Bla bla bla

[nooj]

On the 1st of April, last week, teachers, parents and students of the Basque immersion school system (Seaska) in the North Basque Country occupied the building of the Public Organisation of the Basque Language (Euskararen Erakunde Publikoa) in Baiona. This institution is supposed to help the Basque language in both public and private ambits of the North Basque Country. The protest was actually two-fold.

The first protest is by the secondary school students who want to do all their Baccalauréat and Brevet exams, coming up this May and June in the Basque language. As immersion school students, they study everything except the French class in Basque. So, naturally, they want to do the exams for the subjects in the same language that they've been studying in.

Up until now, they have been allowed to write their Brevet exams in History and Mathematics in Basque, but not Science (Technology/Physical Sciences), which they are obliged to do in French.

In 2017, that year's students actually did do their Science exams in Basque, still very much against the will of the National Education and the National Education were pressured into getting Basque speaking correctors to correct it. However every year since then, the exams have been given to non-Basque speaking correctors, and thus the students who choose to do it in Basque are given failing marks. As for the Bac, the students were previously allowed to do the History, Geography and Mathematics in Basque, but it seems that even this is very much in doubt for this year.

So they occupied the office, and forced François-Xavier Pestel, the academic inspector for the region, to have a meeting with Seaska representatives. In this video you can see the students very much getting into his face, demanding 'Azterketak euskaraz!' ('Exams in Basque!'). He looks quite uncomfortable. Can't ignore them so easily can you when you're looking directly at those accusing young faces, instead of giving orders through email, huh? At one point the Seaska director who is negotiating with the inspector has to tell his students 'emeki, otoi' ('please, quiet') and they actually do! Students that listen to their teacher?

I LOVE ME A COMBATIVE YOUTH.

I'm reminded of what I said about the Zuberoan town of Larraine, population 196. When I went to the only restaraunt in the town and could not get service in Basque, but the restaurant owner straightforwardly told me that I could get it in Spanish. Of course, I walked out. And I'll keep walking out of wherever establishment in the Basque Country where they make me speak French or Spanish.

French and Spanish speakers need to have Basque rubbed into their faces. These people think that Basque speakers are going to lay down, roll over and die peacefully. They're wrong.

If these people won't understand the cultural and social reasons behind learning and speaking the language of the country, by God they'll understand the monetary reason. Let's be honest the amount of money they'll lose for not knowing Basque is miniscule, the waves of French tourists more than outweighs the purchasing power of some Basque speaking farmers enjoying their retirement, but they have to KNOW that it's not okay. I'm not saying make a giant fuss and flip tables. But they need to have it exposed to their face, someone needs to push it into their nose, they need to be pricked by an annoying mosquito. Whether in the South Basque Country or in the North Basque Country.

The other part of the protest was represented by parents living in Larraine, who are demanding the opening of an immersion model in their public school. At the time I was there, I also got to have a talk with the Basque teacher in the local public school, and already there were talks about implementing the immersion system.

Well, the parents are mightily angry because it's been a year since they put in the request for an immersion model, and they've received no response whatsoever from the National Education, neither yes nor no. So they came to Baiona, two hours or so by car from home, brought their kids and some desks and blackboards, set it up front and hoped to meet the academic inspector to press their demands. Unfortunately, he basically ran away from the parents and jumped into his car. I'm guessing if the parents did the same thing as the students and blocked his way out, he would have been forced to talk.

That is why the parent representative, Maitesa Akozeberri is so pissed off. In the first part of the video she's hopeful and wanting to meet the inspector to press her demands. I'm not going to transcribe everything, but she explains there that they lost a year of studying Basque ('ürtea galtzen diagü euskarik ikasi gabe, gure eskolan') and she doesn't understand why the immersion model in her town is being held up when it's been accepted for other towns in the region ('ez diagü konprenitzen nolaz Larraineko eskolak ez düen baimenik ükaiten, alta beste eskolikan üngürünetan galto egin').

In the second part, it's after the inspector flipped her off. She then launches into a determined, passionate and let me say, inspiring speech. She mentions how the powers that be, act with complete disregard and disdain with regards to the common people ('dena behar dizü ürgüilüz blokatü), but even though she is at a loss, they won't let the French education system wear them down ('ez dakit nondik behar den hartü bena egiazki, akitü...ez dizügü ütziko'). They'll keep on fighting to ensure their children can study in Basque. Meanwhile in the background, the students fortuitously launch into the song Guk Euskaraz, almost as if to reinforce her determination.

A final word on the mayor of Larraine, Jean-Dominique Idiart, who I had the pleasure of meeting. He's a Basque nationalist. Last year he gave this interview, in which he said that he'd be ready to create an immersion system for the school even if the French national education system said no:

Ez dute inolako problemarik izan inmertsio bortxatua egiteko guri frantsesa erakusteko, zanpatuak izan gara gu eskolan, punituak eta umiliatuak. Ez dut inolako problemarik hori errateko zeren ez naiz bakarra, eta aipatzen dut ere erreparazio historikoa, edozeinek egin behar du, errekonozitzen badute gaizki egin dutela, eta niretako gaizki egin dute zapuztea gure hizkuntza, gure kultura, gure nortasuna. Hori behar dugu esplikatu eta lortu berdintasuna gure hizkuntza eta gure kulturarentzat. Erraten dudan horretan non da eskandalua? Egia delarik ez da eskandalua izan behar.

