@cristina-rhode : I have a question. From a Basque friend I’ve heard a strange opinion that Nafarroa is not truly Basque region so it’s logical that Basque language is not official there. Girls, can you give us some more information about the situation in general :)
We disagree with your friend ^_^.
Although it’s true that the southern side of Nafarroa was the part that suffered the Roman influence the most - it was and ideal location for Roman agriculture - and was very quickly romanized, Euskara didn’t disappear into thin air.
Back in the Middle Ages, Castilian King Alfonso X the Wise used Latin expression “lingua navarrorum” (the language of the Navarrese), and King Charles III of Navarre swore his coronation “in ydiomate navarre” (the language of Navarre). This language was clearly different and opposed to Castilian Romance or Latin, and scholars suspect it would have been probably Euskara or Navarrese-Aragonese Romance - a language assimilated by Castilian around the 16th century.
These mentions happened after Muslim invasion, so, after centuries using Arab in Southern Nafarroa, there still remained Navarrese languages which were used by many people, enough for the Kings to use it.
A bit further in time, in 1566, Queen Jeanne III of Navarre requested to translate the New Testament to Euskara so her Basque-speaking subjects could understand it (Bibles and masses were solely in Latin, a language only known by priests and nobility by then). Why even bothering if in the Kingdom of Navarre weren’t there A LOT of Basque-speakers? We highly doubt that a queen was interested in a minority…
But of course, from the 16th century on, everything goes downhill from there: Castile assimilates the Kingdom of Navarre and all the high public servants - sent by the king - came from Castile or Aragon, and were unable to speak Euskara. In 1795 the social elite (major, priests, etc) of Artaxona went to court to demand that the town public notary learnt the Basque language since it was “the language most commonly used in town”. They lost the trial.
In the 19th century, the French invasion and the Carlist Wars hastened the regression of Euskara in southern Navarre, that turned almost 100% Spanish-speaking. Franco’s dictatorship just consolidated that situation.
So, historically, Basque was spoken by most Navarreses, it was just in the last 200 hundred years when it was lost in the southern part of the region.
But personally, historical reasons aside, we consider that having Euskara as an official language in the whole Nafarroa is a huge step for our language because it could win thousands of new speakers. There are people that may defend that, since the southern part of Nafarroa has been living for around 200 hundred years without Basque, why would they want to learn it? Well, simply because it’s just another language. 100% of kids learn English / French at school and it’s not a controversial issue. And when people say that Euskara is “not worth learning because it isn’t useful”, we always answer that we learned how to solve Napierian logarithms at school, have never needed them for anything in our lives, and still no one gives a damn about them. As usual, learning Euskara is a big deal for some.
Aaaaand, we wrote a NEVERENDING post again, hahaha.
dailybridgerton
tangentwithtanner
ellievsbear
gummygunk
amandla
theartofmadeline
gamechangershow
