Xatiana says that it would be a shame for the traditional pronunciation to be lost, as it is something typical of Basque, and distinctive from French as well, but offers no guideline or solution. It's not up to her anyway, there needs to be something worked between the whole society.
That interview was made in 2017 and since then, I'm not aware of any novelties on the front.
I was wrong. There are things being done!
Last year the Sü Azia group, a small group of Zuberoans who work to spread knowledge of their dialect through publishing Zuberoan books and music, started a podcast. The podcast is aimed first and foremost to Zuberoans but also to Basques of all dialects who want to familiarise themselves with the Zuberoan variety. The podcast is called XiberoKazt. Among the contributors was the late Allande Socarros (I will never stop praising this man) who explained in this article that one of the motives for the creation of the podcast was to correct non-traditional errors that they saw among Zuberoan speakers:
«Haatik, badira mintzaera ez-egoki batzuk gero eta zabalduago direnak: hala, aho mintzozko h-ak ez ahoskatzea, r bikoitza ia-ia frantsesezkoaren moduan erratea, azken aurreko silaban zubereraz egin ohi den zapadura edo azentu tonikoa ez errespetatzea». Akats horiek belaunaldi gazteetan nabari direla iruditzen zaio Sokarrosi, baina ez horietan bakarrik: «Adinez aurreratuagoak diren euskaldun batzuen ahoetan ere hauteman daitezke. Eta bilakaera kezkagarri hori ez da, batzuek erran izan duten bezala, idazkera arautuaren ondorioz gertatzen. Gertatzen da zuberotar askok eta askok euskara ez dutelakotz nahikoa baliatzen».
There are forms of speech that are ever more widespread, for example, not pronouncing the /h/, or saying the /r/ in the French manner, or not respecting the accentual system in Zuberoan Basque where the accent falls on the penultimate syllable. Socarros thinks that these errors are prominent in the young generations, but not only: You can find these errors among some older Basque speakers as well, and this concerning development is not happening, as some people have said, as a result of the standardised writing system. It's happening because many, many Zuberoans don't use Basque enough.
Socarros, at least, sees the change in the realisation of the /r/ as an error, and so too the loss of the glottal fricative /h/. This phoneme was in fact common to all Basque dialects a few hundred years ago, but was lost in the dialects in South Basque Country and until recently was more or less conserved in the North Basque Country, although as far as I know it is also being lost there, with it being best conserved as you go further east. Zuberoa is where it is consistently preserved. Losing the glottal fricative is hardly something that is rare among world languages, so it's possible it is a natural language change, but I don't think it's coincidental that the two languages that are most impacting Basque don't have /h/ in their phonologies either.
Socarros mentions the denaturation of the accentual system. Zuberoan Basque has a general rule of penultimate accentuation on words. It's one of the most immediately distinctive aspects of this variety to speakers of other Basque dialects. It's very different from French accentuation which places the stress on the final syllable of a word or the final word of an intonational phrase. From a completely non-scientific, purely subjective perspective, what I notice when I listen to some new speakers of French minoritised languages like Breton, Alsatian or Basque, is that the accentuation of their first language comes through. They may do everything else by the book, but the accentuation gives them away. For me, getting the accentuation right is more important than whether you pronounce [r] or not. Native Basque speakers speaking their native dialects have an accentuation, intonation and even rhythm that is quite different from that of Spanish/French speakers, at least speakers of those varieties of Spanish/French that aren't influenced by Basque.
Sü Azia means ember. It is a compound of sü (fire) and azia (seed) or hazia in standard Basque. Let's hope that the young generations of Zuberoans blow on these embers. The podcast is updated every two weeks. Right now they're reading through old Zuberoan texts and authors and commenting on them, but the plan is to eventually study contemporary Zuberoan material. I'm not sure how attractive this is going to be young people. Reading old texts doesn't bother me, but the members of Sü Azia are people from a different generation...perhaps they should have gotten a more diverse team to help them.
Since we've just talked about bees, here's one broadcast from the podcast. It's a short dialogue written by a Zuberoan author Emmanuel Intxauspe (1815-1902). It is read by Allande Socarros and Jean Bordaxar who play two characters called Basilio and Antonio. Even if you don't understand anything, please have a listen and get a feel for what Zuberoan Basque spoken by two native speakers sounds like.
The text is taken from the Basque literature archive Armiarma, but has not been updated for modern Zuberoan orthography. For example, deiküie would be written deigüe today. In standard Basque, digute. Dian would be written düan today. In standard Basque, duen.
The audio: https://vocaroo.com/1dDBdI7Xq8LB
BASILIO. Egün erlez mintzatü behar nitzaizü.
ANTONIO. Haziendatto baliusak dira erliak: hoiek emaiten deiküie eztia.
BASILIO. Ez bakhoizki eztia, bena ere emaiten deiküie ezkoa.