They (the French authorities) never had any problem with forced immersion when they taught us French. We were oppressed in school, punished and humiliated. I don't have any problem with saying it, because I'm not the only one. And I bring up historical reparations as well, anyone should do it if they recognise that they did wrong things, and in my opinion they did wrong things when they crushed our language, our culture, our identity. That's what we need to explain, and we need to achieve equality for our language and culture. Where's the scandal in what I'm saying? As it's the truth, there's no need for it to be a scandal.


With parents, teachers and students like this in the North Basque Country, there's much to be hopeful for.

[nooj]

The eyes of the world are on the French presidential elections. I'm not a French citizen, but the only one who would get my vote is Phillipe Poutou, representing the Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste, an extreme left political party which obviously won't get anywhere near the presidency.

Let me add that just being far left doesn't mean you're necessarily for the French languages. There are plenty of far-left candidates and political parties that are fully engaged in the project of French language supremacy. Plenty of people who consider themselves progressive, left-wing or far-left turn out to be just as terrible on this subject as anyone from the right-wing or the far-right. In France, wanting to maintain the supremacy of the French language is the overwhelmingly majority opinion from all sides of the political sphere. Alongside Poutou, Yannick Jadot is the other exception on this issue, he's from Europe Ecologie - Les Verts.

That's why it feels so cathartically good to hear this on a French television channel:



For the self-determination of peoples, officialisation of the French languages, characterising the French state's actions with regards to its peoples as colonialist...yeah, he'd definitely get my vote.

[nooj]

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) for this year's Eurovision, Tanxugueiras did not become Spain's choice, in an incredibly controversial decision. Suffice to say that if you're a Eurovision fan you've probably heard something about the judges rigging the decision to go against the Tanxugueiras. Because not only were they the public favourites, they literally, mathematically would have won if not for some jury shenanigans. It caused an enormous debate here in Spain.

So. No Galician group representing Spain. Who to vote for? Maro from Portugal has come out with a cracker of a song, called Saudade, half in Portuguese and half in English. She should dispense with the English and sing it all in Portuguese, it'd sound even better.

I'd been following her way before this Eurovision business and I knew that she had contacts with Catalan singers, but when she came out with this acoustic version of her Eurovision song, I was blown away. Filmed in Avinyó, Catalonia and the list of musicians is a who's who of Catalonia's best musicians.

GUITARS
Darío Barroso Miranda
Lucas Delgado
Pau Figueres
Pol Batlle

CHOIR
Eva Fernández
Judit Neddermann
Magalí Datzira
Magalí Sare
Rita Payés
Selma Bruna
Sílvia Pérez Cruz

+ the baby of Rita Payés, in her arms. There's nothing more that warms my heart more than inter-Iberian cooperation. I'm seriously considering voting for Portugal, although I haven't listened yet to all the songs from all the other countries and I'll try to keep an open mind.

I can't help think that the Tanxugueiras are secretly relieved that they weren't chosen to represent Spain. There's the less than enthusiastic manner in which one member, Sabela Maneiro holds up the Spanish flag in this photoshoot (note to self: learn from Sabela, when holding dirty things, it's best to hold it with as few fingers as possible) vs their enthusiasm for the Galician nationalist/independentist flag. That photo is from the after-party after they were eliminated, I believe, so they were better able to freely express themselves.

[nooj]

This interview of the Zuberoan linguist Xantiana Etxebest on Euskadi Irratia, a South Basque radio programme is very interesting. For her thesis, available here, she investigated her own dialect, the Zuberoan dialect, specifically with reference to the changing realisation of the /r/ phoneme.

What I said about Zuberoans tending not to use their dialect with other Basque speakers happens again in this interview. She uses a North Basque version of standard Basque in the interview with the South Basque journalists. Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but there are two models of standard Basque that are developing, one for the North Basque Country and one for the South Basque Country, so that a text written or spoken in standard Basque is always identifiable as a standard Basque from one area or another.

Compare that with this interview on the same subject for the Zuberoan radio Xiberoko Botza, where she speaks normally in her dialect:



Basque has two rhotics in its phonemic inventory, the alveolar tap /ɾ/ and the alveolar trill /r/.

In Zuberoan, between two vowels, the alveolar tap is generally deleted, e.g. /oɾo/ > [o:]. In other environments, it's generally kept as [ɾ]. That hasn't changed, this single tap is retained by all generations.

The real change is with the alveolar trill /r/, which is now pronounced by the majority of Zuberoan speakers under 40 years old as the uvular trill [ʁ] or the uvular fricative [χ]. In other words, like in French.

