ARE WE ESSENTIALISTS IN THE MIST?

J.J. Agirre Martinez

16-08-2018, BERRIA.

Basques who make an effort to live in Basque bump into all sorts of hurdles every day, since Spanish/French language suprematism is so entrenched in the Basque society. J.J. Agirre brings up some examples of that in this article. Language suprematism has even distorted the meaning of some words, so assimilation is equalled to “co-existence”, the drive to hang onto our identity to “essentialism”, the language shift process to “normalization”, the right to actually live in Basque is called “imposition”, the refusal to learn Basque by non-Basque speaking monolinguals is called their “right”, etc.

That suprematism has even affected some Basque nationalist parties and unions, in a way that they may also state that Spanish and French are as “ours” and “native” as Basque.