix attached to a Basque phytonym are gurbitx, gurbiza “madrone tree”, which sits alongside gurbe “wild apple tree” and gurbi “acerolle”, and urritz “hazel tree”, which sits alongside ur “hazel nut”.

If I am correct, we are looking at a marked form, *m-aka-tz, where the payload element is *aka.

The importance of fossilised markers to the study of Vasconic cannot be stressed too strongly. Where one is in possession of the encryption keys, what was hitherto opaque becomes clear. The m= prefix and sibilant suffix are two such encryption keys.

Does Basque makatz have cognates in other Vasconic languages?

I believe so. Consider the following:

Greek mekon “poppy”

Russian mak “poppy”

French maquis “kind of scrub”

In the above examples, the sibilant suffix is missing.

In the next example, both markers are missing:

English oak, German Eiche, Swedish ek, etc “oak tree”.

In Indo-European, this word, in its unmarked form, is isolated in Germanic and is a likely Vasconic substrate loanword.

Some historical linguists maintain that the Germanic word for “oak” is Indo-European. It is almost certainly not. Pokorny states that it is cognate with Greek aigilops “kind of oak” and possibly Latin aesculus “evergreen oak”. Wrong. None of the Germanic words exhibits medial /g/. They all exhibit either /k/ or /x/. Moreover, none has a second syllable that exhibits /l/. Latin aesculus is rather clearly an Italian Vasconic substrate loanword cognate with Basque ezki, Iberian iski, iske “linden tree”, plus the Latin diminutive suffix, -ulus. Besides, none of the Germanic words exhibits the /sk/ cluster.

To get to the truth, one identifies the encryption keys and applies them.

I am aware of at least one attestation of a corresponding Iberian word to Basque makatz. That is to be found on the Third Bronze Plate of Botorrita, which is written in the Hispano-Celtic modified East Iberian Script. This text makes two mentions of a place, Makesko.