Linguistic Nationalism Among the Basques

Dec 9, 2011 by

BY CONNOR EVERETT KELLEY (“Languages of the World”)  On the 20th of October, 2011, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), an organization of Basque freedom fighters, announced a complete termination of their “campaigns of bombings...

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Standardization of Basque

Dec 8, 2011 by

BY MICHAEL JAMES LANCASTER (“Languages of the World”) Until recently, Basque—the ancestral language of the people who inhabit the Basque Country of northeastern Spain and southwestern France—had neither a standardized...

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Languages of France

Sep 2, 2010 by

In yesterday’s posting I mentioned that nation-states, which are typically conceived of as having “one nation, one language”, are rarely if ever so. And what better example of a nation-state than France! When I ask...

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Language and ethnicity: Spain

Sep 1, 2010 by

Undoubtedly, language constitutes an important ingredient in one’s ethnic or national identity. What is essentially the same language, may be perceived — by speakers themselves — as distinct languages, based on...

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Language or dialect?

Jun 25, 2010 by

In his comment to an earlier posting, Joel Hoffman said that “what seems like a dialect to one person might seem like a completely different language to another”. And this goes right to the core of why it’s so...

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