Bla bla bla

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nooj
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Sat Nov 19, 2022 11:48 pm

A poem by Manuel Curros Enríquez, one of the most important writers of the 19th century Galician literary Renaissance. He published this poem in 1874, and as you can see from the notes, there are three time periods being referenced.

The first is in reference to the Spanish War of Independence, the second refers to the long fight against royal absolutism and the hold of the Church. The poem was published as the 1st Spanish Republic fell which lead to the restauration of the Bourbon monarchy. So it seems that the grandfather has been keeping that sickle nice and sharp in preparation for this time, for another battle for liberation. But this time, it will be his grandson wielding it.

Galician poets were hardcore!

Image

The grandfather's sickle

Three times I have sharpened the sickle.
The first time was when
The field and the crops were set aflame
And it reaped so many French heads
That you could not fit them on the threshing floor in mounds.

The second time was when
The Motherland was a prisoner
Of theocratic interests
After a thousand battles and setbacks
It ripped apart the vile flag
of absolutist power.

And I am sharpening it again for the third time now...
"What for, grandpa?", the grandson exclaims,
as he stands in front of him, with his shirt untucked.

"So that you can reap the fruit that I have sown",
replied the restless grandfather,
"and which now is ripening".
And a skeletal smile appeared on his face.
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Thu Nov 24, 2022 12:16 am

A song called 'In Castilla as in Euskadi' written by the Basque writer Mikel Azurmendi and sung by the Basque singer Imanol in 1973. The two were literary/musical giants of their time.



Ene Segurako aitonak

ogia behar zuenean
Castillara joaten zen
jornalaritzara,
morrontzara.


When my grandfather from Segura
Was in need of bread
He used to go to Castilla
As a labourer
As a servant

From the second half of the 20th century, the farmers of the Basque Country stopped growing wheat (too much effort for too little benefit), and the flour that they used for bread came from Spain...such as Castilla.

Bere igitaia trebeenetakoa omen zen
bai, hori bai…
Hamar haur zituen gosez etxean
bai!, hori bai!


It was said that his sickle was one of the most skillfully wielded
Yes, yes indeed
He had ten hungry children waiting at home
Yes, yes indeed

Castillako jornalariek
ogia nahi dutenean
Goierrira joaten dira
jornalaritzara,
fabriketara.


When the labourers of Castilla of today
Are in the need of bread
They go to Goierri
As workers
To the factories

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Spain came to the Basque Country (including the North Basque Country!) in the last century, in search of a better life in the fast industrialising regions. Including in this case Goierri, a region in the province of Gipuzkoa, which I have previously described as the 'heartland' of Gipuzkoa. It's where Segura is.

These people of course did not speak Basque, and the immigration which accentuated during the dictatorship took place at a time when it was impossible (when it was purposely made impossible by the Spanish language supremacist dictatorship) to linguistically integrate these immigrants in the South Basque Country, thereby permanently changing the linguistic landscape in favour of Spanish. However, instead of throwing around recriminations, Azurmendi points out that these 'foreigners' were moving to the Basque Country for the same reasons that Basque immigrants have themselves moved for centuries: work, to feed the family, for better opportunities. If they had control over their means of production, they would not have to leave home.

Kanpokoak pizkorrak omen dira peontzan
bai, hori bai…
Hamaika haur badute gosez etxean
bai!, hori bai!


Outsiders are said to be vigorous in their work
Yes, yes indeed
They have so many hungry children waiting at home
Yes, yes indeed

Castillako soroez eta Goierriko tximiniez
ene aitona eta kastellanoak
jabe bazeneza,
euren haurren haseak

ez lukete ihes gehiagorik ikusiko!
ez Castillan, ez Euskadin.


If my grandfather and the Castillians
Were the owners of the fields of Castilla and the chimneys of Goierri
Their satisfied and full children
Would not have to witness any more exiling
Neither in Castilla, nor in Euskadi.

There's some textual difficulties here, well, grammatical incongruences.

It should be soroen and tximinien (owners OF the fields and chimneys), not the instrumental case.

