Noticias
First digital word
Let me tell you an event belonging to the pre-digital age. Two girls were dancing together, two boys went up to them to ask them to dance, and this was the «conversation» that ensued. It goes without saying that the environment and the people around them were Basque, bilingual people (Basque bilinguals), to be precise:
-Bailamos pues? (Fancy a dance?)
-¡No! (No way!)
-¡Oh, qué lastimantzia! (Oh, what a shame!)
The answer the boys got must have been a shame for them at least, but it did not always have to be like that, of course. Sometimes, depending on goodness knows what, they would have got an affirmative «sí» and… «esque gu hola ezautu giñan, castellanoz, eta bakizu, ohitura hoi hartu genun eta oain e holaxe ittedeu...» (you see that's how we met, in Spanish, and you know, we got into the habit and that's why we speak it now...).
I no longer have much to do with dancing and all that; right now I’m more into website access pages, among other things. Yet when I go into each website, before I’ve had the chance to say anything in advance, the website itself speaks to me; sometimes by giving me a language option, other times by speaking to me in Basque, and other times in Spanish («¡Oh, qué lastimantzia!»).
In addition to the (non-normal?) monolingual websites that do not offer me the chance to choose the language, so that the first word can be Basque, (Diario Vasco, Noticias de Gipuzkoa, ADEGI, Fnac, MediaMarkt, PP ...), among those that allow me to choose between the two languages, very different opportunities for dancing with the two languages can present themselves («Fancy a dance?»).
Within a first group we can classify those that, despite giving the opportunity for two languages, give Spanish priority by opening the home page (first word) in Spanish always, and occasional users, can, if they so wish, change the language (Town Hall of San Sebastián, Town Hall of Lasarte-Oria, Erreala, Policlínica, Eroski, CCOO, UGT,PSE, Ezker Batua ...).
In a second group we can come across websites with accesses requiring the language to be chosen. A first sub-group could include those that always do this (Eitb, Bruesa, Euskotren, Ertzaintza, EUDEL ...); and in a second sub-group we have those that, after being visited for the first time, on the next visit will automatically offer the language one chose the last time one accessed the website (by means of cookies) (Kutxa, Euskadiko Kutxa, Basque Government, UPV/EHU, Euskaltel, Town Hall of Irun, Osakidetza, EAJ/PNV, Eusko Ikaskuntza ...).
In a third main group are those that always open their home pages in Basque and allow the user, if he or she so wishes, to change the language each time (Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, town halls of Azpeitia, Tolosa, Eibar and Arrasate , ELA, EA, Aralar ...).
We could call the first group the non-normalising choice (negative discrimination), the second group the normalised one, and the third, the normalising one (positive discrimination). All three allow one language or the other to be chosen, but the opportunities are very different.
Did you know, for example, that the website of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa gets between about 3.000 and 5.000 visits a day (100.000 a month) and that it speaks to everyone in Basque?
The first word and the second one is not the same thing, and they do not have to be in the same language, but they could be; it seems that way, doesn’t it? What proportion of bilingual people will change the language, if the first digital word is in Basque? And what if it is in Spanish? «es que…» (The thing is…).
Iñaki Arruti
Basque language technician in the Town Hall of Lasarte
