Guidelines for writing in Bizkaia Basque

More information: www.bizkaiera.biz

The oral register of our language, including vocabulary and idiomatic expressions, is not always recorded in dictionaries and grammar books. To address this imbalance, we have attempted to bridge the gaps between oral and written language by introducing stylistic standards and norms that enable us to transfer linguistic structures from one register to the other. The grammar work Bizkai euskeraren jarraibide liburua and our dictionaries Labayru Hiztegia and Labayru Hiztegi Fraseologikoa are results of this effort.

All that, as well as a corpus of linguistic and biographical texts and videos with direct sound registers, can be found at www.bizkaiera.biz.

Basque is a unique language with numerous variants depending on the area. These variants enhance the language; however, when it comes to registering them in writing doubts inevitably arise.

Ever since it launched its alphabetization work, Labayru Fundazioa has made major efforts to study and formalize a common way in Bizkaia Basque, taking account of both oral tradition and written works. Grammatical considerations are collected in the two-volume publication Bizkai euskeraren jarraibide liburua. The work covers declinations, verbal conjugations and syntactical structures. For lexicon and superior linguistic units and expressions, Labayru Hiztegia and Labayru Hiztegi Fraseologikoa are the works of reference.

The unification of Basque requires the union and summation of all local variants, which explains why it is so important to collect and analyse them.