And jabe bazeneza means 'if my grandfather and Castillians, you were owners of their fields and chimneys', which doesn't mesh easily with the next line 'their satisfied children would...'. It should be balira, 'if my grandfather and the Castillians, they were owners of their own fields and chimneys'.

Euren haurren haseak doesn't make any sense. First, let's update it to match modern orthography, which would be euren haurren aseak (without the h in the word ase). Before the standardisation of Basque, and in the early modern period, you see h popping up in all sorts of contexts where it is not warranted, even added in non-etymological positions (hypercorrection) because for the southern dialects of Basque, the aspiration was lost several centuries ago.

You might think that the mistake lies in the aseak (in the absolutive case), when it calls for the ergative case aseek. However, and this might come as a surprise to many people who might have heard of its ergative-absolutive nature, many Basque dialects don't distinguish morphologically between the ergative and the absolutive case in the plural. That is the case in many Basque dialects in Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia. Here is an example from the variety of the town of Azpeitia, where you can see clearly no distinction between gizónak or lagúnek in the absolutive or ergative cases in the plural.

Image

The standard Basque that we know and love, however, follows other Basque dialects where the case is distinguished, so if you learn standard Basque, you will learn the variety according to whose rules, it should be aseek.

That is not my concern. No, the real confusing thing is the genitive case in haurren, put simply it doesn't make any sense here in connection with aseak, not in any dialect. I believe that Azurmendi was attempting to use ase as a singular noun, 'hunger' a substantive use of an adjective, in which case it would be 'if my grandfather and the Castillians were owners of their own fields and their own chimneys, the hunger of their children...', but this option runs headfirst into an insuperable contradiction, because the very next line says 'ez lukete ihes gehiagorik ikusiko' 'they would not have to see any more exiling', that is, there's a number disagreement between the verb and the noun. You cannot have hunger (sg) and 'they would not have to see' (pl). In order to make that fit, the verb would have to be ez luke). Couple this with the fact that it's uncommon in the Basque tradition to substantivise the adjective ase, and I think the better option is the song is talking about their hungry children, that is, the adjective hungry is still acting like an adjective.

If I had to rewrite the last stanza, it would be:

Castillako soroen eta Goierriko tximinien
ene aitona eta kastellanoak
jabe balira,
euren haur aseek
ez lukete ihes gehiagorik ikusiko!
ez Castillan, ez Euskadin.

The question remains, why an author of Basque literature so esteemed as Mikel Azurmendi wrote such shonky lyrics, and why a Basque singer like Imanol kept on singing such shonky lyrics when obviously it would have sounded bad to him everytime that he sang it. I have no definite answers. Maybe Azurmendi wrote it perfectly, but when he wrote it down and passed it on to Imanol, it was misread, and Imanol kept it due to simple tradition. Maybe Azurmendi was writing it, got distracted and forgot who was the subject and who wasn't. Maybe he was stone cold drunk. It's not just me who is puzzled, astonished that I had 'stumbled' upon something so obviously incorrect, I passed it on to my friends, all of whom are native Basque speakers and/or Basque published authors in their own right, and their opinions match mine.
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby Kullman » Thu Nov 24, 2022 1:26 am

Three times I have sharpened the sickle.


I find interesting, beside the archaic XIX century galician, so different of the language we speak right now, than the sickle is only named in the title.
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Thu Dec 15, 2022 3:00 am

According to 2021 census data, there are 297 397 foreigners living in the South Basque Country.

That is out of a total population of 2 849 772 residents in total, which means that 10.4% of the population are born overseas (this is not counting the internal immigrants from within the Spanish state, i.e. Spanish immigrants!). For example, in the Foral Community of Navarra, 16.8% of the population are immigrants, of which the majority are Moroccans (17 732), Ecuadorians (14 938) and Colombians (11 273).

Looking at the provinces of Gipuzkoa, Bizkaia and Araba, the American immigrants are the most numerous: you have people coming from countries like the aforementioned Ecuador and Colombia, but also Nicaragua, Honduras, Venezuela, Paraguay and Bolivia. Next comes the European immigrants, especially from Portugal and Romania. In the third place are African immigrants, who come from countries like Morocco, Algeria, Senegal and Nigeria.