Etxebest says that her own grandparents pronounced the /r/ phoneme like [r], but that her father and she does not. She looked into numerous factors that could explain such a change, such as age, gender, whether they lived outside of Zuberoa, whether they're native speakers, whether they regularly use the language etc, and although some of that has an impact, the most important factor that she has found is age. In other words, the oldest or the most traditional speakers use [r], but the younger or the youngest do not. There's at least two generations of native speakers of Zuberoan Basque that do not use [r], but instead use the 'French' rhotic. Not sure it makes sense to call it the 'French' rhotic, given that native speakers use it. A more accurate term is a novel Basque rhotic.

She has two hypotheses as to the origins of this change, which I don't see as opposing. French influence (directly), due to massive education in French and access to French speaking media. Or more interestingly, the influence of the often Basque speaking Buhameak , the Romani people in the Basque Country, who apparently used the uvular trill or fricative. I don't quite understand how they would have had an important influence on the non-Romani Basque speakers, as usually you take traits that you perceive as prestigious from a prestigious group, but it's an interesting idea. By the way, here's a nice linguistic map showing the different words used in the Basque Country to refer to the Romani:



Aside from terms that are cognate with other European languages like ijitoak (from Egyptians) or buhameak (Bohemians), they were also called by the work that they did. Often the men worked as seasonal sheep shearers, hence the word motxalla (shearers).

Back to the thesis. The trigger for the change was probably due to the French language. Etxebest mentions a story about one of her informants, a woman who left her farm and went to Maule-Lextarre, the administrative centre of Zuberoa. This informant recounts that she used [r] in both her Basque and in her French, but in the city she was mocked for it. This lack of prestige probably had a direct and significant impact on why the phonetic change happened.

After Xatiana presented her study in Maule, in front of an audience of around 50 fellow Zuberoan speakers, this same experience of being mocked for their pronunciation (both by classmates and teachers) is confirmed by another Zuberoan speaker, Jüje Etxebarne, who belongs to the oldest generation of native speakers and so uses the traditional [r] realisation, as you can tell:



Xantiana Etxebest did this study in a purely descriptive manner, like any good linguist. But it has important prescriptive implications. In the interviews, she and other Zuberoans are asked as to what they should do with this information. Should they start teaching [r] in the adult classes and in the ikastolas as the normative pronunciation, like their grandparents speak? The Euskaltzaindia (the Basque Language Academy) has not said anything about the matter, in fact, very rarely does it say anything about pronunciation.

In Zuberoa, there are 2 ikastolas (full immersion in Basque) and 10 bilingual schools (where some of the subjects are taught in Basque). The Zuberoan teachers teach the Zuberoan dialect, but there is no one saying that they have to speak this or that way. This means that some speak with [r], and most do not, and the kids learn consequently their teachers' and their peers' pronunciation. 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. And the fact is that Zuberoan Basque is in such a perilous position, hanging by a thread from utter annihilation, that I don't think anyone is making this a priority. The priority must be teaching the Basque, whether pronunciation is used.

What about in other dialects, in Lapurdi and in Baxe-Nafarroa? Etxebest mentions that this [r] has not been lost in friends her age in Baxe-Nafarroa, she notices that they speak like her grandfather. However when I listen to Lapurdi or Baxe-Nafarroan radio, it's clear that this is a phonetic change that's also happening or happened to most of the North Basque Country Basque speakers, at least the majority of young people under the age of 40. I listen to a lot of North Basque radio, and I can count on one hand the number of young speakers in the North Basque Country who use [r].

My personal opinion:

1) Spanish and Italian teachers in France try to get their students to pronounce the [r] and some even succeed, so it's not impossible for people to change their pronunciation in their first or second languages.
2) If you're going to teach it in school, you should teach them that they have option to pronounce it one way or the other, instead of being prescriptively strict about it, given that it'll probably alienate more speakers than attract them.
3) Given that the media is so powerful on language models that speakers imitate, it's worth considering 'making' North Basque radio journalists pronounce it the traditional way. But given that just over the border there's a massive media industry of South Basques who only pronounce [r] and that hasn't convinced any North Basque youth to switch to [r], it's questionable whether this would have a major effect. Possibly North Basques would be more persuaded to change knowing that it's their fellow North Basque media that's pushing the pronunciation.
4) But do we need to? I'm still doubtful of the need to do so. Yes, the traditional pronunciation is being lost. Something uniquely Basque is being replaced. But in the grand scheme of things, is losing a part of what makes the Basque language Basque so important? There is the symbolically important aspect, I suppose, because to a South Basque ear it's very identifiable as 'Frenchy', but one could argue the same from the other side, to North Basques the South Basques speak very 'Spanishy'. I was talking with a Gascon speaker who was much more categorical about it than I am. To him, not using [r] means simply not speaking Gascon. I'm more relaxed about it.

Here's a video where you can put some faces to speakers of Zuberoan Basque. Some of them are new speakers, some of them are native speakers, everyone speaks Zuberoan Basque except for the man in 3:15 who is from Baigorri and speaks in standard Basque. All of them use [ʁ] or [χ].



