Biscayan
Encyclopedia
Biscayan, sometimes Bizkaian , is a dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
of the Basque language
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
spoken mainly in Biscay
Biscay
Biscay is a province of Spain and a historical territory of the Basque Country, heir of the ancient Lord of Biscay. Its capital city is Bilbao...
, one of the provinces of the Basque Country
Basque Country (autonomous community)
The Basque Country is an autonomous community of northern Spain. It includes the Basque provinces of Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa, also called Historical Territories....
of Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
.
It is the only member of the western branch of the Basque language, with the dialect being named as Western in the classification drawn up by linguist Koldo Zuazo
Koldo Zuazo
Koldo Zuazo is a Basque linguist, professor at the University of the Basque Country, specialist in Basque language dialectology and sociolinguistics....
, since it extends slightly into the fringes of Alava
Álava
Álava is a province of Spain and a historical territory of the Basque Country, heir of the ancient Lord of Álava. Its capital city is Vitoria-Gasteiz which is also the capital of the autonomous community...
and deeper in the west region of Gipuzkoa. The dialect's territory bears great similarity to that of the Caristii
Caristii
The Caristii were a tribe reported by Roman historians in Northern Hispania west of the Deba and east of the Nervion rivers, in modern Biscay and Alava...
tribe, as described by Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
authors.
A perceived linguistic trait differing from other dialects is the form of the auxiliary verb, namely the form "eutsi" or the conspicuous absence of past tense 3rd person mark z- at the beginning of auxiliary verbs. While it is treated as stylish to write in Biscayan, and it is still spoken generally in about half of Bizkaia and some other municipalities, the dialect suffers from the double pressure of Unified Basque
Batua
Standard Basque is a standardised version of the Basque language, developed by the Basque Language Academy in the late 1960s, which nowadays is the most widely and commonly spoken Basque-language version throughout the Basque Country...
and Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
.