Running head: WHY DID THE BASQUE LANGUAGE SURVIVE?

Why Did the Basque Language Survive?

A Review of the Literature
Mikyla Denney
Minnesota State University, Mankato

Author Note
This paper was prepared for Honors Seminar: Research and Information Literacy
401, taught by Professor Martin.

WHY DID THE BASQUE LANGUAGE SURVIVE?

Why Did the Basque Language Survive?

A Review of the Literature
Have you ever thought about where words come from? Many of the modern
languages today were not always here. Many have developed from older, previous
languages, some of which no longer exist. Linguists study exactly how this phenomenon
happened. Some ancient languages and dialects have disappeared altogether, while
some have lasted through the ages. One such dialect is the Basque dialect of Spain. It
has survived since at least the Roman times and is thought to be the oldest European
language still around today. The Basque language has changed very little and very
slowly over the centuries and many factors have led to the preservation of the Basque
dialect. Unfortunately, there is little information on one factor: why Latin did not
transform the Basque dialect as much as it did to dialects in neighboring regions. This
literature review discusses why the Basque language has survived for so long. The
Basque people were able to resist for the most part the influences and invasions of
other cultures. Also, a strong sense of nationalism among the Basque people has
allowed for the preservation of the dialect. Simultaneously the review highlights the
need to investigate why Latin did not have as much of an impact on the Basque dialect
as it did on neighboring languages so that it can be better understood how dialects
survive external influences.
It is rare that a language or dialect such as Basque survives for such a long
period of time with minimal changes, considering the amount of outside factors and
influences that could have majorly altered it throughout the centuries. One factor that
helped the Basque language to survive was its isolation. In her dissertation Dialect

WHY DID THE BASQUE LANGUAGE SURVIVE?

Divergence and Identity in Basque Spanish, Maria Ciriza (2009)

states that the Basque language is spoken by about 660,000
people in three territories in southern France and in four provinces
in northern Spain. Antonio Tovar (1957) claims that one reason
the Basque language has survived for so long is that these
regions where Basque is still spoken today are isolated. However,
there is little information explaining this isolation. The article
Basques by the Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily
Life (2009) describes the areas varied landscape. It contains
foothills of the Pyrenees mountain range, a short coastal plain

Figure 1 Map of Basque speaking

region. Source: Worldmark
Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily
Life.

along the Bay of Biscay, along with steep, narrow valleys and mountain streams. It
would be safe to assume that these types of landscapes would pose a challenge to
anyone trying travel through, especially in ancient times when travel was more difficult
and dangerous than it is today. Therefore, this variation of landscape is most likely one
reason why the Basque people and their language remained fairly isolated.
However, in a later book, Antonio Tovar (1961) argues that the languages
isolation and remoteness is not necessarily the best reason why the Basque language
has survived. He explains how regions west of the Basque provinces are even more
rugged, yet Romanization1 continued there after the fall of the empire (Tovar, 1961, p.
129). Therefore, isolation was not necessarily the main factor in preserving the Basque
language. While there was Romanization in the Basque country, it did not completely
transform or erase the original language. In his earlier book, The Basque Language,
1

Latin was originally spoken by people on the Seven Hills located on the Tiber River in Italy. It started spreading
throughout the rest of Italy, and eventually the rest of Europe, due mainly to the military power of the
Romans (Bonner, 1930, p. 579).

WHY DID THE BASQUE LANGUAGE SURVIVE?

Tovar (1957) states that the Romanization of the Basque language was never
completed, it was actually interrupted. Also, Christianity was accepted late by the
Basques (Tovar, 1957, p. 34). The Basques not only survived invasions by the Romans,
but the Visigoths, Arabs, French, and Spanish as well. the Basques remained in
rebellion against the Visigothic kingdom (Tovar, 1961, p. 129). They resisted
domination from outside forces until the Middle Ages. This was when Spaniards,
Gascons, and Catalans seized a great deal of their territory (Basques, 2009).
There is evidence that the Basque language has changed little over time. There
are actually fewer differences between modern Basque and Basque spoken in the
sixteenth century than there are between Spanish and French of the same time periods
(Tovar, 1957, p. 53). The Basque language was able to resist a great amount of
influence by Latin, simply because the two languages are so different. Languages
completely foreign to each other do not mix and offer more resistance (Tovar, 1961, p.
130). Any Latin elements that did penetrate into the original morphology of Basque must
have done so very early (Tovar, 1957, p. 35). Besides these facts, there is little
information as to why Latin did not have as strong of an influence on the Basque
language as it did on many neighboring languages.
At one point in history, the Basque language retreated in certain regions, due
partly because of the Romanization that did occur within the Basque dialect (Tovar,
1961, p. 129). However, since the language did not die completely, it was revived years
later. Daniele Conversi (1997) states in her book The Basques, the Catalans, and
Spain that the first book written in Basque that researchers have knowledge of
appeared in 1545. For a long time the Basque provinces had kept their local laws and

WHY DID THE BASQUE LANGUAGE SURVIVE?

