Señor_Contador said:
That's because I did not say that, you did. I said Basque is a collection of dialects from a much earlier version of Euskera that was lost many, many years ago.
Dialects of an ancient version of Euskera.
If you're going to call them dialects of an ancient version of a former language, well, that's what pretty much EVERY language is. Spanish is a descendant of a dialect of Latin. The Basque language was not codified until Batua, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a language. Sorbian still isn't fully codified, but there are two distinct branches of it. Many aboriginal languages around the world are not codified. But they are languages. Hell, the German language was for many, many years not codified. And dialects of it could compete for prestige and there was a large amount of unintelligibility. To an extent there still is with varieties such as Schwyzertüütsch.
In the case of the Basque language... I think the comparison between Portuguese and Galego would do it a lot more justice. As you know both are considered different languages, but their language of origin is Galaico-Portugués.
Yes, linguists see Galego and Portuguese as a branch of the Romance tree separate to the one that Spanish is upon. But Basque is something from a different tree entirely.
Some dialects of Basque were so different that they could be considered different languages altogether (which is a sign of linguistic richness).
Either there is one language from which the others are all dialects, or they are separate languages. It's not really possible in linguistic terms to have
only dialects extant, because they must be dialects of something that still exists, otherwise they are linguistic offshoots (i.e. languages) in their own right. You could say that Euskera Batua is a 'levelling off' of several dialects of one language without a prescriptive norm, rather like how modern Italian and modern German were created. Germans in Lübeck and German-speakers in Südtirol were almost entirely mutually unintelligible when speaking dialect, but they were still speaking varieties of the same language.
That is not true at all either. Dude! Dude! Dude! A modern nation state is a "bubble of freedom" in which every citizen is free to speak what they want, dance what they want, assemble as they so choose, and live wherever they want, provided they obey The Rule of Law.
Well hey, if that's what a nation state is, it's incredible we don't live in a completely united utopia! A nation state involves a right to self-determination. It was about the end of feudalism.
In layman's terms:
"State" = political or geographical identity
"Nation" = cultural or ethnic identity
"Nation State" = implication that the two coincide or at least mostly map onto one another.
That all peoples have the right to self-determination was one of Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points, and was one of the key factors in the redesigning of Europe after WWI. That wasn't some idealistic "bubble of freedom". It was about each group of people having their own territory in which they could have that. It was about nations being able to choose their own Law. If you didn't like that, you could live somewhere else, as long as you were willing to be subject to their Law. Which is all well and good as long as you have your own nation state that you can be part of. Sorbs, Basques, Catalans, Brétons do not have their own Nation State. They simply have to put up with the rules of the Nation State they are the minority in. Which the majority are fine with, but some are not.
That is so because you only see Basque as the only language in Euskadi and Catalan as the only language in Catalonia. That is the quintesential nationalist point of view. The fact of the matter is that in BOTH Catalonia and Euskadi Spanish is an official, and most spoken, language. In any case, Catalan is in a much better state than Basque so let's just concentrate on your language. Only about 15% of the people actually speak Euskera on a daily basis. Yes, upwards of 30% know how to speak it, but the question is: Are they using it on a daily basis? So... all in all only 15-30% of Basques actually "have" a "different language". So... in essence, a minority of Basques (in the Basque Country only mind you, the state of the other Basque dialects in Iparralde and Navarre is even less favorable to your point.
The language is only one part of identity. Only a small percentage of Welsh speak Welsh. Only a small percentage of Brétons speak Bréton. Basque is not the only language in Euskadi, nor should it be as long as so much of the population are reliant on Spanish for their day-to-day communication. Hell, even some of the Basque nationalist figures over the years have had to learn the language from scratch. I don't see Basque as the only language in Euskadi. But I see it as "A" language of Euskadi, and as a language with great cultural and historical relevance to the area I feel like it should be protected. Have you seen the efforts of the Welsh and Irish to propagate and extend the usage of their native languages ahead of the all-pervasive English? They're talking of attempting to do that with Cornish too, which has been dead for 300 years.
But what nationalist groups are you talking about? The only nationalists are the Basque nationalists.
You don't believe Spanish nationalists exist?
I wasn't even talking about nationalism at that point. I was saying that actually, the lack of oppression actually is more of a threat to minority identities, because when minority groups are oppressed they become inward looking, which strengthens the sense of community; when they are free there is no need to do this. Take an example; a hypothetical Basque family from, say, Oñati Husband, wife, two kids. Pretty standard. They've always spoken Basque. The children have learnt Spanish at school. So far so good. As they grow up, one of the kids meets a Spanish girl. They marry, have children. That child learns both Basque and Spanish. Then when it grows up, it meets a Spanish-speaking partner, and Spanish becomes the only language spoken. The other hypothetical child meets a Basque boy; they both speak Basque. They live in a nice happy free nation state, and they move house when the husband gets a job in, say, Murcía. Any province will do. So they move down there. They have kids, and speak Basque to them. However, in order to communicate with the other kids and learn at school, that kid needs to speak Spanish, so learning Basque has little benefit to them. So they don't use it and don't teach it to their children when they have them.
There: nobody has been oppressed, nobody's done anything wrong, it's all been quite idyllic - but the Basque language has been lost completely within two generations.
That's what I mean by people's identity being threatened by freedom to practice it.
Furthermore, how can a language spoken only by a mere minority be expected to be the official language in a region where only 15-30% are able to speak it? And lastly, do you think it's right, in a universal sense, to let social tension get worse by mere perceptions (i.e. that "your language and traditions" are in danger)?
Firstly, it can't be expected to be
the official language, but it can be expected to be
an official language, so long as the language is capable of fulfilling the functions of an official language. It shouldn't be that you turn up, say, at court and MUST speak Basque; but you should have the choice to express yourself in Basque if you so wish, within those territories in which Basque is spoken by a reasonable number of people. An analogous situation would be Luxembourg, where Luxembourgish is available for people to use in official communication if they so wish, but the majority prefer to use either French (more common) or German (less common).
Lastly, unfortunately social tension in such a situation is not really something that can be helped. Certain groups work to calm that tension, others with different goals thrive on that tension. The people's perceptions may be shaped by a media which has an agenda (even though that agenda is usually nothing more than "do what will make us money"), but ultimately most people act upon perceptions and thoughts that are usually ill-informed at best. After all, in the words of Winston Churchill, "the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter".
No, not at all. The nazis ideal of a nation is a secular state ruled by the arian race (no Jews allowed), where only one language is spoken and where the "sky is the limit" as far as territory goes (meaning they decided what territory was theirs). The nation state is the complete opposite of that.
The Nazi ideal was an Empire ("Reich", not "Nation" or "Staat"). Where they would take over other people's land and exclude 'undesirable' elements. The Nazis did not believe in the nation state; they believed in ONE nation state. Their one. Believing in your right to self-determination is nationalist perhaps, but not Nazistic; believing in your right to self-determination TO THE EXCLUSION OR EXPULSION OF OTHERS is. Or were the Czechs and Slovaks who were granted their own (nation) state in the aftermath of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire being Nazistic in their demands to not be ruled over by autocratic Austrians anymore?
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