This is also reflected in the languages that they bring with them. Here is a chart with the most spoken languages in the province of Bizkaia, other than Basque and Spanish. There are some problems with this chart. For example, they put Mandarin and Cantonese, but it's much more likely that many of these immigrants speak Wenzhounese, based on their point of origin in China.

Image

As you can see, the South Basque Country has an important part of its population made up of people who were born outside of the Basque Country, either in Spain or outside of Spain altogether, which makes it all the more imperative to teach adult immigrants the Basque language. This is a task which I'm sad to say the EAE and Navarran governments haven't even started to fail at doing, because fail at doing implies trying which I don't see evidence of, just as they don't seriously attempt to teach adult native residents the Basque language either.

Keep in mind that the birth rates of the Basque Country, just as in other parts of Europe, are falling dramatically. In 2021, in the EAE (the Autonomus Community of the Basque Country), 18.2% of the population were under 20 years old. By 2036, that is expected to fall to 15.3%. Those over 65 years old, however, are expected to be 29.3% of the population, six points higher than it was last year. This means that for the South Basque Country's population to increase, as it is expected to do, it will be immigration that does the heavy lifting. Indeed, the average age of an immigrant coming to the South Basque Country is 33.4, whereas the average age of a native born in the South Basque Country is 46.6. The difference is clear.

In this context, one of the important factors that will condition the present and future survival of the Basque language and the success or failure of the language revitalisation experiment is whether or not the language is successfully transmitted to the adult immigrant population, and to their children. I'd love to be able to say that the South Basque education system is working perfectly fine, and that the majority of immigrant children - or the majority of native children, for that matter - who pass through the education system come out as 'Basque speakers'. I cannot. It would be a lie. Even many South Basque children who do the entirety of their scolarity in the immersion Basque model do not emerge at the end with a solid level of Basque.

I think I've mentioned that in the South Basque Country - in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (EAE) at least, since Navarra is a bit different - there are several different kinds or models of education, depending on what language is used as the means of education. Parents choose, depending on whether the model is offered by the school or not.

There is Model A, in which all of the subjects are taught in Spanish, with one subject Basque, treated like a foreign language. In the 1983-1984 school year in the EAE, 75% of Basque children were educated in this model, 186 500 students. Predictably, almost no one left school being able to speak Basque. For decades in the democratic period of Spain (and in the dictatorship? Forget about it!) the Basque school education system churned out hundreds of thousands of monolingual Spanish speaking Basque children.

Today, after 38 years, only 17% of students take this Model A. Still too high, and in my opinion the whole Model should be completely abolished. Something this important should not be left to the choice of parents. There should not be any 'choice' as to learn Basque or not. In this respect, the Québécois and the Catalans have the right idea, they have no equivalent of Model A. For the vast majority of kids, you have to learn IN French and IN Catalan, end of story.

To give you an idea of how absolutely useless this Model A is, education department internal data from between 2017 and 2019 shows that 98.4% of the 14 year old secondary students who were enrolled in Model A, that is to say, students who were 2 years away from the termination of their secondary education, did not have the basic B2 level in Basque that they were supposed to have.

For some, if not many, Basque people, school will be the only opportunity to have sustained contact with the language. The moment that these kids leave school, it is very possible that they will never have to speak Basque or almost never hear Basque, ever again. Which makes it all the more imperative that their length of exposure to Basque, and being forced to use it, in school, should be as high as possible. We should abolish Model A and make Model D obligatory.

What is Model D? It is immersion education in Basque, all subjects are taught in Basque with the exception of one subject, Spanish. In 1983-1984, this model only accounted for 16% of the total student population, but it has had an extraordinary growth to encompass 65% today, meaning that a majority of Basque children in the EAE theoretically learn Basque from primary to secondary education. You can see this historical shift in the following charts:

Image

Image

However, immersion education itself is not always successful. It is a profound mistake to believe that immersion education is completely effective. According to the same internal data, 4 out of 10 14 year old students who study in Model D, still did not meet their basic Basque level. That's not to say that in the 2 years that they have left, they won't improve...but it's also not a guarantee that they will!

