Euskara · Beginner 1(a)
Learn to type in Basque
Home row anchors
Settle both hands on the home row: A S D F for the left, J K L ; for the right.
These are the keys you press, and in Basque they produce exactly the letters printed on them — nothing is remapped and nothing is hidden behind a modifier.
Learning to type in Basque
Basque is written in the Latin alphabet. Every practice word here stays inside it: 26 letter keys and nothing beyond them.
Basque is written with the plain Latin alphabet and nothing else: not one of the 87 practice words here needs a character beyond the 26 letter keys. That makes it the shortest route into touch typing, because every key you learn is one you already have. The only thing between you and fluency is the habit of not looking down.
The distribution is lopsided, which is the useful part. Across the 87 practice words, 21 distinct characters appear — and the single most common accounts for about 16% of every letter typed, with the top ten covering roughly 80%. Drilling the frequent ones first is where almost all of the benefit is.
The speed test and the games draw on one bank of 87 common Basque words — 21 distinct characters in all, averaging 4.7 written units per word. The beginner course works outward from the home row in nine stages, and a drill is finished only when it has been typed cleanly three times — the default, adjustable in Settings. That repetition is the point: speed is a by-product of not making mistakes, and chasing it directly produces fast typists who then have to go back and fix everything.
Accuracy first is not a slogan, it is the ordering that works. Typing Basque quickly at a 90% hit rate is slower in practice than typing it steadily at 99%, because every error costs a backspace, a re-aim and the rhythm you had.
- Writing system
- Latin
- Keyboard layout
- Latin QWERTY family
- Direction
- left to right
- Practice words
- 87
- Distinct characters
- 21
- Average word
- 4.7 units
Characters you will press most in these Basque words
- a65
- i53
- r39
- e37
- n31
- o24
- t23
- u21
- z18
- k15
- l15
- b12
Counted across the 87 practice words — the characters worth getting right first.
eta da ez bat hau hori bere gure zure oso asko ondoA language with no relatives, typed on a Spanish keyboard
Basque is a language isolate — unrelated to any other language on earth, and spoken in its region before Indo-European arrived. Its written form uses the Latin alphabet and, since the standardisation of Euskara Batua in 1968, needs almost nothing beyond it.
The alphabet includes ñ and uses the digraphs dd, ll, rr, ts, tt, tx and tz. c, q, v, w and y appear only in loanwords and foreign names. Most Basque typists use a Spanish keyboard.
The letter x is worth a note: in Basque it spells a sound like English sh, which is why Basque place names look startling to Spanish readers and why the letter appears far more often than its position in the alphabet would suggest.
Questions about typing in Basque
Where should I start with Basque?
At the beginning of the beginner course, even if you already touch type in another language. The nine stages start on the home row and add keys outward, and the early ones are short. If Basque is a script you have never typed, the first stage is doing more work than it looks like — it is building the map, not the speed.
How long does learning to touch type in Basque take?
Longer than a week and shorter than you fear — and it depends far more on how often you practise than on how long each session runs. Short daily sessions beat long weekly ones by a wide margin, because what you are building is recall and recall decays between sessions. The streak counter exists for that reason.
Can I skip ahead to a later stage?
Yes, nothing is locked. It is usually a mistake, though, because each stage assumes the keys before it have stopped needing thought — and a stage practised on top of a shaky one tends to embed the shakiness rather than fix it.
Do I need a Basque keyboard?
No. Nothing in these Basque practice words leaves the 26 letter keys already printed on your keyboard, so there is nothing to install or configure.
Which Basque keyboard layout do these lessons use?
Latin QWERTY family. The 87 practice words between them use 21 of those 26, so 5 characters never come up in the practice text — these are the commonest words rather than an even sweep of the layout. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the keys you actually press, which for an input method are the Latin ones already printed on them.
What will I actually be typing in Basque?
Sequences of the keys each stage has introduced — single letters first, then pairs, then short chunks — written in the Latin QWERTY family layout. The point of the course is the position of a key rather than the vocabulary. The 87 common Basque words in the practice bank are what the speed test samples and what the games pull from, once the positions stop needing thought.
Is Basque hard to type?
No — Basque is about as gentle an introduction to touch typing as exists. No accents, no layout change, a fairly compact inventory of 21 characters across the practice bank, and every key already under your fingers. Whatever difficulty you meet is the difficulty of touch typing itself, not of this language.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
No, and it is free either way. Every lesson, drill, test and game works signed out, with your progress kept in this browser. An account adds three things only: your progress and settings follow you to another device, your streak survives clearing your browser data, and you can appear on the leaderboards under a name you choose.
Also in Basque: the speed test and typing games.
Other languages written in Latin: Catalan, Cebuano, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- The home rowASDF and JKL; are where every touch typist's hands return. What the home row is, why the bumps are there, and how to drill it properly.
- Do typing games help, and what do they measure?Games are a good diagnostic and a poor teacher. What pressure exposes that a calm test does not, and the limit of playing your way to a faster speed.
- Which finger types which keyThe standard finger assignment for every key on a QWERTY keyboard, why the index fingers carry two columns each, and the keys people get wrong.