(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
La Mano de Irulegi, the Hand of Irulegi, unlocks ancient and rich Basque history [1]
['Daily Kos Staff', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']
Date: 2023-01-01
Idaho has the one of the largest populations of Basque people outside of Spain, with Boise having the largest concentration in the U.S. The city plays host every five years (in nonpandemic times) to the international Jaialdi festival. It’s a big deal for the city and state, and this find is resonating in the diaspora.
The Basque language is indigenous to the region that spans parts northern Spain and southern France and is a language isolate, evolving purely independently from other languages. That led linguists and historians to believe that without the influence of other Europeans, the Basque must have been illiterate.
“It takes our idea of early languages and sometimes early civilizations as being kind of caveman or kind of an early rudimentary language that are very simple,” said John Bieter, a history professor at Boise State studying Basque immigration. “And it just dumps that on its head.”
Professor Javier Velaza, a linguist on Barcelona, said that La Mano de Irulegi doesn’t solve the mystery of the Basque language’s origins, but remains critical. “From a scientific point of view, this discovery is very important because it’s the first text preserved in Basque country and found where ancestors to the Basques lived,” he said.
“You would think that these languages with much bigger powers would have subsumed ours,” Arostegui said, “but we've been able to maintain it for such a long time.” The language is “really integral to our identity,” Arostegui added.
The social history of the Basque people is a huge part of that. The language was outlawed during Francisco Franco’s authoritarian rule in Spain, Arostegui explained. “From 1939 to 1975, you know, you could not use it in public. You would be fined,” she said. ”My name would have been illegal, right? You could not name your child Edurne.”
The language was kept alive during the Franco regime outside of Spain. “I always point out that it's thanks to the diaspora that a lot of these elements are still around because no one ever banned Basque here in Boise,” Arostegui added.
“Could you imagine seeing in hieroglyphic and just being able to read it from your present language, that is how it felt for me,” Arostegui said. “Just connecting to somebody 2000 years ago is a once-in-a-lifetime sort of moment.”
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/1/2143335/-La-Mano-de-Irulegi-the-Hand-of-Irulegi-unlocks-ancient-and-rich-Basque-history
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