Such figures in any normal country would be a national emergency. Can you imagine 40% of the student population in Spain failing to have a B2 level in Spanish? 40% of French children failing to have a B2 level in French?

Are we doing enough to squeeze out every little bit of benefit from the Model D? Of course not, there's always room for improvement, but I think the problem is not that the Model D doesn't 'work', it's that all of the responsibility for making Basque speakers is being handed to school in the first place. School does work, but it doesn't work enough and it never will. School is just one part of a young person's life, an important one yes, but ultimately one small part. If you as a child live in a society that is majoritarily Spanish speaking, that's an inherently hostile linguistic environment that constrains the possibility of you ever becoming a proficient Basque speaker. The figures say it for themselves.

Bringing it back to the beginning of my post, 9.6% of these model D students are immigrants. What happens when you are born overseas, when you come to the South Basque Country, when you are enrolled into a school with the model D, and you do school in Basque...?

You can see an example in the following video from the Gipuzkoan town of Elgoibar, a town of about 11 000 residents, showcasing the cultural and lingustic diversity among the students in Elgoibar. Well, students and their parents.



According to a 2016 census, 62.27% of the residents of Elgoibar are Basque speakers, although the daily usage is very different: 35.9% in Basque, 61.9% in Spanish.

Notice how even though the parents might speak languages as different as Arabic, Amazigh, Portuguese, Urdu, Punjabi, Romanian, Wolof, Fula, Serer, Diola, Mandarin, Cantonese, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Albanian, Italian, Lingala, Aymara, Quechua etc the majority of the adults speak to the interviewer in...Spanish. For the majority of adult immigrants, they consider learning Spanish to be sufficient for them and many never learn Basque. Whereas the children are integrated in Basque. They systematically talk to the interviewer in Basque.

To what extent do these children assimilate, integrate and consider the Basque language as their own...? To me, it seems clear that they consider Basque to be an important language in their own diverse repertoire of languages, one that cements their identity as locals from Elgoibar. As Basques.

Here's something that I saw, a report on ETB2 (the Spanish language channel of Basque television) about the rising prices of goods in England. You might have to click on the video and watch it on YT, I don't think the embedding works for me.

They interview 2 kinds of Basque people who have moved to England.

The first type is a Basque woman from Donostia with a very Basque last-name, but who speaks in Spanish. One wonders whether she even speaks Basque.

The other kind of Basque people are several members of a Pakistani family. They were born in Pakistan, but spent 12 years living in the Basque Country and their formative childhood years in the Basque education system. Despite moving to and living in England for the past 6 years, they have not forgotten the Basque language. Their fluency and ease in the language suggest to me that they might even speak Basque to each other at home as well, perhaps as a kind of 'secret language' that their parents might not understand as siblings are wont to do. And furthermore, they speak in the dialect of Antzuola in the Debagoiena region, a distinct Western dialect. It is not something that you learn in a school classroom, it is something you learn by talking with your schoolmates in the school patio, or outside school altogether.



I have an additional anecdote from someone who works as a teacher in the French public school system in Baiona, in the North Basque Country.

Ça me parle car j'ai quelques ados d'origine maghrébine à Bayonne qui viennent du Pays basque sud et qui savent parler basque (espagnol, etc.) quand les gosses avec des noms basques ou gascons n'en savent pas un mot. C'est assez frappant. Par contre, je ne sais pas s'ils seront longtemps attachés à la langue, surtout que ce sont des populations très mobiles (selon le travail des parents).


That is to say, in his class he has Basque students of Maghrebine origin who come from the South Basque Country and they speak Basque, whereas his North Basque and Gascon students who were born there don't know a single word...
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Fri Dec 16, 2022 9:40 pm

After 40 years of democracy and some kind of officiality for the Basque language in at least one of the administrative regions of the Basque Country, the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (EAE), you might be puzzled:

Why is Basque still struggling? In fact, why is it going backwards, and in some respects, worse off than 40 years ago?

