Biscay is a province of the Basque Country in Spain.It is generally accepted that Bizkaia, the original Basque term, is a correlate of bizkar Biscay is a province of the Basque Country in Spain.It is generally accepted that Bizkaia, the original Basque term, is a correlate of bizkar Biscay .gif", event)' onMouseout='HidePop("83511")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Basque_Country_(autonomous_community)">Basque Country
The Basque Country is an Autonomous Community of northern Spain.The Basque Country was granted the status of historical region within Spain with the Spanish Constitution of 1978...
subsequently joined (1918), with articles of association being approved and Euskaltzaindia being legally constituted in October 1919. One year later its journal "Euskera" was launched, the official organ for the publication of its rules and research work, which has survived to the present day.
The current internal structure and organisation can be summarised as follows: the academy is governed by a ruling body composed of the Chairman, Deputy Chairman,
SecretaryA secretary is an administrative assistant in business office administration.The executive secretary has a myriad of administrative duties. Traditionally, these duties were mostly related to correspondence, such as the typing out of letters...
and
TreasurerA treasurer is the person responsible for running the treasury of an organization.-Government:The Treasury of a country is the department responsible for the country's economy, finance and revenue. The Treasurer is generally the head of the Treasury, although, in some countries A treasurer is the...
. The heads of the Research and Watchdog Sections are also members. Plenary sessions must be held at least once a month. Under current rules the Academy has 24 full members and an unlimited number of associate members.The Academy is present throughout the area where Basque is used, with a head office in
BilbaoBilbao is the largest city in the Basque Country in northern Spain and the capital of the province of Biscay ....
and regional offices in
BayonneBayonne is a city and commune in south-western France at the confluence of the Nive and Adour rivers, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department, of which it is a sub-prefecture....
(Baiona), Donostia-San Sebastián,
Iruñea-PamplonaPamplona is the capital city of Navarre, Spain and of the former kingdom of Navarre.The city is famous worldwide for the San Fermín festival, from July 7 to 14, in which the running of the bulls or encierro is one of the main attractions...
and
Vitoria-GasteizVitoria-Gasteiz, is the capital city of the province of Álava and of the autonomous community of the Basque Country in northern Spain. It is the second largest Basque city, after Bilbao...
.
Goals
The Academy's articles of association set out the institution's objectives, first published in 1920. Those articles have been repeatedly reformed (and standing orders added) with the aim of adapting the institution to the
linguisticIn the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...
and cultural circumstances of the day. However, the initial articles defining Euskaltzaindias ultimate goals have simply been ratified over the years, with new details being added where necessary (e.g. article 1 in 1976). The aims of the Academy were set out as follows in the original articles:
Art. 1 - The aim of this institution is to watch over the Basque language, paying close attention to its promotion, both philologically and socially.
Art. 2 - Accordingly, the Academy deals with both these areas in their respective sections: the Research Section and the Tutelary Section, with members belonging to both.
It is thus clear that the work of Euskaltzaindia is concerned with both the
corpusCorpus is Latin for body. It can refer to:* Corpus Christi * Corpus linguistics...
and the status of the language. Since then the Academy has maintained these two sections in order to carry out its mission.
History
In the decade and a half prior to the
Spanish Civil WarThe Spanish Civil War was a major conflict that devastated Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939. It began after an attempted coup d'état by a group of Spanish Army generals against the government of the Second Spanish Republic, then under the leadership of president Manuel Azaña...
(1919-1936), the Academy managed to consolidate itself as an institution and set about its project of promoting the birth of a standard
literary languageA literary language is a register of a language that is used in literary writing. This may also include liturgical writing. The difference between literary and non-literary forms is more marked in some languages than in others...
, although it was unable to provide a precise, solid academic formulation for that aim. On the other hand, its work in that period contributed decisively to a better understanding of the language through
Resurrección María de AzkueResurrección María de Azkue was an influential Basque priest, musician, poet, writer, sailor and academic. He made several made several major contributions to the study of the Basque language and was the first head of the Euskaltzaindia, the Academy of the Basque Language...
's studies (Morfología Vasca
, 1923-1934) and far reaching surveys among speakers of the languageA language is a system for encoding and decoding information. In its most common use, the term refers to so-called "natural languages" — the forms of communication considered peculiar to humankind. In linguistics the term is extended to refer to the human cognitive facility of creating and using...
(Erizkundi Irukoitza, from 1922 onwards). The journal "Euskera" is a faithful witness to the work carried out at the time.
In 1936 and the years which followed, under the language politics of Francoist Spain the Academy's previous activities were reduced to silence until
AzkueResurrección María de Azkue was an influential Basque priest, musician, poet, writer, sailor and academic. He made several made several major contributions to the study of the Basque language and was the first head of the Euskaltzaindia, the Academy of the Basque Language...
