Oskar Zapata Solano

INTRODUCTION

There has been a growing preoccupation in recent years about Basque language use. Despite constant improvement in the statistics regarding language competence, it is not being paralleled by a corresponding increase in the use of Basque.

This has aroused the concern of many in the Basque language field and the public administration, which has manifested itself in the Basque language movement in at least three ways. Basque language associations have for many years been developing programmes to increase language use. Much attention is being paid by educators to studying ways to develop Basque language use among children and youth outside of the schools. Kontseilua, the Basque language movement's umbrella organisation, held a conference in Donostia on the subject of language use in 2006. Evidence of similar concern in the administration is seen in emphasis on promoting the use of Basque in the policy goals set by the Basque Government's Vice-Ministry for Language Policy for the period 2005-2009.

For professionals and volunteers alike who are in the business of promoting Basque language use, it is encouraging to see such a stand being taken by the language movement and public authorities in support of language use because it implies stronger support, but importantly this also throws into greater relief the need to work together on this issue. By sharing responsibility and coordinating our efforts, we will surely increase our chances of success in dealing with this intrinsically difficult challenge.

Fortunately, thanks to sociolinguistics we are in a better position today than a few years ago to understand the issue and build programmes promoting language use on firmer theoretical foundations.

Sociolinguists have taught us that language use is subject to three factors: the speaker's relative language competence, the Basque-speaker density of the speaker's social network, and the speaker's language loyalty.

The earlier belief (or hope) that language knowledge would lead directly to language use has been proved mistaken: knowledge has not, to the extent we might have wished, led to use. Consequently, the need for effective policies and programmes promoting language use has been clearly perceived both among language workers and in the administration.

It is our understanding that the promotion of Basque language use must extend to the whole of society and include areas in which use can be regulated by law but also areas of free use. While both are important, little attention has been paid until now to the activity of Basque language associations within the free use domain, and its strategic importance has not been acknowledged.

In the view of the organisation coordinating the Basque language associations, Topagunea , the full introduction of Basque into the free use domain is of the utmost importance. One reason for this is that this is the domain in which language transmission, via family and friends, takes place. Another is that this domain, through the family, friends, neighbours, association members and so on, is fundamental for the consolidation of the language community.

These domains are associated with aspects of people's private lives on which laws and public regulations have little impact, and strategies of other kinds therefore need to be developed to influence people's language habits, giving due consideration to the provision of a wide range of attractive options that combine enjoyment, practicality, convenience and emotional appeal.

All this is being done by the Basque language associations: local grassroot movements created in order to promote Basque language use. Ten years ago these associations established the Topagunea Federation to improve coordination among the associations and provide the services they require.

One line of activity of the Basque language associations and Topagunea is the formation of conversation groups in a framework known as Mintzapraktika programmes . Their basic idea is to bring people who habitually speak Basque into contact with people who do not usually speak it. Mintzapraktika programmes are carried out during people's free time and participation is voluntary. Their aim is to form new social networks and win over new speakers and social spaces for Basque. Thus they fit in very well with the philosophy and dynamics of the Basque language associations.

The Mintzapraktika programmes go back to the Bagera Basque language association which pioneered the formula in 1993 with its "Mintzalaguna" programme. Similar projects sprang up elsewhere over following years.

In response to a need for coordination, in Topagunea we began working in 2001 in two directions, one of which was the creation of Topagunea's Mintzapraktika Committee, while at the same time we entered into an agreement with the Basque language school federation AEK , the Uztarri language school and the provincial government of Bizkaia to coordinate the Bizkaian programme through cooperative efforts.

Another outcome of cooperation was a conference organised jointly by the Durango AEK and IKA  Basque language school organisations in 2005, in which a handbook was presented containing the methodology proposed by Topagunea's Mintzapraktika Committee for the running of such programmes.

Carrying cooperation on language use promotion still further, in 2006 we received a proposal from the Basque Government's Vice-Ministry for Language Policy to enter into a joint agreement on the development of a several-year plan for the promotion and expansion of Mintzapraktika programmes. Topagunea viewed this proposal as a new challenge, and has been working hard on its development over recent months.

This will be Topagunea's proposal for the coordination of Mintzapraktika programmes all over Euskal Herria, expanding them and developing new variants. We are now ready to share this plan with other organisations and create projects of cooperation.

THEORETICAL ORIENTATION

In considering how to influence language use, we take into account the findings of research and the opinions of many specialists, basing our programmes on these. Sometimes we do this in a deliberate manner and in other cases intuitively, which is also valid since intuition is generally founded on the observation of one's surroundings and ultimately provides the indicators for our programmes.