To this, I reply that Basque is an official language in the EAE, but you have to understand that 'officiality' doesn't mean the entire Basque society of the EAE is for the Basque language. The political, legal/judicial, economic, educational, sports, entertainment, medical sectors tends to be at best indifferent, but very often, actively hostile to the Basque language.

It would be puzzling indeed, if you didn't take into account the fact that there are counter forces that are at play working to keep Basque where it is. Imagine it like this. Basque is like a fish in a river. Now if that river was flowing in the same direction as the fish, things would be A-okay. Unfortunately, in reality, the river is flowing against the fish, and whilst the fish (= Basque activists) makes titanic efforts, it remains more or less in place...or goes backwards...and any advances it makes does not lessen the perpetual necessity of continuing to swim.

I'll give you an example. This is a graphic representation of the public money that the government of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country has given to the media in the Basque Country (newspapers, magazines, radio etc) for this year, 2022, in the form of subsidies, grants, money handouts.

Image

Notice that all Basque language media combined gets 500,000 euros, whereas all Spanish language media gets a total of 5,000,000 euros. Five hundred thousand vs five million. It's also worth nothing who exactly that money goes to. The highest recipients are the Spanish language newspapers El Correo and El Diario Vasco in the right-wing stream of politics. Unsurprisingly, they are supporters of the center-right, Christian-democratic party that governs the EAE government. The Basque language magazine Argia, on the other hand, gets nothing, 0 euros, despite having a similar amount of readers as Berria, around 52,000 readers. Berria, the only daily Basque language newspaper, received the modest sum of 287,925,70 euros, modest in comparison with the Spanish language newspapers.

Around 34% of the population above the age of 16 years of age in the EAE are Basque speakers, and 19% are capable of understanding Basque, even if they can't speak it. So even if money were proportioned equitably based on the population who speaks or reads or listens to a language, there should be a lot more money given to Basque language media, obviously. But I think that you would be fundamentally missing the point if you demanded more money for the Basque language media because of this.

In the case of a minoritised language, it needs extra help, not equal and fair distribution according to how many people speak or read in this language, because per its condition as a minoritised language, it will always have less speakers, readers and listeners than a dominating language that is putting this language into a minoritised status. Every cent of public taxpayer money that goes to Spanish language media helps to reinforce the Spanish language dominance in the Basque Country, it helps to maintain or even increase the flow rate of the river in which the Basque language is arduously swimming.

What do you think will happen if the fish gets tired for one moment?

Is the Basque government stupid? Do you think they don't realise that if they spend more on Spanish, a language that is dominant in the South Basque Country, and less on Basque, Basque will never have a snowball's chance of coming out from Spanish's shadow and becoming a normal, normally used language? Do you think that they're genuinely puzzled as to why 40 years of 'officiality' hasn't saved the Basque language?

I think they know this. I prefer to believe in their maliciousness, if that is the right word, rather than in their stupidity or ignorance. They're comfortable with the EAE being an autonomous community where Spanish is the dominant language, and not only that, their policies favouring Spanish with minor concessions to Basque here and there have got them to where they are, the top of the government. They have no political incentive to change. They have no incentive to truly revolutionise society and restore Basque to even close to parity with Spanish.

When you realise that you have exterior (the Spanish state) and interior enemies within the Basque society itself that counteract Basque language revitalisation, then perhaps it's not so surprising that after 40 years, Basque is still where it is.
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Thu Dec 29, 2022 3:21 pm

When you realise that you have exterior (the Spanish state) and interior enemies within the Basque society itself that counteract Basque language revitalisation, then perhaps it's not so surprising that after 40 years, Basque is still where it is.


I said Spain is the exterior enemy, whereas the Basque government and large swathes of the Basque society are the internal enemy.

