Basque or Euskera

Today, it´s the turn to talk about the language of the Basque: Euskera

Basque (endonym: Euskara, IPA: [eus̺ˈkaɾa]) is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 27% of Basques in all territories (714,136 out of 2,648,998).[1] Of these, 663,035 live in the Spanish part of the Basque Country and the remaining 51,100 live in the French part.[1]Basque is considered to be a language isolate.[2]


In academic discussions of the distribution of Basque in Spain and France, it is customary to refer to three ancient provinces in France and four Spanish provinces. Native speakers are concentrated in a contiguous area including parts of the Spanish autonomous communities of the Basque Country and Navarre and in the western half of the French département of Pyrénées-Atlantiques. The Basque Autonomous Community is an administrative entity within the binational ethnographic Basque Country incorporating the traditional Spanish provinces of Biscay, Gipuzkoa, and Álava, which retain their existence as politico-administrative divisions.


Gipuzkoa, most of Biscay, a few municipalities of Álava and the northern area of Navarre formed the core of the remaining Basque-speaking area before measures were introduced in the 1980s to strengthen the language. By contrast, most of Álava, the western part of Biscay and central and southern areas of Navarre are predominantly populated by native speakers of Spanish language, either because Basque had been replaced by Spanish along the centuries, in some areas (most of Álava and central Navarre), or because it was possibly never spoken there, in other areas (Encartaciones and southeastern Navarre).


Like the other languages of Spain except Spanish (Castilian), the public use of Basque was severely restricted and regarded as a sign of separatism during the main part of the 20th century (namely under Francoist Dictatorship and Miguel Primo de Rivera's rule).[citation needed]


In southwestern France, the ancient Basque-populated provinces were Labourd, Lower Navarre, and Soule. These territories and Béarnwere consolidated into a single département in 1790 under the name Basses-Pyrénées, a name which persisted until 1970's when it was changed to Pyrénées-Atlantiques.


A standardized form of the Basque language, called Euskara Batua, was developed by the Basque Language Academy in the late 1960s. Euskara Batua was created so that Basque language could be used—and easily understood by all Basque speakers—in formal situations (education, mass media, literature), and this is its main use today. The role of this standard Basque language depends on the linguistic educational model of each region and each school. In most areas of the Spanish Basque Country, the educational Model D, where all subjects are taught in Basque, except "Spanish language and literature" (which is taught in Spanish) is now the predominant model. In Navarre the majority of the students follows the Model G (all subjects in Spanish), but Model D makes up almost 26%.[3] In France, the Basque language school Seaska and the association for a bilingual (Basque and French) schooling Ikasbi meet a wide range of Basque language educational needs up to the Sixth Form, while often struggling to surmount financial and administrative constraints.


Apart from this standardized version, there are five main Basque dialects: Bizkaian, Gipuzkoan, and Upper Navarrese in Spain, andNavarrese–Lapurdian and Zuberoan (in France). Although they take their names from the mentioned historic provinces, the dialect boundaries are not congruent with province boundaries.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The online encyclopedia of writing systems and languages
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/basque.htm



Languages across Europe. BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/european_languages/languages/basque.shtml