GO TO THE Basque Country of Spain and, linguistically, you feel you are entering not just another country but perhaps another continent. Familiar world languages—Spanish and French—suddenly give way to the otherworldly-seeming Basque, with its proliferation of x’s and k’s, and alien-looking words of tongue-twisting length. Basque (also known as Euskara) is unrelated to the Indo-European family that includes almost all European languages.
Its survival has not been assured. The dictatorship of Francisco Franco from 1939 to 1975 relentlessly centralised the state and insisted that citizens “speak Christian”—that is, Spanish. Public use of Basque was forbidden. When Franco died, the Basque-speaking population was mostly old and rural. For a language, this is usually a terminal diagnosis.
Against all odds, since the 1980s the number of speakers has grown by almost 350,000, out of a regional population of 2.1m. Education has been crucial. In 2017 two-thirds of pupils were studying in schools where Basque was the language of instruction, up from around 14% in 1984; 87% of ten- to 14-year-olds are reckoned to know the language. This is why, in the most recent big survey, the Basque-speaking population (41%) almost matched the non-Basque-speakers (44%). The other 15% are said to understand Basque but struggle to speak it.
For those who follow language revival, this is a galloping success. The world is filled with regional minority languages whose few fluent speakers are old. Being able to halt a death spiral is considered a victory. To increase the number of speakers is a triumph.
But there is another side to the story. In the Basque Country just 376,000 people have the language as their first, transmitted to them in the home. Basque is weakest in the three provincial capitals, where the population is dominated by people from Spanish-speaking homes. As one Basque parliamentarian puts it, even as the knowledge and prestige of the language are growing, outside schools actual usage still seems to be shrinking.
With different proportions, the outline of this narrative can be seen elsewhere. Ireland’s constitution names Irish as the national and first official language. A requirement that all youngsters study it has halted its decline: it is another great victory that 30% of the population claims to be able to speak it. The fact is, though, that few actually do—just 1.7% on a daily basis outside school, and only another 2.5% weekly. A similar tale could be told of Welsh. Rising numbers can speak it, and it has a prominent public presence on signs and in government. But daily use is mostly confined to small pockets of the country.
Such strategies are nonetheless being imitated. In New Zealand, the decline in Maori may be ending. The age groups most likely to speak it are the old (who learned it at home the traditional way) and the much younger, probably thanks to recent immersion programmes. The New Zealand government aims to raise the number of speakers to 1m by 2040, out of a total current population of 5m. This will require many non-Maori to learn it; increasing numbers are doing so. This is all to the good—but those who have learned it as a second language, Maori and non-Maori alike, are far less likely to use it in daily life.
What would it take to get people to live in these languages, as opposed to merely acquiring them? Some Basques say ruefully that in a mixed group in which just one person is uncomfortable in Basque, the rest quickly switch to Spanish. They say that in Catalonia, a similar group is more likely to insist on continuing in Catalan (which, for this and unrelated historical reasons, is far more widely spoken in its territory than is Basque). Insisting on Irish, meanwhile, would border on the absurd, as Manchán Magan showed in a television mini-series, “No Béarla” (“No English”). In it he tries to carry out daily tasks—buying a bus ticket, finding a mechanic—in Irish only, with comical results.
Activists typically want their language to live, even predominate, not just survive. But that might mean shaming those who abjure it. Governments might have to force shopkeepers to address customers in it. Such coercion would be unpopular and illiberal.
A rosy view is that Basque-type situations are the best of all worlds. People can take advantage of the opportunities offered by a major language while keeping the traditional one going—an invaluable link to the past, preserved in adversity. That is success indeed, if bound by painful, possibly inevitable limits.
By The Economist