Let's see in what sense Spain is the external enemy to the Basque language and to every other language spoken in Spain. The Spanish government has a series of projects to kick-start the economy, called PERTE (proyectos estratégicos para la recuperación y transformación económica). One of those projects pertains to language in particular, called the Proyecto Estratégico de la Nueva Economía de la Lengua. As you'll see shortly, it's absolutely not anodine that the title for the project is 'de la Lengua', that is, the one language, because the Spanish government is spending the vast majority of that money on only one language, Spanish.

Concretely, and summarising the information that is mentioned in the above link, the project's budget is:

Total budget: 1.100 M€
Budget for co-official languages: 30 M€


I mean, you can already see that there's a vast disparity, as all of the co-official languages combined get a measly 30 million euros, but it's actually worse than you think, because according to the details released so far (see the Real Decreto 958/2022), each language gets a pitiful amount of money dedicated to it. The budget for the Galician language is 2 M€ (Proxecto Nós), the budget for Catalan is 2 M€ (Aina), the budget for Basque is 2 M€ (Gaitu), Valencian, which is of course a variety of Catalan but is managed in the Valencian Community, gets 0.5 M€ (Vives). And the rest of that 30 million euros...? We still don't know.

Budget for NON OFFICIAL languages, like Asturian or Aragonese: 0€


YEAH YOU READ THAT RIGHT, NOTHING.

Now let's look at how much Spanish gets:

Artificial intelligence and other kinds of technology in Spanish (330 M€)
Science in Spanish (130 M€), popularisation of Spanish science and research
Spanish teaching/learning as a foreign language (475 M€)
Cultural industries like audiovisual products and videogames (presumably all in Spanish) (70 M€)


When I said earlier on how every single cent spent on Spanish is a cent that could have been used for Basque instead, that wasn't entirely right. You see, that sounds too neutral, as if giving a cent to Spanish that could otherwise have gone to Basque is a mere transactional thing and that doesn't really affect Spanish or Basque's situation.

In reality, every single cent spent on Spanish and not spent on Basque is a cent that is actually used against Basque, because every cent of taxpayer money used for Spanish, strengthens its position of absolute dominance in Spain, and that in turn is automatically damaging for the minoritised language.

You'll hear Spanish speakers often claim that the minoritised languages in Spain live from subsidies and taxpayer money...they don't realise how much money Spain spends on Spanish, to reinforce its supremacy in Spain and elsewhere in the world. The Spanish language that receives the most amount of public aid, by far, is Spanish.

And the worst thing about it is that it doesn't need any of it. We can de-officialise and ban the Spanish language tomorrow, draconian dictatorship style, and by its pure demographic weight, it would still keep going and be the most spoken language in Spain for decades.
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Sun Jan 01, 2023 7:51 pm

...
Last edited by nooj on Sun Dec 10, 2023 10:10 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Mon Jan 02, 2023 12:17 am



A song called Xorrotxak by the Zuberoan musical group Xiberrotarrak, dedicated to two special characters in the Maskarada plays in Zuberoa. As the name itself simply states (zorrotza = sharp) , they are people who sharpen knives and tools, and so they come equipped for that role in their costume, with a whetstone (?). But they also wear cute little hats with a squirrel on it!

Image

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The Maskarada plays have a cast that is manichaean in its philosophy, in terms of order vs chaos, good vs evil. The team of order are the 'Reds' and the team of chaos are the 'Blacks'. The xorrotxak form part of the Blacks, and their task is to sharpen the sword of the Jauna (the Lord), who is on the team of the Reds, but they also go around singing bertsos. In fact, they are specifically chosen for being the best singers of the whole cast.

Honestly I don't know much about the Maskarada itself beyond what I have read...I've never had the opportunity to see it myself, thanks to the pandemic which curtailed the performances for the last few years (except for last year, but I was away). But I hope to see it myself this year!

Bata mitila zelarik,
Bestea nausia
Bena jokütik kanpo
Zer adiskideak
Mezperan gaüa xuritürik
Gorri edatean
Gorritü igantean
Xuriaren txestatzean


One is the apprentice
The other the master
But outside of the play
What good friends
The night before, sleepless
Drinking themselves silly
Beet-red on the Sunday
Drinking the white wine.