Here's another video, about a community initiative of runners in a group. Both Basque speakers speak in Zuberoan Basque and they use [ʁ] or [χ]:

[nooj]

The mistake with this survey is that they show a basic ignorance of the nationalisms in play. They ask questions like 'are you more attached to your region or your country' without taking into account the fact that nationalists (Basque, Catalan, Galician etc) don't consider the Basque Country, Catalonia or Galicia to be 'regions'. They consider them to be countries.

I don't know by how much, but at least some of this word choice will have impacted the final results. If they had asked me this question, I would obviously have said that I'm more attached to the country, which is the Basque Country, 7 provinces, separated between two nation-states, than to the 'region' I live in, which is the EAE (the Basque Autonomous Community that regroups Araba, Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia), and obviously I'm not at all attached to the state I live in, which is Spain.

It's something basic, but I guess these political experts with their university degrees never stop to think one second about how things really are in the real world, because they're fatally indoctrinated into their worldview where everything that is not a nation-state is a region.

Notice that Galicia, which is hardly known for its independence movement, and whose nationalist movement is less politically successful than in the Basque Country or Catalonia, still supercedes overseas French territories in terms of how it distinguishes itself.

[nooj]

https://mobile.twitter.com/anerrro/status/1423263375165956101

In this video you see a man with Basque as his first language expressing himself in Spanish, poorly. This is in the town hall of the Bizkaian city of Eibar, often called one of the ugliest cities in the Basque Country because its industrial history has not been kind to it. I'm not gonna deny it's kinda ugly, BUT there are always things to compensate. The night life and community sentiment in Eibar is great. To take a word from Ireland, there's great craic.

You can take the video in several ways: "Wow, look! In the 21st century there are still Spanish people born and raised in Spain who can't speak Spanish!".

Or you can take it in the other, more interesting way, which is, "In the 21st century we still make Basque speakers speak in Spanish? Why don't they give translators to the people he is talking to, so that the man himself can speak freely in the language that he is clearly most comfortable in? What's the point of officiality if we don't use it?". The song Euskal Herrian Euskaraz explains it well: "Euskal herrian euskaraz Ez bada hitz egiterik, bota dezagun demokrazia xerri azkara": if we can't speak Basque in the Basque Country, let's throw democracy to the pigs trough.

Because when we now have what we couldn't have in the dictatorship, and we don't use it, living in the democratic Spain is worthless.

I already posted this video, well a link to the video last time, this time I'm posting the video on YT and I want to talk about one thing in this man's way of pronouncing Spanish words that is interesting. By the way, no, there are no adult age Basque speakers that are monolingual in Basque (the last such Basque speakers died in the 20th century), but there are still a few (hundreds?) of elderly Basque speakers who do not master the foreign languages Spanish/French.



Notice how this man pronounces words like arrason (0:55). First thing, there is no distinción. He uses [s] instead of [θ]. This kind of Basque seseo used to be a typical characterstic of the Spanish spoken by Basques in centuries gone by. Second, he pronounces it with an epenthetic ar-.

This reminds me very much of Gascon, an Occitan variant with Basque substrate influence. In Gascon, many original Latin words that began in r- became ar-. For example: arriu (< rivum 'river'), arrei (< rēgem 'king') or indeed arrazon/arredon (<ratiōnem 'reason'). In this man's speech, you can imagine how Basque speakers who learned Latin would have pronounced these words.

Superficially similar is the Zuberoan Basque prefix arra-, which is used to create words that mean a repetitive action.

arrajin (arra + jin) = to return

arramaiatz (arra + maiatz 'May') = the month of June, literally 'second May'

arrerran (arra + erran) = to say again

This prefix comes from Gascon, but obviously it has nothing to do with that epenthetic ar- that Gascon got from Basque. Instead the prefix comes from the original Latin prefix re-, with the same meaning.

[nooj]

I found a Sardinian native speaker who is:

1) interested in his language, without being a linguist or having anything to do with linguistics, just an ordinary guy. I appreciate linguists or linguistics nerds, but I also appreciate ordinary people because they tend not to be so monothematic and they have interesting perspectives on languages that others might not have.

2) knowledgeable in many variants of Sardinian (native variety Lugdorese, but also is familiar with Nuorese and Campidanese) which is a very rare talent.

3) loves Sardinian literature, poetry and music.

4) and doesn't even mind me asking him questions about his language.

In other words, this would be the perfect opportunity to start learning the language. Problem: I'm barely coping with the languages I'm already learning. I'm not very good with time management and I'm too lazy to learn how to manage my time effectively , someone else probably would be able to juggle Sardinian, but not me.

Anyway, I once said on this log:

The loss of any language is a tragedy, but if Sardinian goes extinct which it has all the chances of doing, that is one branch of the Romance tree completely pruned. Sardinian is historically special because it split off very early on. All the other Romance varieties of the continent are more related to each other, than Sardinian is to any of them.