ANTONIO. Nola ezti-khoi beniz ezinago, e-nintzan ezkoaz orhitzen.
BASILIO. Eztia, jateko bezaiñ hon da sendogarritako. Marhanta denian hartzen da eztia hurareki nahasirik. Atxeterrek janerazten die zonbait aldiz barazkal aitzinian khorpitzetik librerazteko. Bestalde orano, zonbat gaizarentako ez-ta hon ezkoa! Huneki egiten dira tortxak, oihal ezkostatiak eta herxkaillü mota hanitz. Erliak sortzen dira jinkolloak bezala, eta jaten die eztia. Lilietan edireiten die eztiaren eta ezkoaren geia. Liliaren irinareki egiten die ezkoa, eta eztia aldiz liliaren kokoxetik elkhitzen dian zühatzareki. Irina biltzen die lilien gañen gibeleko aztaparren herresta erabiltez. Zankhoetan badütie galtzak bezalako batzü, eta ez-tira ükhüratzen horik bethe artino. Zühatza hürrüpatzen die müthürrian dien trunpa bateki. Zühatzarentako badie sabel bat, eta han ezti egiten da. Irinarentako badie beste bat eta han ezko bilhatzen da. Gero, ahotik eztia egotxiz, egiten die orrazia. Eginik denian orrazia, hunen xiloak eztiz bethatzen dütie.
ANTONIO. Xiloa deitzen da thegittoa?
BASILIO. Orraziarena bai.
ANTONIO. Zorobilatzen naie ni gaiza hoiek orok.
BASILIO. Ez-tüzü zertzaz zorobila.
ANTONIO. Zer! ez-ta zorobilatzeko gaiza, lilien gañen den irinaren ezkotürik ikhustia?
BASILIO. Eta e-tzütü xorotzen gük jaten dütügün gaizen ikhustiak gure odoletara khanbiatzen?
ANTONIO. Egia diozü, enündüzün ohartzen.
BASILIO. Egün behiak jan dian belharra bihar eznetürik jaten dügü.
BASILIO. Today I need to speak to you about bees.
ANTONIO. Bees are precious animals, they give us honey.
BASILIO. Not only honey, but they also give us wax.
ANTONIO. As I'm a honey-lover, wax didn't enter my head.
BASILIO. Honey is as good to eat as it is for medicine. When one has a cold, one takes honey mixed with water. Before lunch, physicians prescibe the eating of honey several times, in order to free our body from the cold. And what isn't wax useful for! With wax, you make candles, waxed canvases and many types of bandages. Bees are created like butterflies, they eat the honey. They find the raw material for honey and wax on flowers. With the pollen, they make the wax, whereas they extract the honey from the flower cups with the nectar. They collect the pollen on top of the flower by using the 'rake' of their back legs. On their legs, they have some kind of 'spats', or stockings, and they don't stop until they fill them. They suck the nextar through a proboscis that they have at the end of their head. For the nectar they have ine stomach, and there they make the honey. For the pollen, they have another stomach, and there the pollen turns into nectar. Later in excreting the honey from their mouth, they make the honeycomb. When the honeycomb is done, they fill the holes with honey.
ANTONIO. That's what you call a beehive?
BASILIO. Yes, the one made out of honeycombs.
ANTONIO. All these things are marvellous to me.
BASILIO. There's no reason to marvel.
ANTONIO. Oh? Isn't it something to marvel at, seeing the creation of wax from pollen on flowers?
BASILIO. And you don't marvel when you see that the things that we eat change into our blood?
ANTONIO. True, I didn't realise.
BASILIO. The grass that the cow eats today, will be the milk that we drink tomorrow.
Atxeterrek - Socarros explains that this word is an old word for doctor. It comes from Latin archiater. In contemporary Zuberoan, the doctor is called the bedezi. It's a borrowing from Gascon medecin .
Liliaren irinareki - the pollen of the flower. In Eastern dialects, the word for flower is lilia. All flowers, not just those that belong to the genus of Lilium. And the pollen is described as the irina, literally the 'flour' of the flower.
jinkolloak - the butterfly. Literally, Jainkoaren oiloa, meaning the chicken of God. In the same episode, Socarros explains that many young Zuberoans now call butterflies papilluak, taken straight from French, but I like the chicken of God more.
In fact, there is an incredible number of words for the butterfly in the Basque language. This following linguistic map gives a fair representation, but I'm sure there are more than was collected. Some of them are onomatopoeic names, but others have distinguishable etymons, like jaingoiko+mandaturi (messenger of God) or atxiyamatxi, where you can distinguish amatxi (grandmother) or sorgimitxi, which you can distinguish sorgin (witch).
What I want to know is...why? We have basically one word for cat in Basque which is similar across all dialects, but we have a hundred words for the butterfly. Do Basque speakers just like butterflies or something?