But we decided we should examine the ideas of some specialists because they provide interesting clues and justifications for the basic tenets of the Mintzapraktika programmes.

In their theoretical growth the Basque language associations have drunk from the waters of the Basque writer and thinker J.M. Sánchez Carrión, better known as "Txepetx". In his Un futuro para nuestro pasado [A Future For Our Past], based on his doctorate dissertation (1) , he explains that the three factors involved in the language learning process are knowledge, motivation and use.

Applying Txepetx's paradigm to our case, motivation means the reasons, wishes, feelings or interests that make people learn or seek to preserve a language, knowledge is the process of learning how a language works or acquiring the ability to use it, and use refers to activity in all domains of the speech community and in all language functions.

Through the Mintzapraktika programmes, we propose to act on all three levels. We arouse motivation by endowing language with its communicative function, on the assumption that if it serves as a means of sharing our day-to-day concerns, joys and feelings in an informal setting, this will result in increased language loyalty. We support knowledge by making it possible to improve language competence through informal exchanges with Basque speakers outside the classroom environment, which will accelerate the learning process for people who want and/or need to improve and enrich their Basque language level. Finally, we can favour language use by providing a way to make new friends and create new Basque-language networks between people who do not previously know each other and would not otherwise meet.

Another feature of these programmes is that, because they are carried out in public places, they also provide a means of modifying the linguistic landscape through the presence of informal groups of speakers.

We have been placing a lot of emphasis on the informal dimension of these activities. Here is what Pello Jauregi has to say on this subject in his study "Gazteak eta euskara Lasarte-Orian II"  [Youth and the Basque Language in Lasarte-Oria (2):

"Gure irudikoz, euskarazko erabilerak ez du aurrerapen nabarmenik ezagutuko, baldin eta gizarte multzo handiek, eskolaz gain, ez badute euskarazko esperientzia luze eta sakonik talde informalen batean, dela talde hori familia den, dela sare horizontaleko talderen bat den. Berezko talde informal horietan garatzen baitira benetan hizkuntzazko erraztasuna, atxikimendua eta ohitura."

[In our opinion, the use of Basque will not make any great progress as long as large parts of society have no prolonged, profound experience of Basque outside of school in an informal group such as family or some kind of horizontal network, since it is in such informal groups that real language fluency, loyalty and habit are developed.]

BASIC METHODOLOGY

So far we have considered the origins of the Mintzapraktika programmes. Most Basque towns have a group of people that constitute a Basque language network: people who habitually communicate in Basque with their friends, when shopping, in their family, in transactions with public services and so on. Towns also have other inhabitants who have little chance of forming part of any such Basque language network. People who do not customarily speak Basque are of many kinds. Some are learning the language, while others have studied Basque before but have forgotten it because of lack of practice. Some lack opportunities to speak Basque where they live, while others may have moved to the town only recently. We suggest that a way to reach all these people may be to provide new networks, create informal social networks, build spaces of language use related to leisure interests and, in a word, multiply the opportunities to live in Basque.

However, it must be said that people are attracted to the Mintzapraktika programmes for a variety of reasons of their own:

• Some are looking for a way to improve their Basque, especially to learn to speak more fluently, and consider it a good way to work on their language skills, and above all to gain fluency, by doing things in a small, intimate group together with Basque speakers who use the language spontaneously. In many such groups they will also get a chance to practise the local dialect and typical colloquialisms.

• Others view it as a supplementary part of their learning process. Such people are typically advanced learners who feel the need to make the leap from the classroom out into the "world", to put all they have learnt in the euskaltegi into practice with local Basque speakers, and who see in this programme an opportunity to increase the number of hours of language contact time and become better acquainted with the colloquial language.

• Yet others are looking for new networks in which to meet people. There are people who can speak Basque who, for one reason or another, have insufficient opportunities to speak Basque in their own circles or who simply wish to meet new Basque speakers, which is precisely what the Mintzapraktika programmes offer.

• Some people are motivated to join Mintzapraktika by a wish to have some fun, rather than limiting their involvement with Basque to their jobs or the school context. Quite a few people who come to the programmes work in the Basque language field: they may be teachers, Basque association staff or government workers who already use Basque daily but mainly in the context of their profession; they hope the programme will provide an opportunity to enjoy using Basque in their leisure time and meet new people.

