Euskara—the endangered language of the Basque people—is often celebrated as a success in language revitalization. Yet despite decades of investment in schools, public institutions, and language policy, the everyday use of the language has not kept pace with the growing number of people able to speak it. After spending three weeks interviewing linguists, teachers, journalists, government officials, and local residents across the Basque Country, I came away with a broader question: what does it really take to keep an endangered language alive?

A Language That Should Be Thriving

This summer, a friend and I travelled through the Basque Country in the north of Spain as part of a student research fellowship on language revitalization. Language revitalization is the effort to rebuild the use of an endangered language—not only by teaching people to speak it, but also by restoring its role in education, public life, and daily conversation. Through interviews across the region, we set out to understand why Euskara is often regarded as a major success in language revitalization.

It is easy to see why. Euskara is taught in schools, protected by law, funded by government, celebrated in museums, and promoted through television, radio, and newspapers. A standardized written form of Euskara has been developed, Euskara-medium schools have expanded, the language is now used in public administration, and community campaigns have encouraged people to learn and use it. Most people would assume that a language with this much support was thriving.

At the Etxtepare Euskal Instituta (San Sebastian) whose goals are to raise the profile of the Basque language and the Basque culture worldwide

The results have certainly been impressive. The latest Basque Sociolinguistic Survey shows that since the early 1990s, the share of people able to speak Euskara has risen steadily, particularly among younger generations educated through Euskara immersion programs. Among 16- to 24-year-olds, the proportion able to speak the language has more than doubled.

But the same survey also reveals the limits of that success. Everyday use has not kept pace. Many Basque speakers continue to use Spanish more often than Euskara, and in some territories and strongly Basque-speaking areas, everyday use has declined. The apparent success of the Basque case therefore raises a harder question: is increasing the number of people who are able to speak a language enough to keep it alive?

Why Euskara Matters

These findings matter well beyond northern Spain. Euskara is not simply another regional language facing modern pressures. It occupies a unique place in the history of human language itself.

Euskara is Europe’s only surviving language isolate, with no known linguistic relatives. Linguists believe it predates the arrival of Indo-European languages in western Europe, but exactly where it came from remains one of historical linguistics' greatest unsolved questions. Losing Euskara would therefore erase an independent branch of human language.

Yet Euskara is far from alone. UNESCO estimates that nearly half of the world's roughly 7,000 languages may disappear by the end of this century. Around the world, governments and communities are investing in immersion schools, teacher training, media, and cultural institutions to reverse language decline. The Basque experience therefore offers lessons that extend far beyond the Basque Country.

From Suppression to Revival

For much of the twentieth century, Euskara did not enjoy the protections it has today. After the Spanish Civil War, the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, who ruled from 1939 to 1975, abolished Basque autonomy and suppressed expressions of Basque political and cultural identity. The use of Euskara was banned in schools and repressed in public life.

Yet Euskara survived. Families continued to pass it on, while underground initiatives helped preserve and teach the language outside official institutions. After Franco’s death in 1975 and Spain’s transition to democracy, the Basque Country regained a measure of self-government, and Euskara gained official status and entered schools, public administration, broadcasting, and cultural life.

At Euskararen Etxea (which translates to "House of the Basque Language"), Bilbao, which is dedicated to promoting, preserving, and exploring the Basque language.

That history helps explain why speaking Euskara became more than an ordinary linguistic choice. Under the dictatorship, preserving and using the language was a way of maintaining Basque identity. After democracy returned and Euskara could again be used openly, one study suggests that its public use may also have provided a peaceful outlet for expressing that identity.

The revival that followed was therefore an extraordinary achievement. Within a generation, Euskara moved from official repression to widespread institutional support. But that success created a different challenge: once a language no longer has to be spoken as an act of resistance, what can encourage people to keep choosing it in everyday life?

Learning a Language Isn’t the Same as Using a Language

Although everyone we spoke to cared deeply about the future of Euskara, there was surprisingly little agreement about why its everyday use has not kept pace with the number of speakers. Some emphasized economics. Others pointed to migration and urbanization. Still others believed the answer lay in how the language is passed from one generation to the next.

One thing, however, united almost all of them. Knowing Euskara was not the same as using it.

Journalists observed that many readers preferred Spanish-language newspapers despite supporting efforts to preserve Euskara. Government officials spoke proudly about decades of investment in language revitalization, while acknowledging that encouraging people to choose Euskara in their daily lives remained a much harder challenge.

Economics came up first. Several interviewees pointed out that Spanish—and, across the border, French—dominate higher education, workplaces, and much of the national media. Even fluent Euskara speakers often find themselves switching languages because doing so simply makes daily life easier.

Others argued that migration, urbanization, and changing patterns of community life had transformed places that were once overwhelmingly Euskara-speaking.

The Family Factor

The explanation that stayed with me most, however, concerned the use of Euskara within families.

Decades ago, the linguist Joshua Fishman argued that languages survive not through teaching alone, but because they are passed naturally from one generation to the next. Linguists call this intergenerational transmission: children learning and using a language at home with parents and grandparents. Once that chain weakens, institutional support alone cannot fully replace it.

Several people we interviewed described exactly this challenge. Teachers described students who learned Euskara at school but switched to Spanish as soon as classes ended. Others pointed out that children cannot pass on a language they themselves use only at school. As one interviewee put it, “A language has to be lived, not just learned.”

What Can Other Languages Learn from the Basque Experience?

Before travelling to the Basque Country, I assumed that saving a language meant teaching more people to speak it. After three weeks of interviews, I left with a different understanding. Schools, governments, and public institutions can create new speakers and restore an endangered language to public life. But the success of revitalization cannot be measured by speaker numbers alone. It must also be measured by whether people use the language naturally—with family, with friends, and in the ordinary course of their lives.

That is what makes the Basque experience so important. It shows both how much determined communities and governments can achieve, and where institutional policy reaches its limits. The next stage of revitalization is therefore not simply to teach endangered languages, but to make them natural choices in homes, friendships, workplaces, and public life.

Further Reading

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