Recently I was reading a paper by the Sardinian linguist Rosangela Lai, 'Language planning and language policy in Sardinia. Language Problems and Language Planning (2018)'. What she says is devastating.

For some years, Sardinia had experienced a stable diglossic situation. Sardinian was used in the domestic domain and with friends, while Italian was the language of education, administration and the media (see Rindler Schjerve, 1993, p. 271). However, at the end of the 1960s the intergenerational chain of transmission was broken in larger towns, and even in rural areas children were increasingly growing up speaking Italian at home (Rindler Schjerve, 1993, p. 272). Today, in the vast majority of Sardinian families, Italian has replaced Sardinian in all domains and intergenerational transmission has been completely interrupted (see Rindler Schjerve, 1993, 1998, 2000, 2017; Marongiu, 2007). Younger generations have been raised speaking only Italian and have an imperfect, and often at best passive, knowledge of Sardinian. For these people, Sardinian is little more than the language of their grandparents.

[nooj]

I have a song in Sardinian to share with you, by the singer Adrià Mor. Adrià is from the Alguer, that little Catalan outpost on the island of Sardinia. He sings in both the Catalan variety from Alguer as well as in Sardinian. This song is called Decoloniza·ti, sarda, which means 'Sardinian woman, decolonise yourself'.

C’est a Marina, una barraca
sa resistèntzia a is follows e a is likes.
E cun s’ispàssiu, sa cussèntzia ismànniat
cantende in sardu a sa chitarra.
E regordende a su turista
chi Sardigna no est Itàlia.

Fèmina sarda traballadora:
èssere bersàlliu de una tripla opressione,
de gènere, classe e de natzione,
ti faghet tres bortas batalladora.
Pitzoca balente in rebellia,
dinnidade antifascista.

A su pòpulu sa terra
A is potentes sa gherra
Contra de sa prepotèntzia
A sa vitòria semper

Ti narant Partidu Sardu de Atzione
una cosa isceti chi depes fàghere:
lìmpia sa terra d’esertzitatziones,
torra su chelu a is pillones.
E boga sa Nato chi Sardigna
est pòpulu de paghe.

No semus antigas, no semus arcàicos,
semus sa Sardigna chi si depet pesare.
No ses italianu, no ses ispagnola,
ses sarda e custa est s’ora.
Ca deo no m’adato a is cliché,
solu pro pràghere a vostè.

A su pòpulu sa terra
Indipendèntzia, indipendèntzia
A is potentes sa gherra
Indipendèntzia, indipendèntzia
Contra de sa prepotèntzia
Indipendèntzia, indipendèntzia
A sa vitòria semper
No passaran, no passaran

E decoloniza·ti, decoloniza·ti…

Cun su cumpromissu de Luiseddu Caria
tzerriende sintzeru chi no passaran.
Vìtima a pustis de s’ipocrisia
de leis antiterroristas.
Pro cumbàtere su fascismu
de Sardigna a Curdistan.

Luiseddu Caria, Vìtima a pustis de s’ipocrisia de leis antiterroristas. - 'victim of the hypocrisy of anti-terrorist laws'. A Sardinian independentist, arrested for terrorism after fighting against ISIS alongside the Kurds and the founder of a left-wing Sardinian independentist party, A Manca pro s'Indipendèntzia. If you can read Catalan, I highly recommend this article, written by a Sardinian independentist, who tries to explain to a Catalan audience the basic history of a movement that is utterly unknown on this side of the Mediterranean.

This stanza:

Fèmina sarda traballadora:
èssere bersàlliu de una tripla opressione,
de gènere, classe e de natzione,
ti faghet tres bortas batalladora.
Pitzoca balente in rebellia,
dinnidade antifascista.

Sardinian woman of the working class
Being the target of a three-fold oppression,
of gender, class and nation
Makes you a three-fold fighter
A brave woman in rebellion
Antifascist dignity

is a clear reference to the Catalan poet Maria-Mercè Marçal (1952-1998), one of my all-time favourites, who said:

A l’atzar agraeixo tres dons: haver nascut dona,
de classe baixa i nació oprimida.
I el tèrbol atzur de ser tres voltes rebel.

I thank fate for three gifts: for being born a woman,
from a working class and from an oppressed nation.
And the murky blue of being three times a rebel

I el tèrbol atzur de ser tres voltes rebel - the line that has sparked a thousand schoolchildren's essays and innumerable interpretations. Interpreting strictly the line without forcing the grammar, being three times a rebel 'is' being the murky sky-blue (tèrbol atzur) colour, in some way.

[nooj]

In Galicia this kind of structure has various names depending on the location:

Abellariza
Alvariza
Cortín
Corticeira
Oseira
Alvar
Abelleiro
Talameiro
Cortiño
Alvarello

As some of these names suggests, they have to do with bees. They're made out of stone, usually made without mortar, usually in a circular shape. They're used to protect the hives and the honey they produce from outside animals, such as hogs and bears (which explains the name oseira), as well as from storms or fires. Usually they're placed on a slope, so that you can have various levels of hives and they are positioned in a way, facing the east, so that they can get the most amount of sunlight during the day.

