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The language has evolved in the literary plane from classical Labourd dialect used by writers in the Sare School, to the literary Navarro-Lapurdian dialect, a sort of Basque unified in the French Basque Country made concrete by a grammar book by Pierres Lafitte Ithurralde in the 1940s.
Navarro-Labourdin or Navarro-Lapurdian (Basque: nafar-lapurtera) is a Basque dialect spoken in the Lower Navarre and Labourd (Lapurdi) former provinces of the French Basque Country (in the Pyrénées Atlantiques département). It consists of two dialects in older classifications, Lower Navarrese and Labourdin.
Because the French Basque Country is not under the influence of the Basque Autonomous Country government, people in the region have fewer incentives from government authorities to learn the language. As such, these results represent another decrease from previous years (22.5% in 2006, 24.8% in 2001 and 26.4 in 1996 or 56,146 in 1996 to 51,197 ...
Modern Basque dialects show a high degree of dialectal divergence. However, cross-dialectal communication even without prior knowledge of either Standard Basque or the other dialect is normally possible to a reasonable extent, with the notable of exception of Zuberoan (also called Souletin), which is regarded as the most divergent Basque dialect.
The origin of the Basques and the Basque language is a controversial topic that has given rise to numerous hypotheses. Modern Basque, a descendant or close relative of Aquitanian and Proto-Basque, is the only pre-Indo-European language that is extant in western Europe.
However, modern Basque has had lexical influence from Gascon in words like beira ("glass"), which is also seen in Galician-Portuguese. One way for the introduction of Gascon influence into Basque came about through language contact in bordering areas of the Northern Basque Country, acting as adstrate.
In the Basque Autonomous Community and in the north of peninsular Navarre, Standard Basque is the most widely used working language. In the French Basque Country, Basque is used in several ikastolas and in one lyceum, but its use lags far behind French, the only official language of France.
It had been classified as a subdialect of Souletin (otherwise spoken in the province of Soule in the French Basque Country) in the 19th-century classification of Louis Lucien Bonaparte, and as a separate dialect in the early-20th-century classification of Resurrección María de Azkue. [2] The last speaker of the Roncalese, Fidela Bernat, died ...