The pouring rain slowed down my walking so I arrived at Senpere too late to get the last bus to Donibane Lohizune (Saint Jean de Luz). As usual in rural areas, especially on the weekend the service is not the same as in the cities. As it turned out, missing the bus was a stroke of luck because I met a bunch of Basque speakers.
I was stuck there in Senpere. I went to the bar, saw a group of people and asked if they knew where I could stay for the night. They were younger than me, in their mid twenties. "Euskaraz al dakizue?". They did. They were the ones who talked about the far right graffiti, and their response to that was 'fils de pute'. Basque speakers tend to use Spanish/French swear words even though there are Basque swear words, contrary to the myth that there aren't. It's just that Basque speakers tell me that they somehow lack 'force' or are sufficiently vulgar...
One of them was the nephew of the mayor in Senpere, and after a bit of asking around and prodding, they found me a place in the pilgrim's albergue, even though I wasn't there as a pilgrim, saving me nearly 70 euros in the hotel. Who says speaking Basque doesn't pay...
I had the albergue all to myself and when I checked the guestbook, the last entry from a pilgrim was from the 22th, a week earlier. The Camino still has pilgrims...just less. Judging by the entries, most pilgrims were French, German, Dutch.
After showering, I went and rejoined the group at the bar. They were a group of eight guys born and raised in Senpere. Seven were Basque speakers, only one did not speak Basque despite being Basque and his father being a Basque speaker. For some reason he was not raised in it. And he provided me a fascinating view into the power that one person can have in language dynamics. Because I told them that I live in the south Basque Country, they kind of took it for granted that I didn't speak French, which is also kind of true, and so they spoke Basque with me only. I didn't try to disabuse them of the notion that I didn't speak French.
But as their friend was a French speaker and did not understand Basque to a high level, the language of conversation slid slowly but inexorably to a mix of Basque and French, until I would speak and then by my presence I would pull the language back to Basque.
If only that one friend had learned Basque...! One person has the power to change the language habits of all of his friends. And the collective pull of all of his friends and family weren't enough to convince him to learn Basque, because in Senpere there are classes for adults. Instead he had travelled to South America and learned Spanish. Learning a foreign language before learning his own language...?
The Basque speakers were native speakers, having learned it from childhood. Indeed, one of them told me that he did not speak French until he was 8 years old, which is great. I can't think of many places in the French state where this is still possible.
His mother is from Bilbao, his father from Senpere. North-South marriages or indeed southerners coming to live in the North are not uncommon, I met several southern Basques in just those two days. One was a retiree who had been living in Sara for about 11 years, originally from Donostia. He was gardening and I said hello, g'day as I passed by, he said the same back (in Basque) so I turned right around. I wasn't going to miss an opportunity to speak Basque...
I try not to 'force' a conversation. I'm a quiet, timid person. But I do try to keep an open ear and I'm not afraid to talk to random people.
Another North-South mix was a couple. The husband was from Donostia, the wife from Sara, their three kids spoke northern Basque. I didn't hear a word of French from them during the whole day.
This was in Sara, because as it turned out on that day, there was a small market in the plaza and a marathon.
In the 20th century, smuggling products and even people through the mountains or across the river Bidasoa at night was a business in which a significant proportion of able bodied Basque men engaged in, on both sides, risking imprisonment and even death as the border guards were liable to shoot. Hence the mock up below with the guardia civil and his famous tricorn hat. To commemorate the smuggling trade, the marathon has this theme.
Basque speakers from around the region came out in force, including a camera team from the north Basque Country media company Kanaldude. It was a safe space to be bathed in Basque.
There were mothers from the local ikastola, Olhain, who set up a tent and sold food and drinks to raise funds. Normally the Herri Urrats festival held in Senpere, would fund the ikastolak but it was cancelled this year so they're in a tight spot. I was happy to eat and drink as much as I could to help. They were making taloa, lomoa, txistorra ardoa, sagardoa, etc. Except that in the north, wine is called arnoa. Due to d~n being articulated in the same places it's easy for these consonants to vary according to dialect.
Better than Australian sausage sizzles that's for sure, Australians just limit themselves to sad sausages + white bread + onions + ketchup.
I talked with many of the mothers working in the tent, who were all either Basque speakers or learning Basque. I was really impressed with a mother who did not speak Basque perfectly but was learning Basque for the sake of her children, a kind of reverse transmission process, whereby the children teach the parents or the parents learn Basque to help their children in their schoolwork. Or to ensure a Basque speaking household.
A sign on a house, as I was leaving Senpere:
Lagun onekin, orenak labur
With good friends, the hours (are) short
I haven't said anything about the dialects. In Sara and Senpere they speak a Nafar-lapurtera dialect, highly intelligible even for a learner like me who has not had much contact with other dialects from the north. What's different can be understood via context or just...by asking. For example when the guys were calling around to find me a place, they used the word atzeman which surprised me because where I live it means to capture, seize (physically) or to understand, seize upon (metaphorically). By context it must have meant to find, and I commented on it to them, "aizue, atzeman hitzak aurkitu esan nahi du ?" to which they said yes. That is to say, I asked them if atzeman meant aurkitu and they confirmed it for me.
There are southern words that they encountered before and recognise, but they themsleves don't use. It's probably because north Basques get exposed a lot more to south Basque than vice versa. When the nephew told me that he was related to the mayor (auzapeza or mera), he asked me how mayor was said in the south, fearing I didn't understand his word. I said it was alkatea. At that point he was like oh yeeeeah.
From my limited experience with Basque, the experience or sensation of interdialectical navigation between the central dialects spoken in Nafarroa (both upper and lower), Gipuzkoa and Lapurdi) is that of navigating between the different Spanish dialects. I say, experience or feeling because in linguistic terms I think that there's more dialectical difference between these Basque dialects than between the furthest apart Spanish dialects, BUT my personal ressenti is that the same strategies used by an Argentinian to talk to a Mexican, is the same as that used by Basques in these provinces. You don't have to study the other person's dialect, you can go by intuition, whereas I feel with Western Basque and Zuberoan, it requires more effort, maybe even conscious studying or prior knowledge of the differences.
I mean it's not anything different from what Norwegians do everyday. It's normal.