Notice the 'wings' of slate or granite, called bardas in Galician or bardes in Asturian on the upper part of the structure, which is used to block bears from climbing over. It's also why these alvarizas aren't put close to trees, since bears are good climbers.





In order to enter, they build a door in the wall or the beekeeper uses a ladder to climb over. These alvarizas are not exclusive to Galicia, and in fact they can be found all over the Peninsula, but the prototypical circular structures are most well known in Galicia, Asturias, Leon, Extremadura etc. It's probably not a coincidence that all were former dominions of the Kingdom of Galicia and part of the Galician-Astur-Leonese cultural area.

The hives in the following picture are made with stone slates and a rectangular wooden structure. These are the colmeias that everyone knows, but the oldest circular versions are called in Galician trobos and in Asturian truébanos. The trobos are made out of a single piece of hollowed out wood or from the bark of trees like the corkwood oak (Quercus suber). The use of bark also explains one of the other names for alvariza, the corticeira. You can see the round versions in the second photo. The problem with these round versions is that it's hard to harvest some of the honey whilst leaving some for the consumption of the hive without also destroying the hive, which is why people passed to the cubical versions that are organised internally into sections. This action of extraction is called esmelgar in Galician.





In Asturias, the alvarizas are called cortinos and whilst investigating them, I found a very nice website that explains some traditional beliefs that Asturian beekeepers have:

En munches caseríes d’Asturies hai cortín, agora con colmenes preparaes pa sacar más rindimientu, compartiendo espaciu colos truébanos tradicionales.Éstos tán fechos de tueros güecos, casi siempre de castañu vieyu, qu’a veces yá taba tubáu. Dempués de recoyer l’enxame, tápase’l truébanu cola calduya, que ye una corteya d’abedul o de corchu de forma circular, bien sellada al truébanu con bul.la de vaca, pa que nun tengan claridá dientro, pues sinón les abeyes nun trabayen. Enriba lleva una llábana pesada p’asegurar el zarramientu. El truébanu tien un furaquín pa que les abeyes puedan entrar y salir. Güei n’Asturies hai apicultores mui preparaos, pa sacar bon rindimientu de les abeyes y van perdiéndose estes formes tradicionales.

Son perinteresantes les creencies populares alredor d’estos animalucos. Dizse que si una abeya entra en casa ye señal de que va haber visita, pero si la mates, la visita nun va ser mui agradable. Estes creencies nun son esclusives d’Asturies. Hai munchos llugares del mundu, yá dende l’antigüedá, qu’alimenten supersticiones sobre estos inseutos.

Según nos diz l’investigador Xuacu López Álvarez, la creencia más estendida ye la que rellaciona a les abeyes con «la idea d’ una supervivencia del alma dempués de la muerte». N’Asturies lo «sagrao» de l’abeya espeyábase nel comportamientu que teníen los paisanos con elles. Enxamas discutíen nin blasfemaben delantre de les abeyes y cuando falaben d’elles llamábenles «abeyines de Dios, pitines de Dios y bendites», pues creíen que yeren llevadores d’almes o representaciones de les mesmes. Cuando morría l’amu d’una casa, la familia tenía que comunica-ylo a les abeyes, porque sinón taben na creencia de que morría l’enxame o que fuxía en busca de la so alma.

Ye perguapa la escena de «garrar l’enxame». Suelen salir pel branu, cuando la calor aprieta y los campos tán floríos. Yera entós cuando’l paisanu que quería garralu, encomenzaba col ritual. Un calderu con agua y a chapicar p’arriba y a tira-yos tierra a les abeyes, mientres repetía: «pousa, pousa, pousa? arriba, arriba, abeya maestra» y petaba nel truébanu con un palu. El truébanu untábase per dientro con ceres de miel y rustíase con yerba abeyera, planta de los xéneros Melissa o Mentha, mui arumosa. El so golor atrái a les abeyes. Facíase un poco de fumu con un trapu que nun quemase. Nun yera’l llabor fácil, sobre too si la maestra yá tenía escoyío’l sitiu pa posase. Según los espertos, son les abeyes esploradores les encargaes de buscar un llugar afayadizu onde asitiase. Había, entós que «convencer» a la maestra, y tres d’ella diben toes entrando nel truébanu. A veces pósense nos sitios más inesperaos. Na mio casa, fai años posóse ún ente’l teyáu y el techu. Allí atoparon les abeyes un furacu qu’enllenaron de ceres y llegamos a tener nel techu’l pasiellu una bona mancha de miel. Hubo que xubir al teyáu pa «garrar l’enxame», y sacales d’ellí. Y va pocos meses posóse un enxame nel campanariu de la ilesia de Belén. Allí les abeyes buscaron abellugu y la so danza competía los díes de fiesta colos danzantes nel campu.

