Bird names you won't find in the dictionary
- Biologist and philologist Asier Sarasua has created the website on birds in the Basque Country: txoriak.eus. The main objective is to gather the names of the birds in Euskera, as well as to provide information on the names of the birds in Euskera. Thus, Sarasua has addressed on the web two aspects: ornithine (bird names) on the one hand, and ornithology (branch of zoology that studies birds) on the other. It has combined natural heritage with linguistic and cultural heritage.
Asier Sarasua, for his part, has been convinced that, as a biologist, chorizo, philologist and enthusiast of dialectology, he was condemned to create such a project. He began interviewing Eibar baserritars in the 1990s. Then he realized that the bird names he had learned in his studies and books were unknown to the peasants and hunters in the area. They used other words that Sarasua, though biologist and philologist, didn't know.
In order to obtain more bird names in Basque, he began to conduct interviews in the villages of the Eibar area. Finally, he decided to extend the project to Euskal Herria, and has already conducted interviews in several locations in the seven territories.
Sarasua, which began in the 1990s, has devoted an average of time to a number of projects and works. In the last two years the project has been resumed, seeing the shortage of material in Euskera in relation to a theme of this type. In December 2016, he created the website txoriak.eus to value everything raised for years.
200 interviews
Asier Sarasua is the only author of the project. It has created the project txoriak.eus and has refocused on collecting and cataloguing the legacy of the bird names that were in danger of extinction. To do so, he has worked on various topics on the web.
On the one hand, it has focused on the natural or zoological aspect. It has drawn up a list of birds and has collated biological information about them on the Maritime Museum website. He's created a tab for every bird. It explains when and where each bird can be seen and which habitats and places are most suitable for it. In addition, it has incorporated extension maps, photographs and other multimedia content in the tabs. You can also hear the noise of each bird.
Sarasua has also worked on a section called Txoritokis. It has detailed the situation of the biosphere reserves, parks and lakes of Euskal Herria and its surroundings. For the time being, he has published material on the biosphere reserve of Urdaibai, Santoña, Txingudi, Salburua and the wetland of Pitillas, but later on he plans to work others.
Asier Sarasua:
“In the statements of baserritars and hunters it is observed that, unlike mammals, amphibians and mushrooms, in birds most words are far from the Basque batua, and often out of dictionaries”
Finally, the biologist and philologist has produced the Basque nomenclature for birds, indicating the name that birds receive in each of the counties of the Basque Country. For this purpose, he has conducted more than 200 interviews and reviewed books and articles.
The basic source for the elaboration of the dictionary is oral.
Sarasua has interviewed the baserritars, hunters and fishermen, all of them elderly. The first in the 1990s and the last in January 2017. He explained that in the future he will also do others.
The basic source for the elaboration of the dictionary is therefore oral. But Sarasua has also worked and analyzed a hundred books, articles and dictionaries that collect bird names, in order to compare them with those for oral use. As he explained, these talks warned that, unlike the rest of the lexical realm (mammals, amphibians, mushrooms, farmhouse tools, etc.). ), most of the words that are received around birds are far from the Basque Batua and often outside dictionaries.
Therefore, it is in Sarasua's interest to analyze whether the birds' written and oral names coincide or not. In fact, when someone inserts a bird name into the dictionary, it expands and prevails in other books and dictionaries. But it often happens that, although the word is spoken in writing, it is not used verbally. In addition, birds can have very different names from one village to another, a single bird can receive a dozen names.
The poultry species called Anas Grows is known as ‘Ahatettipi’ in Zuberoa, ‘Ahatetxiki’ on the Costa Urola, near Gorbeia, the Goierri and the Alto Bidasoa. In the region of Donostialdea, on the other hand, ‘Txertxeta’ is called the same bird and ‘zertzeta’ is used in the Duranguesado, Alto Deba, Bajo Deba, Lea Artibain, Arratia Nervión, in the vicinity of Gorbea, Goierri, Gernika-Bermeo, Urola Costa,
Sarasua intends to collect and recover the bird nomenclature through the project Txoriak.eus. In fact, he believes it is an endangered heritage: “The poultry sector is truly rich and is about to disappear among young people, disrupting transmission and dominating standard forms.”
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