customary privileges intact, which was unlike most other Spanish regions. A historian by
the name of Augustin Chaho was among the first to interpret the First Carlist War (18331839) as a national struggle for freedom of the four provinces. According to Marianne
Heiberg (1989), the Carlist Wars were basically Basque civil wars. Liberal, anti-fuero
urban centers fought against the Carlist, pro-fuero rural areas.
Juan Dez Medrano (1995) goes on to explain in his book Divided Nations that
Basque ethnic consciousness was significantly enhanced by the Second Carlist War
(1872-1876). The reason for this enhancement was that the Carlist military support in
the Basque provinces had turned the war into a conflict between the Basque provinces
and the rest of Spain (Medrano, 1995, p. 69-70). This situation was made worse after
the war with the abolishment of the Fueros. Marianne Heiberg (1989) explains that the
Fueros were a defense of common lands and protection from state taxes. This
abolishment had dramatic consequences on the Basque people. They now had to pay
taxes from which they had previously been exempt. Also, the main legislative and
executive bodies of the Basque country had been replaced with Disputaciones
Provinciales, the main governing bodies in the fifty-two Spanish provinces at that time
(Medrano, 1995, p. 70). Even though there had been an interest in Basque culture and
history before the abolition of the Fueros, the decree abolishing them was a powerful
motivation for the cultural and historiographical movement that arose.
The standardization of Basque was delayed compared to neighboring Romance
languages, which were heavily influenced by Latin. Hualde and Zuazo (2007) claim that
this is due in part because there were few functions assigned to the language. The
Basque language did not have official use in administration until recent decades.

WHY DID THE BASQUE LANGUAGE SURVIVE?

However, in modern times, the movement has continued to grow in order to revive and
standardize the Basque dialect and culture. Jacqueline Urla (1999) explains that people
from all walks of life are working to revive the use of Basque, including professionals,
artists, parents, students, musicians, and poets. The ways people contribute to the
movement vary from teaching Basque classes and participating in fundraisers for
Basque language schools to working for Basque radio and television. It is this diversity
that makes this Basque-language movement unusual compared to other contemporary
language-revival movements (Urla, 1999, p. 44).
It is important to know why Latin affected Basque the way it did because even in
modern times Latin is impacting the Basque dialect via the pressure to use the Latinbased Spanish language. One area where Basque is being revitalized is in schools.
According to Begoa Echeverria (2003), efforts to revive the Basque language started
in the 1960s, when ikastolas2 were founded. These schools were the building blocks for
the educational system today. According to Gardner (2000), students in private and
public schools have the option to choose between three linguistic models. Model A
offers instruction in Spanish and teaches Basque as a subject for three or four hours a
week. Model B is bilingual. Model D offers instruction in Basque and teaches Spanish
as a subject (as cited in Echeverria, 2003, p. 353). All three levels are offered at the
primary and elementary levels. However, the bilingual option is not offered at the
secondary level (Echeverria, 2003, p. 353). Nevertheless, these efforts to teach Basque
were met with controversy. Echeverria states, During the period of my field work
(January through December 1997), the ruling Spanish party, Partido Popular, called for
a halt to Basque-medium schools [Model D] and a re-emphasis of Spanish nationalism
2

Schools that teach the Basque language (Lpez-Goi, 2003, p.672).

WHY DID THE BASQUE LANGUAGE SURVIVE?

(Echeverria, 2003, p. 353).
However, such controversy has not stopped the Basque nation and its people
from fighting for the standardization and revitalization of the Basque language.
Nationalism runs high in an effort to save and revive the only indigenous language of
Western Europe to survive invasions and other cultural influences. This phenomenon
occurred because of several reasons. The isolation of the Basque people and their
culture, the resistance to invasions and other outside forces, and a strong sense of
nationalism are just some of the factors that contributed to the survival of this ancient
language. One of the cultural influences that had little affect on the Basque language
was Latin. Even though some Latin did penetrate the dialect, it was not to the extent of
other languages. However, there is little information as to why Latin did not have as
great an effect on the Basque dialect. Researching this concept is important so that it
can be better understood how dialects survive external influences.

Works Cited

WHY DID THE BASQUE LANGUAGE SURVIVE?

Basques. (2009). In T. L. Gall, & J. Hobby (Eds.), Worldmark encyclopedia of cultures

and daily life (2nd ed., pp. 65-69). Detroit: Gale.
Bonner, R. J. (1930). The conflict of languages in the Roman world. The Classical
Journal, 25(8), 579-592.
Ciriza, M. (2009). Dialect divergence and identity in Basque Spanish. (Ph.D., University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, .
(304894452).
Conversi, D. (1997). The Basques, the Catalans, and Spain : Alternative routes to
nationalist mobilisation. Reno: University of Nevada Press.
Medrano, J. D. (1995). Divided nations: Class, politics, and nationalism in the
Basque country and Catalonia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Echeverria, B. (2003). Schooling, Language, and Ethnic Identity in the Basque
Autonomous Community. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 34(4), 351-372.
Heiberg, M. (1989). The making of the Basque nation /. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Hualde, J. I., & Zuazo, K. (2007). The standardization of the Basque language.
Language Problems & Language Planning, 31(2), 143-168.
Lpez-Goi, I. (2003). Ikastola in the twentieth century: An alternative for schooling in
the Basque country. History of Education, 32(6), 661-676.
Tovar, A. (1961). The ancient languages of Spain and Portugal. New York: S.F. Vanni.

WHY DID THE BASQUE LANGUAGE SURVIVE?

Tovar, A. (1957). The Basque language. New York: American Book-Stratford Press, Inc.
Urla, J. (1999). Basque language revival and popular culture. In W. A. Douglass, C.
Urza, L. White, & J. Zulaika (Eds.), Basque Cultural Studies (p. 44-62). Reno,
NV: University of Nevada.