In the quote it explains that bees were believed to be souls that survived death and they were considered to be holy creatures. One never swore in front of bees, and when the owner of a house died, the family of that person were obliged to tell the news of this person's deaths to their bees, because it was believed that either the hive would also die or that the hive would flee in search of the soul of the owner.

Reading this reminded me of the recently departed Zuberoan Basque activist Allande Socarros. I remember that he said about bees in Zuberoan culture:

Eüskal Herriko, Züberoan pürü bai, üsantxa xahar batek nahi züan etxalte batetako etxekanderearen edo etxeko jaunaren hitzearen berri eman zedin etxe hartako erleer.

An old Basque, or at least Zuberoan custom was that when the master of a home died, the bees were informed of their master's death.

After this, I asked a Lithuanian person who told me that in fact, in their culture as well, bees are sacred:

Announcing the death of the owner to the bees is a tradition here as well, and also inviting the bees to festivities.

I don't know how prominent those traditions are anymore, but bees are surely respected.

For example, we have different words for an animal dying (dvėsti or gaišti), and a human (mirti). You're supposed to use the human word for bees, and same with the two words for eating (ėsti for animals, and valgyti for people and bees). Although I suppose that's more relevant for rural life, because people in the city will often use those human words for their pet dogs and cats anyway.

Also, our word for 'buddy' (bičiulis) comes from the word 'bee' (bitė).

Bees have always been a sacred being for Lithuanians, and that feeling somewhat translates into the present day as well, even if most of us don't believe in our old gods anymore, among which there was also a goddess of bees, Austėja.

I'm no beekeeper, but I wonder if this kind of reverance towards bees is universal among beekeepers around the world. I wouldn't be surprised.

In Asturias as well, there is a second type of alvarizas, called talameiros. The difference between the cortinos and the talameiros is that talameiros are towers and the hives are placed on top:

[nooj]

And the fact is that Zuberoan Basque is in such a perilous position, hanging by a thread from utter annihilation, that I don't think anyone is making this a priority. The priority must be teaching the Basque, whether pronunciation is used.

What do I mean when I say this variety of Basque is 'hanging by a thread from utter annihilation'?

Let's look at the demographics.

In 1999, Zuberoa had 15 484 residents spread across 35 towns. In 2019, it had 12 716 inhabitants. Zuberoa is slowly being depopulated.

For a variety of reasons. Young people leave to study and then don't return, or they don't find the work they want, or are unable to start their own businesses, or they cannot find a home to own (not much offer). And we're already seeing the beginning of what's happening in or near the Basque coast where the prices have sky-rocketed, making it difficult or impossible for young people to buy their own property. The pressure on the property market is now spreading to the interior, mountainous regions of the Basque Country as second home owners outprice any local opposition.

And it's not as if they're all rushing to the capital of Zuberoa, as often happens in other places where people leave poorly serviced rural areas and go for more urban areas. Maule is the capital of Zuberoa and between 1968 and 2018, the population of Maule has fallen from 4 500 inhabitants to 2 950 inhabitants. It's not a city nor is it even a big town, but it still has all the services you'd want, so it's puzzling why it's emptying out.

Zuberoa did not escape the intergenerational collapse that happened in other Basque regions, meaning that in Zuberoa, most parents stopped transmitting their languages to their children. As a result, today roughly 50% of the population are Basque speakers, meaning that there are around 6 000 Zuberoan Basque speakers. However, 65% of those 6 000 speakers are over the age of 60 years old. Most Zuberoan Basque speakers are people who are nearing the age of retirement or are already retired. That means that in the next decades as they pass away, we're going to see the 6 000 number go down. A lot.

What's being done to raise the number? Well like I said, most parents stopped transmitting the language, and the basic reasons behind why they stopped transmitting haven't been really solved. Most of the hope falls then on the 2 ikastolas and 10 bilingual schools (whether of the private + public variety) in Zuberoa. Less than 1/3 of the children of Zuberoa are in those schools. The rest, over 2/3 of the children of Zuberoa, are educated in schools where they have no sustained contact with Basque. They will probably grow up to become Zuberoan teenagers and young adults who can only speak in French, and possibly for the rest of their life. It pains me to 'write off' over 2/3 of the youth before even starting...

The ikastolas are full immersion Basque schools where everything is taught in Basque except for French. There are two, the Eperra Ikastola and the Basabürü Ikastola, with around 100 and 45 students respectively. Yes, these are surprisingly few children on which to hang the hopes of a language's survival...



The 10 bilingual schools follow a model where some subjects are taught in Basque and some are in French, the point being to give equal hours to each language. To round the list off, last year one public school in the town of Idauze-Mendiko was allowed to pass onto an experimental immersion model (similar to what's done in the ikastolas) and it is set to open this year. Experimental, because the National Education allowed some of these schools on a provisional basis. The parents in Larraine, who I have already talked about, are protesting for their school as well to become one of those experimental immersion schools, but as of yet no response from the French Education department.

