Does any one know how many people speak "vascence" ? Curious and also was speaking about this in my class and didn't really know...Gracias

According to the basque autonomous government about 680,000 people can speak basque ("vascuence" in spanish, "euskera" or "euskara" in basque) or any of its dialects (the basque language is quite fragmented). 85% of those basque speakers are in the Basque Country, and the rest in Navarre and the french basque territories.

Almost all the basque speakers speak spanish too.

Fernando

Gracias Fernando...I knew someone would know that information here on the message board. Now I will be prepared for my class...

Don't forget the euskaldunak here in the US. The diaspora of Basques from all the provinces, mostly in the first half of the 20th-century, brought many Basques to the states. Estimates put the number of Basque-language speakers in the US at no less than 50.000.

hello everybody

hey and dont forget the euzkaldunik in various latin american countrys such as chile and argentina and several others.also i must point out there are basques in the u.s who are not the "basque colony of america" there are also some basques here in new york. i have a basquito freind who lives a couple of blocks from me.

About 2% of Spains population speaks Basque just thought id throw in that fact. I believe people sould have the right to speak Catalan,Galicain,Basque etc. But I don't believe they sould have any official value in other words Spains castillan is the master langauge used by over 300,000,000 people therefore its obviously alot more usefull then Basque Catalan and Galicains. Which in comparison to Spaish (Castillan) it is a meer joke of a langauge when talking about the amount of people that speak it.

Why considering one spanish language against another?

In my opinion the language richness of Spain is incredible, and it would be horrible if we lost some of our languages in favor of others. Catalonian, basque, galaecian, valencian, castilian,... all are spanish languages and their use should be encouraged.

But, no matter how I like the language diversity of my country, I believe that every spaniard has the right and the obligation to speak spanish. I also think that the politic use that nationalist countries are doing with these language is stupid. In some places they are trying to annihilate spanish to impose people to speak the regional language.

Fernando

i think that trying to promote and improve the seconds language(basque galician catalan etc) in spain is a great idea , and i dont think that this will `anilihhate `the spasnish language like you said, since spanish is verry strong and the main language of spain, and the others are verry `weak` (not a lot of people are talking it, mostly the old people too, verry regional language...) from what i saw only the catalan was seeming verry alive and widely spoken, but most of the people are perfect bilingual.

heyeveryboy

janlo

galego too conho.not just catalan is so widely spoken also galego(galeginho i call it at home)i mean all the galician people speak sometimes mixing spanish use but still everybdy understands it and speaks it just like in catalunya.now the basques are adly the ones who have it tougher with there regional language.over there it seems alot of people dont know **** about there regional language.thats sad hombre.but in GALICIA and in cataluna its different fortunly.

Janlo agreed! I'm not saying that promoting the other languages will eliminate spanish. What I'm saying is that sometimes the regional governments (which have all competences in education and language matters) seem to believe that promoting the regional language automaticly means trying to destroy spanish. The knowledge of all the languages should be encouraged.

Fernando