+ Euskera: lengua troglodita?

Desde luego que en el Siglo XIX, en la era de la comunicacion, en una Europa Unida donde el mayor problema es la excesiva diversidad de lenguas que dificulta la comunicacion, para un extranjero tiene que resultar desconcertante -o surrealista- que se engendre un frankenstein linguistico a base de coser y remendar los diferentes restos de una lengua arcaica, primitiva, y completamente inutil, y que se obligue a toda una poblacion a hablarla.

Es por ello, que el corresponsal del WSJ, Keith Johnson, se asombra de que el gobierno vasco obligue a los policias a dejar de patrullar para estudiar gramatica, o que con un deficit de medicos cualificados, se rechacen doctores por no hablar una lengua del jurasico.

Y es que Spain is different, especialmente a los ojos de un foraneo. Solo en Belgica se superan semejantes extremos de teatro del absurdo, aunque eso es poco consuelo: los belgas no tienen fama precisamente de inteligentes:

Ms. Esquivias, a 50-year-old high-school math teacher and Spanish-speaking native of Bilbao, must learn Basque or risk losing her job, [...] she has been given at least a year off with pay to spend 25 hours a week drilling verbs and learning vocabulary in Euskera -- a language with no relation to any other European tongue and spoken by fewer than one million people. About 450 million people world-wide speak Spanish.


Basque separatists have [...] taken to wielding grammar instead of guns [...] experimenting with pushing a strict regime of Euskera into every corner of public life. Of the present-day Basque Country's approximately 2.1 million inhabitants, roughly 30% speak Basque; more than 95% speak Spanish.

The regional government of the Basque Country has begun to tighten the screws on its language policy to the point where now, all public employees, from mail-sorters to firemen, must learn Euskera to get -- or keep -- their jobs. Cops are pulled off the street to brush up their grammar. And companies doing business with the Basque government must conduct business in Euskera. Starting next year, students entering public school will be taught only in Basque.

Although there is a shortage of doctors in the Basque Country, the Basque health service requires medical personnel to speak Euskera. Health-service regulations detail how Euskera should be used in every medical situation, from patient consultations down to how to leave a phone message or make an announcement over a public-address system (Basque first, then Spanish). There are rules specifying the typeface and placement of Basque signs in hospitals (Basque labels on top or to the left, and always in bold).

The official goal of the Basque policy is to transform Euskera from a "co-official" status with Spanish to "co-equal" status. "To have a truly bilingual society, you need positive discrimination," says Mertxe Múgica

But as Basque nationalists try to push their language into the mainstream, they are bumping up against an uncomfortable reality. "Euskera just isn't used in real life," says Leopoldo Barrera, the head of the center-right Popular Party in the Basque regional Parliament. Though it has existed for thousands of years -- there are written records in Basque that predate Spanish -- it is an ancient language little suited to contemporary life.

Airport, science, Renaissance, democracy, government, and independence, for example, are all newly minted words with no roots in traditional Euskera: aireportu, zientzia, errenazimentu, demokrazia, gobernu, independentzia.

The regional government has spent years of effort and billions of euros to make sure that every official document, from job applications for sanitation workers to European Union agricultural grants, is available in Euskera. But this year, in San Sebastian, a hotbed of Basque nationalism and the region's second-largest city, not a single person chose to take the driver's license exam in Euskera, says Mr. Barrera.

The Basque-language TV channel is loaded with Euskera favorites, such as the irrepressible redhead "Pippi Galtzaluze." But the channel has a 4.4% audience share in the Basque Country, according to data from Taylor Nelson Sofres -- less than the animal-documentary channel of public broadcasting.


Joseba Arregui, a former Basque culture secretary, native Basque speaker, and onetime architect of the language policy, feels that Euskera is being pushed too far. "It's just no good for everyday conversation," he says. "When a language is imposed, it is used less, and that creates a diabolical circle of imposition and backlash."

In the classroom, Euskera use has also allowed separatists to control the curriculum. Basque-language textbooks used in schools never tell students that the Basque Country is part of Spain, for example. No elementary-school texts even mention the word Spain.

Por Lawrence de Eurabia