• There are cases of people who join in as a way of supporting language normalisation. The programmes offer them an opportunity to become active supporters of the Basque language and they feel that by helping out in Mintzapraktika they are taking part in the normalisation process by facilitating and enriching language students' learning, and helping to enlarge the pool of Basque speakers, while at the same time drawing their conversation partners into Basque language networks, thereby helping the Basque speech community to grow and consolidate.

• And finally, some people join with the specific goals of integration and meeting people.

Whatever their reasons, there are links between all these linguistic and emotional objectives.

But alongside these personal objectives, the programme's promoters also pursue broader objectives that have to do with supporting the language's normalisation process:

• Increase the number of Basque speakers. The programmes serve to bring together people who, for one reason or another, have difficulty using Basque in their everyday lives or do not use it at all (possibly because they are still learning, lack fluency or just have no occasion to use it) and people who are in the habit of speaking Basque.

• Winning over new spaces for the Basque language. We also want Basque to be spoken in public and have a perceptible presence on our streets. Wherever these projects are implemented, the street presence of Basque is incremented, but this is obviously most noticeable in non-Basque-speaking areas. Conversation partners generally meet out of doors or in public places such as a bar, a park, the town square and so on, and by doing so they are making a certain impact on the linguistic landscape as well.

• Create new Basque-language networks. By means of the programmes we wish to bring about the creation of new spaces and networks where Basque is used. Our plan is to set up social networks that are not generated spontaneously in our towns and cities and transform them into "spontaneous" ones.

• Transmit the Basque language in a natural manner to people who are drawn to Basque culture. Here our goal is for people who live in Basque to perform that transmission in an informal manner. The relationships that arise in these small groups combine linguistic and cultural transmission, because feelings and experience are the key to such transmission. The theory is that relationships among people with similar intersts, experiences and social contexts can facilitate this transmission.

• Enjoyment and familiarity giving rise to language loyalty. Mintzapraktika programmes are performed in free time as a leisure activity in which people, responding to their own initiative and motivation freely choose to participate for enjoyment. Speakers who are members of a minority language community often feel overwhelmed by their worries, anger and frustration about the fate of their language. This initiative constitutes an attempt to provide an opportunity to enjoy oneself in Basque in spaces of free use and cast off, for a while, such heavy burdens as these. We believe that demonstrating that it is possible to create and knit together informal Basque language networks helps such a community to achieve greater self-confidence. Thus we think that the exchange of feelings and experiences ultimately may create favourable conditions for the growth of language loyalty.

What can be done to help towards the achievement of such aims? The way the programmes work is simple but effective: small groups of three, four or five people are established by comparing interests, age, background etc. Different kinds of people are brought together, some of whom ordinarily speak Basque while others do not. The only commitment required of them is a promise to meet at least once a week. The programmes impose no other obligations, and it is up to the members of the group to determine, in the course of their relationship, what other internal rules should hold.

The small size of groups makes relations easier, encourages participation, and offers a chance to discuss subjects of interest to everyone, to turn the language into a tool for communication in leisure activities such as going out for drinks, attending cultural events, hiking, sports etc. and to bring out the language's positive aspects.

Complementary events serve to broaden these networks, leading to relations between people from different groups and thus building a bigger network, while also providing a sense of belonging to a common project.

Such events take a variety of forms so as to suit the tastes of everyone: cultural acts, picnics, outings, workshops, choirs and so on. These are generally organised with the aim of facilitating relations. Some take place in one's own town to help all programme participants make each other's acquaintance and create an opportunity to meet other local Basque speakers, in order to help reinforce the local language community. Other events are organised jointly with members of programmes from other towns or districts. One function of these is to allow participants from programmes in neighbouring locations to meet. Finally, there is an event called Mintza Eguna ("conversation day"); this is for Mintzapraktika programme participants all over the whole Basque Country. As well as being fun, this event has the virtue of making members aware of the size of the movement.

PROMOTERS AND PROJECTS TO DATE

The usual ambit of a Mintzapraktika programme is a town or district. As one of the basic premises of the project, geographical proximity is built into the organisational structure. The idea is for one's conversation partners to be people to whom one has easy access.

It is therefore important for the programme to be sponsored by organisations with a public profile in the town or district concerned. Let us now look at who these are:

Basque language associations: These are meeting places for local Basque speakers that promote Basque language use through a variety of programmes and services. In the mind of the public these associations are associated with language use projects.

Euskaltegis or Basque language teaching centres: As well as being meeting places for people who are learning Basque, the euskaltegis often stay in touch with their ex-pupils. These centres thus play a central role in Mintzapraktika programmes. Euskaltegis also form part of the Basque language movement at a local level and are perceived by the public as active agents in the normalisation process.

