There are no breathing spaces without proper speakers. Native speakers are the support, the oraceration, the mainstay and the foundation of the respiratory zones.

But let's start at the beginning: what are the respiratory zones? The word Arnasa is a word translated into Basque by Euskaltzaina Mikel Zalbide, to express the concept that American sociolinguist Joshua Fishman gave birth in 1991: physical breathing space.

In his book Reversing Language Shift, Joshua Fishman, a U.S. honorary scholar, explained what is a demographically concentrated space, in which Xish [minority language threatened: Euskera in our case] can be in its realm, without superiority or persecution."

Euskaltzaina Mikel Zalbide explained with his words the concept:

"What is the respiratory zone? (...) To put it somewhat in Euskera, a place where the Basque people feel demographically 'in their anger', a place where they feel 'the lord of the house' without anyone resisting and being attacked. This is essentially Fishman's physical breathing space. In places where the Basques live with the Basques in an Basque environment, where the language of their parents is acquired from generation to generation, in areas where there is no linguistic planning or any special intervention (for some the 'eccentric'), the Basque is more alive. There's the best health. This is the real Basque respiratory centre, which ensures the transmission of the tongue in full condition (much more than in most other places). Young children learn in their language without a special organization. This is how they learn to speak. First speaking and then, with the school, etc., reading, writing and writing in it the records and variants of that oral language, working it, making it more formalized. This is the normal, prototypical path of continuity of healthy languages. (. These are, for Fishman and others, the most natural and useful principles of the attempt at linguistic revitalization. Standardisation without it is not a standardisation. Nor does anyone who carries the surveillance of these media to a second or third priority".

Therefore, in the equation of the respiratory zone there is an inevitable element that is the speaker himself. Thus, the respiratory areas are characterized as spaces of broad knowledge and use of the Basque language, natural spaces of great demographic concentration of native speakers, source and quarry of native speakers, which reinforce, ensure and maintain the intergenerational transmission of the mother tongue.

Let's now explain what native speakers are:

Native speakers are natural speakers of all languages, native speakers, native speakers or native speakers. On the knee chain, they are speakers who receive from their parents and who naturally have language, the Basque language, theirs and their own. Speakers who live and think of that language. Compared to the other languages you know, your own language is the most fluid. Native speakers make it a central language in the understanding of the reality that surrounds them and in a language of reasoning their reflections, since they have this own language as an instrument of reflection and internal expression for their own bosom.

We have language and we have languages enabled. For every language to be alive and healthy, it needs native speakers, speakers who live the language and the language itself to live. Speakers who speak and laugh internally in their own language; in short, speakers who, in continuous interaction, live their own and eternal language.

The native speaker is the noun of the language, as native speakers renew the root tongue tree to the sap, renew outbreaks, renew the leaf and renew their breath to be a rigorous and accurate tool for human communication. Language is created by natural speakers, as is water that constantly renews itself from the old mountain fountain or that renews fire by the brasa and the coals. If you're a native speaker, it'll be a language.

When establishing social relationships or relationships networks between natural speakers, spaces, places or human structures are created centered on one's own language. In fact, these spaces that have as their axis the language of native speakers are the respiratory spaces of language, that is, the spaces of linguistic domain.

The main respiratory centers we have in society are families with natural speakers. These types of families are the strengths of the Basque Country, especially if these respiratory spaces, often isolated, live in erdal zones. When the human structure and the networks of relationships - families, friends, colleagues, coworkers, neighbors, neighbors, neighbors, neighbors, neighbors and neighbors -, formed by native speakers, are interrelated, intertwined, woven and compacted, then geographic respiratory spaces are created (villages, rural neighborhoods, towns, streets, urban centres, villages and headlands).

Today, however, there is a tendency to say respiratory point to all the areas that allow doing so in Euskera, but not everything, of course, is respiratory point.

The "imperfect breathing guide of the Basque Country" was developed on February 25 at the Aiaralde Action Factory. It analyzed the protection and respiratory zones of the Basque Country.

Shelters are spaces that ensure the use of Euskera. The spaces of protection of the Basque Country, without linguistic stress, are spaces that allow to speak in Basque comfortably. They are spaces in which Euskera is at the center of human communication, but it is also common for those who do not know Euskera to do so in Spanish. Sponsorships are consciously created, thought and planned, have a decision made expressly in their origin, a consensual decision, like the Basque spaces. The spaces of protection are explicit and, due to their visibility, are usually reference spaces, especially among speakers with Basque.

In the area of protection zones we have natural respiratory areas, especially the geographical areas, created without planning, created without thinking, although the latter are also producing a progressive advance in linguistic planning. In the respiratory zones, the linguistic behavior or the social norm of use of the Basque Country predominates, and those who are immersed in these networks of relationships, even if they do not know well the Basque Country, will endeavor not to violate the social norm of use of the Basque Country, since its violation would generate linguistic stress and conflict. In respiratory areas, it is rare for someone to listen in Spanish, since in these networks of relationships the demographic concentration of native speakers is predominant.

Shelters are the oasis of language, especially in minority socio-linguistic areas. But also in the geographical respiratory areas we need protective spaces to weave, resume and further compact social life in Basque. Among other things, there is also an urgent need for workshop factories and working life to become a protection centre for the Basque country in general to give more bellows and stronger life in Euskera.

The great Xalbador of Urepel told us, "The people are the body, the linguistic heart." And for the heart to fall apart, we need the veins to the whole body spontaneous speakers that carry new blood and vital force, because without them neither for the Basque nor for the people there are breaths and there is no future.

Patxi Saez Beloki, socio-linguistic and member of the Euskaltzaindia Development Commission