, with the collaboration of
Federico KrutwigFederico Krutwig Sagredo was a Spanish Basque writer and politician, author of several books.Along with Felix Likiniano, he tried to create some resistance to the Francoist regime after the Spanish Civil War...
, was able to timidly reinitiate academic life at the beginning of the 1950s. The articles of association were reformed in 1954, new full members were elected and from 1956 on the Academy started to enjoy a more settled existence both in its internal affairs and in its public conferences and open meetings (first postwar congress:
ArantzazuArantzazu is a town and municipality located in the province of Biscay, in the Autonomous Community of Basque Country, northern Spain.-External links:*...
, 1956).
The following decade (1956-1968) coincided with a new generation of collaborators, the increasing introduction of Basque in bilingual non-state schools (
ikastolaAn ikastola is a type of primary and secondary school in the Basque Autonomous Community, Navarre and the French Basque Country in which pupils are taught either entirely or predominantly in the Basque language...
k), the revival of the Basque language press and the first attempts at teaching basic
literacyLiteracy is a concept claimed and defined by a range of different theoretical fields. In everyday terms, "literacy" is typically described as the ability to read and write...
in Basque, among other initiatives.
Euskara batua, unified Basque
The Euskaltzaindia has been a vocal and active advocate of the introduction of a unified
dialectThe term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by scholars of language. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other...
of the Basque language, known as "
Euskara BatuaEuskara batua is a standardised version of the Basque language, which nowadays is the most widely and commonly spoken throughout the Basque Country...
", or Unified Basque. Basque has been usually divided into 8 different dialects, varying in their level of mutual intelligibility. The first detailed dialectical analysis was by
Louis Lucien BonaparteLouis Lucien Bonaparte was a French anglophile linguist, and the third son of Napoleon's second surviving brother, Lucien Bonaparte, and Lucien's second wife Alexandrine de Bleschamp...
. However, many people have seen this as a weakness in the language's fight for survival in a world in which minority languages spoken in states are wiped out by the states' official language. Having been for centuries pressured on both sides by
SpanishSpanish or Castilian is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that originated in northern Spain and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile, evolving into the principal language of government and trade in the Iberian peninsula...
and
FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
, and under the rule of
FrancoFrancisco Franco Bahamonde, commonly known as Francisco Franco , or simply Franco, was a military general and dictator of Spain from October 1936, and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in 1975...
coming close to extinction, the Academy felt the need to create a unified dialect of Basque, in order that the language have a greater chance of survival. The new dialect of Basque was heavily based on the
GipuzkoanGipuzkoan is a dialect of the Basque language spoken mainly in the province of Gipuzkoa in Basque Country but also in a small part of Navarre. It is as central dialect, spoken in the central and eastern part of Gipuzkoa...
dialect of Donostia-San Sebastián - the dialect with the richest literary heritage.
The 1968 Arantzazu Congress laid down the basic guidelines for achieving that objective in a systematic way (lexicon, morphology, declension and spelling). A further step was taken in 1973 with a proposal to establish a standard conjugation.
The debate arising from this new set of standard language rules (1968 - 1976) did not prevent it from becoming increasingly accepted in teaching, the media, and administration (1976 - 1983), within the context of burgeoning regional government (Statute of Autonomy in
EuskadiThe Basque Country is an Autonomous Community of northern Spain.The Basque Country was granted the status of historical region within Spain with the Spanish Constitution of 1978...
, 1979; Improvement of the Charter of
NavarreNavarre is a region in northern Spain, constituting one of its autonomous communities - the "Chartered Community of Navarre" .-History:...
, 1982). Many people, however, continue to oppose the imposition of a single created dialect of Basque.
Euskaltzaindia counsels the Basque administrations wishing to officialize Basque place names.
It is funded by the
BiscayneBiscayne can refer to:Places:In South Florida:* Key Biscayne, an island in Miami-Dade County** Key Biscayne, Florida, a village on Key Biscayne island* Biscayne Bay, a lagoon on the Atlantic coast, bounded in part by Key Biscayne...
, Guipuscoan,
AlaveseÁlava is a province of northern Spain in the southern part of the Basque Autonomous Community. The province numbers a population of 301,926 inhabitants in an area of 2,963 km²....
, Navarrese,
SpanishThe Culture of Spain is a European culture based on the pre-Roman cultures, mainly the celts and the Iberians, known as the Celtiberian cultures; but mainly in the period of Roman influences. In the areas of language and religion, the Ancient Romans left a lasting legacy...
, and
FrenchThe culture of France and of the French people has been shaped by geography, by profound historical events, and by foreign and internal forces and groups. France, and in particular Paris, has played an important role as a center of high culture and of decorative arts since the seventeenth...
authorities for culture.
Other
The current president is Andres Urrutia.
The lesser-known organization Euskerazaintza strives to preserve the various
BasqueBasque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is the mother tongue of approximately one fifth of Basques, 632,000 out of nearly 3,000,000...
dialects.
External links