No: Duolingo has no Basque course, from English or any other language. Why Spanish and French won't help, where to learn it instead, and your first words.
Author: QlangoPublished: 4 min read
No, Duolingo doesn't have Basque. There's no Basque course on Duolingo for English speakers, and none from any other language: we read Duolingo's full course catalogue on 11 November 2026, and Basque isn't in it.
A disclosure: we make Qlango, a language app that teaches Basque, so we have an interest here. The Duolingo fact above is plain fact, and you can check it yourself on Duolingo's course list.
No, because there is nothing close to offer. Basque, euskara to its speakers, is a language isolate: no relationship to any other living language has ever been proven. Duolingo teaches Spanish and French, the languages spoken all around the Basque Country, and they're useful there, since almost every Basque speaker also speaks one of them. They just won't teach you any Basque. Apart from a layer of borrowings such as liburu (book) and eliza (church), little of the vocabulary and almost none of the grammar carries over from Spanish, French or English. Babbel and Busuu don't offer Basque either (checked November 2026).
Qlango teaches Basque at A1 and A2, the first two levels of the CEFR scale. At these levels you introduce yourself, talk about daily life in simple sentences and get through everyday exchanges about your family, your work and the place you live.
In a lesson you work through short Basque example sentences, each shown with the translation in the language you learn from. You answer them in several ways, such as flashcards, picking one of two answers, matching pairs, putting scrambled words in order, writing what you hear and writing the translation yourself, which is where you have to choose between etxera (to the house) and etxetik (from the house) on your own. An AI voice reads each example aloud, and you can slow it down. Every lesson comes back after one, two, four and eight days and then once more, and examples you needed a hint for return in harder questions later.
You pick the language you learn from: English, or your own native language if you'd rather.
The feature that surprises learners most is the ergative. English uses the same form for the subject of every verb. Basque doesn't: when a verb has an object, its subject takes the ending -k.
| Basque | English |
|---|---|
| Gizona etorri da. | The man has arrived. |
| Gizonak ogia jan du. | The man has eaten the bread. |
| Gizonak etorri dira. | The men have arrived. |
| Gizonek ogia jan dute. | The men have eaten the bread. |
Look at gizonak. In the second sentence it's "the man", with a -k because he ate something. In the third it's "the men", because -ak is also the plural. The auxiliary at the end settles it: da and dira go with verbs that have no object, du and dute with verbs that do, and dira and dute tell you there's more than one.
| Basque | Roughly | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Kaixo | kai-sho | hi |
| Egun on | eh-goon on | good morning |
| Eskerrik asko | es-keh-rreek as-ko | thank you |
| Mesedez | meh-seh-des | please |
| Bai, ez | bai, es | yes, no |
| Barkatu | bar-ka-too | sorry, excuse me |
| Agur | ah-goor | goodbye |
The x in kaixo is "sh", and the tx in pintxo, the bar snack, is "ch". On the counter they're pintxoak, with the same -ak you met above, this time as a plain plural. Our full guide to learning Basque covers the letters, the case endings, the auxiliary verbs and a plan for your first month.
No. As of November 2026, Duolingo has no Basque course from English or from any other language.
No. Spanish or French will help you get around the Basque Country, but Basque isn't related to either, so neither course teaches you any Basque.
It depends on where you're starting. If you want a course organised by CEFR level that starts from zero in English, with a fixed review schedule, Qlango teaches Basque at A1 and A2. Duolingo, Babbel and Busuu don't offer Basque (checked November 2026).
Qlango is free to download on iPhone and Android, and you can start your first Basque lesson without creating an account. It also works in your browser.
Learn the sounds of x, tx, tz and z, a handful of greetings and the article -a first. Then add the place endings -n, -ra and -tik, and short sentences with the ergative -k, learned as whole phrases rather than from charts.
We can't say. Duolingo adds and removes courses over time, so check its catalogue if you're reading this much later.
Basque isn't the only gap. See every language Duolingo doesn't teach, or compare Qlango and Duolingo side by side. Your first Basque lesson takes about five minutes, and it starts with kaixo.
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