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Euskera

Euskera, or the Basque language, is nowadays written with Latin alphabet. There are about 600,000 speakers in the north of Spain, the entire province of Guipúzcoa, in addition to the provinces of Vizcaya and Navarra and some areas in Alava, and in the western part of the French Atlantic Pyrenees (approximately 100,000 speakers).

With regard to the origin of the Basque tongue, there have been a number of hypotheses. It has been suggested that the language of the ancestors of the Basques was introduced into this part of Europe by immigrants from Asia Minor at the beginning of the Bronze Age (i.e. round about the year 2000 BC).

Basque and Castilian entered History together, since the first text preserved in Castilian, the Código Emilianense, c.977, is also written in Basque.

Euskera is the official language of the Basque provinces since 1982, together with Castilian. The orographic features of the region have contributed to maintaining its linguistic diversity, which cause some linguists, based on the intercommunicative difficulties, to claim the existence of seven different Basque languages. To overcome this fragmentation the Royal Academy of the Basque Language was created in 1919, and in 1968, a standardized Basque grammar called batúa was adopted for official purposes.

If you need more information about the Euskera, please write or call to:


REAL ACADEMIA DE LA LENGUA VASCA-EUSKALTZAINDIA
Arbieto, 3
48071 Bilbao (Vizcaya)
(Spain)
Phone: 34 - 4 - 415 8155

Thank-you, very much.

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