Schools: Local schools have links with various sectors of the population: teachers, pupils, ex-pupils (who leave school with a knowledge of Basque but quite often cease to be involved with Basque afterwards), and parents (who speak Basque with their children). Other organisations also somehow connected with the schools include parents' associations and ex-pupils' (alumni) associations. In general, schools are well known to the population and are often perceived as components of the Basque language movement.

Cultural, sports and leisure clubs or associations: These have Basque-language activities and typically serve as meeting places for conversation groups.

The public administration: Mintzapraktika programmes are highly compatible with the public authorities' Basque language normalisation policies.

It is advisable for Mintzapraktika programmes to be organised cooperatively by such local bodies as these so that each of these entities can have an input. They will have different viewpoints: for some, the programme represents an opportunity to broaden the provision of leisure options; for others, they are a good way to integrate present and past students into the language community, to encourage parents and children to continue their use of Basque outside the school context, or to improve the local plan for promoting Basque language use. The idea is to set up a programme that responds to all these different perspectives and aims.

The good thing is that the programme makes it possible for all those involved at the local level to play a role in the building of new networks without asking any group to sacrifice their own goals and functions, while creating new projects, uniting in a common project to support Basque locally, and consolidating the language community through cooperation.

Cooperation is a much-repeated catchword but it is not always clear how to implement it and to what purpose. The Mintzapraktika programmes provide an excellent opportunity to carry out a practical exercise in cooperation on a specific project that is highly compatible with everyone's objectives.

COOPERATION

Topagunea also proposes to carry that cooperation from a local to a higher level.
This is provided for by an agreement it entered into with the Basque Government's Vice-Ministry for Language Policy in 2006 which provides for expanding the Mintzapraktika programmes to most parts of the country over the coming years.

To achieve this aim, Topagunea needs partners. It is important that the large euskaltegi organisations should participate (AEK has already begun started), that the Mintzapraktika programmes should be recognised by municipal Basque language planners, that there should be involvement from parents' organisations, schools and so on.

We firmly believe that programmes set up through cooperation will have a better chance of success, and that if this does not happen programmes will be at a disadvantage as different entities compete for control. Based on our experience to date, in order to make the Mintzapraktika programmes successful it is important that a variety of entities be involved. This is the way forward that we wish to propose.

CHALLENGES

The Mintzapraktika programmes will face many challenges in the future. Among these will be growth, achieving coordination, developing new programme variants and implementing new measurement procedures.

We want to grow because of our conviction that the Mintzapraktika programmes are a very effective means of increasing language use, which is the primary goal of the Basque language associations.

Growth will need to be gradual, but we believe the programme should eventually be spread throughout Euskal Herria, because:

• Surveys have shown that there are large numbers (both relative and absolute) of Basque "quasi-speakers" in the big urban centres, but their distribution is scattered making it very difficult for them to form social networks: such speakers are unaware of each other and do not know whether the people around them can speak Basque.
  
• In some areas Basque speakers are few and far between, and here it is important to make the presence of speakers publicly visible. For this to happen, Basque speakers and people interested in Basque need reference points and channels towards which they can orient and gravitate.
  
• In other areas, existing social networks are highly structured, so that speakers who wish to speak Basque can only do so by entering into new social relations where Basque is spoken from the outset.
  
• There have also been some reductions of traditional Basque-speaking domains of language use for a variety of reasons: young people's behaviour patterns, newly-arriving inhabitants' language habits, or just a lack of Basque language awareness. We believe that the implementation of Mintzapraktika programmes represents one way to fight this negative trend because it raises language awareness and creates new social networks.

Another challenge will be the development of new variants of the programme in order to adapt it progressively to the needs and characteristics of different people, youngsters, parents, internet users, immigrants and so on and so forth. Each of these groups have characteristics and needs of their own: people's free time availability may vary, or their need for supervision, their interests and tastes or particular difficulties for establishing social relations. Provisions should be made for such cases.

Measurement: the indicators used so far mainly look at the degree of participant satisfaction in terms of whether they are happy with the programme, their relations with their group and so on. While these fulfil a purpose, we would also like to consider other factors such as the effect of particular programmes on language habits, motivation, individual language use, language knowledge, etc.

Developing relations between the different programmes and consolidating coordination will offer yet another challenge. Work on this area has already begun with training, Mintza Eguna days, joint events and so on, but a lot more remains to be done. Given that we have similar enrolment periods and sometimes carry out similar activities, why not propose something new? Important steps could be taken in this direction.

Henceforth, once coordination is a reality, many possibilities may be considered.