The language of the Basque Country is called Euskera, and it is currently on a list of endangered languages. It is slowly making a come-back thanks to nationalist sentiment but is still spoken by less than a million people. Although it is the co-official language of the Basque Country, Euskera is actually spoken by less than half of the residents of the region; where I am you wouldn’t guess, but I suppose all the city-dwellers offset those of us in the boondocks.
It doesn’t help of course that dialects of Euskera are massively different, even in very small areas. There is a standardized language used for publications written in Euskera or for movies and television shows, but it is not the normal Euskera spoken by real people. When you can’t necessarily communicate with other people who are supposed to be speaking the same language as you… perhaps it is understandable that some people choose convenience over preserving a beautiful ancient language.
Despite the trouble involved in communicating in different dialects however, as little as 80 years ago Euskera was “very widespread and inescapable in daily life” (http://www.unc.edu/~sdteeter/basque.html). What happened in the past century then? The Spanish Civil War. When Franco assumed power, he banned all of the languages aside from Castellano. When he died in 1975 and Spain finally became a democracy, the four provinces making up the Basque Country were allowed a large degree of autonomy, and the Basque language was once again allowed.
Now schools in the Basque Country are taught in one of 3 models: Model A in which classes are taught primarily in Castellano with Euskera as a separate subject, Model C in which classes are taught in both languages, and Model D in which classes are taught primarily in Euskera with Castellano as a separate subject. There are also night schools offered to give adults the chance to learn their ancestral language. Hopefully these measures can save the oldest language in Europe from extinction.
Gracetopher Kirk 