What of the 10 bilingual schools? We've had several decades to see the results of the 50%-50% model, both in the North and in the South Basque Country. This supposedly bilingual model does not produce bilinguals, at least in the sense of students with 100% capability in one language and 100% capability in the other language. It produces French/Spanish dominant students who have some kind of knowledge and proficiency of Basque...but not much. In fact, I'll be blunt, they tend to know very little Basque. We've had decades to observe that only the immersion model produces fully bilingual students.

How many years do the kids spend in these schools anyway and therefore, how much exposure do they get to Basque? Well, the two ikastolas in Zuberoa are schools for early childhood education (2-6 years) and also elementary school (6-11 years). If the kids want to continue in the immersion model, they must leave their province of Zuberoa and go to the Piarres Larzabal school in the town of Ziburu, in the province of Lapurdi, from 11 to 14 years. Afterwards, they can go to the Bernat Etxepare Lizeoa, the sole lycée in the Basque language in the North Basque Country, from 15 until they finish their Bac at 18.

That's in the best of cases. What happens in reality is that there is a steep drop off in enrollment rates for students from the primary education to secondary education (and there's also a steep drop off from secondary education to university level, given that there's hardly any degrees available in Basque). To give an example of what happens in the whole of the North Basque Country, I have some data from 2020. Out of all the students in the North Basque Country, in primary education (3-11), 41.08% did all of their education or at least a part of their education in Basque. In collège, that reduced down to 21.72%. And in lycée, that number was whittled down even more to 10.09%. Only 1 out of 10 secondary students over the age of 14 years are learning in Basque. Meaning only a small proportion of Basque students actually get sustained Basque language education for all of their scolarity.

When we talk about agricultural lycées, which are where many students go to study tourism, agriculture, nursing etc, all of which are important sectors in the North Basque Country, you find that there's not a single one in the North Basque Country that offers education in Basque. All of them are in French.

As for the bilingual models, I have to make a clarification at this point, which makes my previous claim that they're not effective even more apparent. In early childhood education and in elementary school, yes, those 10 schools do offer 50% of their class time in Basque and 50% in French. However, in collège and lycée, the amount of hours for teaching subjects in the Basque language is reduced to 3 hours, with the addition of one subject that is not related to Basque that is also taught in Basque. However, often in these secondary education schools, there's no teacher available to teach in Basque, and so both the number of students who enroll into the bilingual streams, and the very quality of the bilingual model is seriously compromised. Basically if you're a parent and you put your child into a 'bilingual model' thinking that you're child is going to be bilingual at the end of it, you're going to be disappointed by the time your child is an early teenager.

Back to Zuberoa.

In 2020, there were 902 primary school students in Zuberoa. Of those, 551 students (61%) were learning Basque and French. In collège, there were 465 collège students. Of those, only 97 students (20.9%) chose the bilingual stream. From 61% to 20.9% is a big fall, but just you wait...

When we get to the lycée, there is only one lycée in Zuberoa that offers bilingual education, that's the 'Lycée du Pays de Soule' in the town of Sohüta. There, only 9.4% of students signed up for that bilingual stream. From 61% to 20.9% to 9.4%, now that's a very big fall. If we look at the professional lycées as well, of the 973 lycée students in Zuberoa, only 37 signed up for the bilingual stream in Sohüta. This means that few children in Zuberoa continue their education in Basque until the end of their scolarity. They get bits and pieces in Basque, if they're lucky.

There's one more thing that I'm sure you would like to know. What kind of Basque are they teaching anyway? In the ikastolas, they start only with Zuberoan Basque (speaking, reading, writing), and progressively introduce standard Basque (speaking, reading, writing) in the last years. This introduction to standard Basque is necessary because when they go to the Piarres Larzabal school in Lapurdi to continue their education, the classes will only be in standard Basque. They will be integrated with students who come from all over the North Basque Country speaking all kinds of dialects from home, or those who only learned standard Basque. As far as I know, it's similar in the bilingual streams, they are taught both Zuberoan Basque and standard Basque.

To summarise.

In Zuberoa like in the rest of the North Basque Country, intergenerational transmission has mostly stopped. Most native speakers of Basque are elderly. New speakers aren't being created in sufficient numbers to compensate for the loss of those speakers. Most of the new speakers that are being created are done so through the school, but they remain very much a minority (most of their Zuberoan peers don't have any contact with Basque). And another subject that I won't go into, but I will merely evoque: what kind of new speakers are we making anyway? Do they use Basque outside of school? What about the quality of their Basque?

I haven't mentioned adult language education, which is a very important part of Basque language revitalisation. There are adult Zuberoans and adult French immigrants to Zuberoa who sign up to classes organised by AEK in order to learn Basque. Their efforts cannot be denied, but I don't have any data on how many they are nor what level they achieve. Despite that shortcoming, I hope this gives a general picture of what's happening in Zuberoa.

I haven't given any solutions. That's because I think the solutions are obvious. For example, the universalisation of the immersion model in both the public and private education. It's just that these obvious solutions are exceedingly difficult or impossible to apply in the North Basque Country, because 'they' won't let it. You know who they are.