Bedatxe bat izanik, maskaraden botza
Sekülan ez beitügü ützi ofizioa
Xorrotxa behin dena beti odolean
Xorrotxa behin dena beti dü gogoan


When it is spring, the voice of the Maskarada
We will never abandon the role
Once a xorrotx, forever in the blood
Once a xorrotx, forever in the memory.

Denbora den bezala errota üngüratzen
Zahartzen hasirik gira, bena ez ahültzen
Bi botzetan dütügü kantoreak gozatzen
Hortan gira laketzen, kobla oihükatzen
Agitzen zaikü üsü gibel so egitea
Urxantxaren bürüaren gainen fite txerkatzea
Ahatzerik beitügü, urtoroz txapelak
Dohakabez jabe goaz kanbiatzen züala


Spinning the wheel like time itself
We have started to grow old, but not weak.
In twin voices we enjoy our songs
Acclaiming verses, in this we take our pleasure.
It's often the case that we look backwards
And search hastily over the squirrel's head
We have forgotten that every year
Our hats must unfortunately change their owners.

kantoreak - abestia is a neologism created by Sabino Arana, whereas all natural dialects of Basque have always used a Romance loanword for the word for song. Kantua, kanta etc or in the case of the Zuberoan dialect, kantorea. The compound word abesbatza (also a neologism!) meaning choir, however, has found a certain degree of acceptance in Zuberoa.

laketzen - the verb laket seems to be an old loanword from Latin, placet. In Basque, like in Latin, it means to like, enjoy etc. Amusingly, thanks to the sound changes that Basque performed on Latin loanwords, it ends up sounding very similar to the English like with the same meaning, which I imagine could prove to be useful for some later Basque marketing campaign...I wouldn't be surprised to see "I laket the Basque Country" somewhere.

If you would like to see what it looks like in real life, here's the xorrotxak from last year in Atharratze.

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lingzz_langzz
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=14260
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Re: Euskara (berriro)

Postby lingzz_langzz » Wed Jan 11, 2023 8:59 am

nooj wrote:A story from a young mother who is trying to raise her children in the Niçard/Nissart variety of Occitan, and the difficulties she is encountering. She wrote this in a FB support group for young parents raising their children in Occitan.

The orthography she uses to write her story is the traditional local one, not the Classical one. The Classical one has made important inroads in that community, but it's common for literate speakers to be competent in both orthographies of their language, which is spelled Niçard in the Classical orthography or Nissart according to the traditional local orthography.

She's also an Occitan teacher and with her husband, only speak to their two children (three and one years old) in the language.


Hey! I found this post you wrote and I'm wondering do you have any materials for learning Nissart? I've just started and I found a grammar and a dictionary but I'd really love to read more in this dialect and meet people I could chat with. Are you learning it too?

Also, could you pass me the name of the FB group? Thanks a lot!
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Re: Bla bla bla

Postby nooj » Wed Jan 11, 2023 3:19 pm

I saw that you asked this question on Twitter, and my response is the same as what other people said there, I highly recommend you get in touch with Gabrièu Pelisson. The fact that he's a second language learner means that he can tell you what resources he himself used, although he has the advantage, of course, of living and/or being able to travel to areas where the language is spoken, that you don't living in Spain.

This is the daughter and the mother from the story and the FB group.:



Nissart doesn't have a lot of presence in the media, to say practically none, but even when it does show up...one of the things that really displeases me about French media and their relationship to French languages is that they use methods that help viewers avoid actually having to listen or engage with the language, except through the prism of French itself, such as voice-overs or translations.

For example, take this short - very short - segment called Matinada Nissarda that is supposed to introduce the audience to the Nissart language and to the Nissart culture, on the local chapter of the French television channel BFM:



As you will quickly realise, there's at least as much as French in there as Nissart. Gabrièu is consistent with his ideals as a language activist and speaks in his language, but he is systematically translated by the presenter, as if this was some incomprehensible Romance language. God forbid that people have to listen to four sentences in Occitan in a row.
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