Until scarcely a century ago, Euskara was the main language of the valleys of the Navarrese Pyrenees. Different factors, the repression installed by the Franco regime featuring high on the list, converged, however, to produce a spectacular step away from the language. The language is now being recovered mainly thanks to its use in the education system. Local dialects, however, are in serious danger.
ORBARAKO AKERRA

Orbaran aker bat zorriz bete zitzaie ta herri guzia bildu ze. Akerra meatzen ai zela, fite hilen zela. Gala uste zute guziek. Zentzu handiko gizon bat bazen Orbaran egun gaietan: Joanes Iriarteko. Gari gertatzen zena adierazi ta zer egin behar zen galde ein zakote. Hark erran zue:
- Aker gori sar zazie bezko bat olio irakian. Gan hilen dire zorriak.
Sartu zute akerra galako bezkoan, ahoz goiti gelditu ze, hortzak zuri-zuri ageri zituela. Orduan Joanes Iriartekok akerra botzik zela, irriz zegola erran zue. Hila ze aker gaixoa.

Martin Arotzarena. Orbara
Local forms of speech are being lost at a great pace. Some were lost in the XIX century (Pre-Pyrenean basins). Others, such as the Roncal and Salazar versions of the language, disappeared only recently with the death of their last speakers. These valleys took their flocks south to the Bardena and the banks of the River Ebro, lands in which Castilian was spoken. The language is maintained in Luzaide-Valcarlos and survives in Aezkoa, helped maybe by the fact that the inhabitants of these areas took their flocks north to the Basque-speaking valleys of Basse-Navarre.

All the same, Basque is present in a host of elements of everyday life: speech, place names, vocabulary, etc, are preserved in the mother tongue of these lands. Nowadays, and despite certain local peculiarities, the unified version of Euskara, batua, is spoken. Use varies according to area. The linguistic areas defined by the Government of Navarre affects the area covered by the Consortium, dividing it into Basque-speaking, Mixed and Non-Basque-speaking areas. The Basque language has a different legal status in each of these areas.

The Basque language and its dialects have attracted the attention of scholars throughout history.

- The first researcher was Prince Louis-Lucien Bonaparte (nephew of Napoleon) in 1863, who defined 8 dialects. According to Bonaparte, the eight Basque dialects (with 25 sub-dialects) could be geographically associated with: Biscay, Guipuzcoa, Southern Haute-Navarre, Northern Haute-Navarre, Eastern Basse-Navarre, Western Basse-Navarre, Labourde and Soule.
- At the beginning of the XX century, the second great scholar of the subject, Resurrección María de Azkue, reduced the number to seven: Biscay, Guipuzcoa, Haute-Navarre, Basse-Navarre, Labourde, Soule and Roncal.
- In the mid-XX century, Koldo Mitxelena established the following nine dialects by region: Biscay, Guipuzcoa, Haute-Navarre, Aezkoa, Salazar, Roncal, Basse-Navarre, Labourde and Soule. In 1958, he added a tenth: the southern dialect spoken in Alava, Rioja and the north of Burgos which disappeared between the XVIII and XIX centuries.
- More recently, the professor and scholar of dialects Koldo Zuazo suggested a different classification for modern-day Basque dialects: Western, Central, Navarre, Navarre-Labourde, Soule and Western Navarre.

The dialects spoken within the area of the Tourist Consortium appear in bold.

Other names related to the study of the language spoken in the region are Arturo Campion, Iñaki Camino and Aitor Arana. The storywriter and great savant of local ethnography, Perpetua Saragüeta from Mezkiriz, also deserves a mention.
atxatxuri digital