argia.eus
INPRIMATU
Basque mythology (and II)
Maialen Berasategi Catalán @mberasca 2020ko abenduaren 28a

Among all the riots of our adolescence (and when I say that I mean my environment, not our generation, which I find too extensive), there was one, especially non-revolutionary and, above all, not original: those children who until then lived mainly in Euskera became Castilan-speaking adolescents and post-adolescents and authentic Castilan-speaking. Here's the little ÓRDAGO of our parents and teachers, the adults who came from a time when Basque learning was rebellious. We didn't realize, spiked, that everything was too comfortable for a real uprising.

So far self-criticism (you know what the general law is in the sea of sharks: a brief self-criticism, a long neighbourhood). I want to make it clear that our group, which chose as rebellious the mainstream language, moved to Spanish, even to English, in a certain social context. Briefly not: we had no reason to speak in Basque (see). Or, in the opposite sense, we did not (see) reason not to do everything in Spanish. We saw the series in Spanish, most of the music in English, and people in general also knew it and we heard it in Spanish on the street, in the bars, where it was. The path we naturally chose was ours. Because that's what the diglossia has: it takes you away from a minority language as natural as mucus, mosquito and cancer, and it pulls you into the dominant language.

"We totally swallowed a myth that was still very widespread: that the Basque language was a Moñoño language that only served children. We wanted it, but we didn't need it and we didn't like it."

We totally digested a myth that was still very widespread: that the Basque language was a Moñoño language that only served children. We loved her, but we didn't need her and we didn't like her. That is what a friend says that nowadays, when we talk about this issue in a gloomy way, it is a very simple matter: we have not managed to need the Basque Country to live in Euskal Herria, and, in addition, we do not like the Basque Country; we have been led to believe that it does not have any kind of synthetic or much English, French or Spanish expression, and even that it will never have. Another friend then answers that if we forget about the expressive force and ellipsis and other resources of tradition that we had until yesterday morning in the oral and in the writing, and we don't bring them into our time and adapt, how can we not get frustrated with pain? We do not ask ourselves to try to mature an autonomous and functional speech and writing, but to torture ourselves compared to those next door and thinking that it is not possible, that it is not possible, that little can be set dignified by numbers. The temptation, the myth and the complex of the boring people who despise Euskera have brought to us, now that we ourselves have fed it very often.

I was lucky enough to grow up in two parenting languages, but in one of the two I became, after very few years, in an instant, an incapable, a non-speaking. Much later I have realized the loss that it has caused and how much it has damaged me and continues to make my way back to the Basque country. Because returning to the Basque country, as well as entering the Basque country, is a decision that must be endorsed every day, with head and against the wind, here and today, unfortunately. Irene Arrarats Lizeaga explained this in an interview with Miren Artetxe Sarasola in this same medium: “Having the opportunity to learn Basque and not to learn it is a political option, in favor of the Erdaldun culture, but if you have not had the opportunity to learn, you have not opted for politics: what has not given you the way has done for you.”