From: topp8564-AT-mail.usyd.edu.au
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 10:55:54 +1100
Subject: AUT: Basque


On 27/2/2003 9:48 AM, "Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba-AT-online.no> wrote:

> That is far more more than what I remember the paper of
> "Herri Batasuna"  used to do.  ("Herri Batasuna used to be the
> name for the political, and then legal wing of ETA ) 95 per
> cent of their paper or more was written in Spanish. Due of
> course to that the majority of  Basque for the last hundred
> years at least, have not spoken Euskara, which must  have
> been one reason for the Basque nationalists movement's
> obsession with "blood" and "race" -- "the purest there is".
> The language skills in Euskara must have improved con-
> siderably in the last decade or two, at least as far as reading
> capabilities are concerned. But in a copy of the paper of
> the small nationalist, and pro-ETA union, L.A.B,  I have from
> 1994, there was still just two small articles in Euskara, the
> rest is in Spanish.
> 
> Otherwise it easy to be against both the state oppression
> and ETA (as well as the autonomous Basque police forces).
> They need each other. It is tragi-comedy.
> 
> Harald

Steady on, mate. The Summer Institute of Linguistics Ethnologue has it that 
580,000 Basque speakers in Spain, in a region with a population of 2,000,000. 
40% of those were born to Basque parents. So, a little under 2/3 of modern 
ethnic Basques is Euzkadi speak Basque. Irish Gaelic, by comparison, is known 
by 13% of the Irish population. (Nynorsk, the artificially - and 
nationalisticaly - constructed Norwegian, is known by about 30% of Norwegians.) 

It is a bit reckless to dig into the lack of Basque native speakers between the 
age of 20 and 50, since that corresponds to the the period when Franco 
repressed the language.

I also don't see how language is any more 'natural' or less usable for the 
purposes of bigotry than 'blood' or 'race'.

SIL also notes that Euzkadi is the term for the Basque region, not for the 
language.

Thiago










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