TIMED PRACTICE · Euskara
Basque typing speed test
Flow like a stream. Space commits a word, backspace fixes the last one. Tab or Esc restarts.
Testing your Basque typing speed
Basque is written in the Latin alphabet. Every practice word here stays inside it: 26 letter keys and nothing beyond them.
There is no mapping problem in Basque. The alphabet is the one printed on your keyboard, the practice words draw on 21 distinct characters, and every one of them is a key your fingers can already find by accident. What is left is the harder half of touch typing: doing it without checking.
Speed in Basque comes from prediction more than from finger speed: a familiar word is one motion, an unfamiliar one is a letter at a time. Drilling common words trains the shapes the language repeats, and "a" is the character you will press most.
Not all keys are worth the same. Ten characters carry around 80% of everything you will type in these Basque drills, and the remaining 11 share what is left. That is why the course introduces its material a little at a time rather than all at once: the early characters do a disproportionate amount of the work.
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. A test can run for a fixed duration or a fixed number of words, with punctuation and numbers optional. Words are drawn at random each time, so no two runs are the same and there is nothing to memorise. The result reports net speed, accuracy, how steady you were across the run, and the five keys you got wrong most often.
- 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
Do I need a Basque keyboard?
No — and no layout change either. Basque spells its 87 most common words entirely from a-z, so whatever keyboard you are reading this on is already a Basque keyboard.
How is typing speed measured here?
In words per minute, where a "word" is a fixed five characters rather than an actual word. That convention is what makes a WPM figure comparable between languages whose real words are very different lengths. The number reported is net WPM: uncorrected mistakes are subtracted, so it reflects text you actually produced correctly.
Why is my Basque speed lower than my English speed?
Usually vocabulary rather than keys. The motions are identical, but you predict an unfamiliar word more slowly than a familiar one, and typing speed is mostly prediction. It closes with exposure.
Is the Basque typing test the same every time?
No. Words are drawn at random from the Basque bank on every run, so there is nothing to memorise and a second attempt is a fresh test rather than a rehearsal. You can fix the duration or the word count, turn punctuation and numbers on, or paste your own text.
Which Basque keyboard layout do these tests 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?
87 of the most common words in Basque, drawn at random. They use 21 distinct characters between them and average 4.7 written units each, with the longest running to about 10. Short, frequent words are used on purpose: they are the ones your hands will meet most often outside a lesson, so the practice transfers.
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?
Neither. There is no paid tier and no required sign-in — the 87 Basque practice words, the speed test and all three games are the whole product, available immediately. Signing in is worth it only if you practise on more than one device.
Also in Basque: lessons 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.