Basque Diaspora in the USA and Language Maintenance

Abstract

The Basques first immigrated on a large scale to the USA during the Gold Rush of 1848. After immigrating to the USA, they settled in pockets throughout the West, especially in California, Nevada and Idaho, and it is currently estimated that more than 35,000 Basque–Americans live in these three states. This represents one of the largest concentrations of Basques outside the Basque Country. Although Basque identity and culture have been preserved thanks to Basque Clubs scattered throughout these states, little is known about their language proficiency and language attitudes. This paper looks into this question. The participants in the study were 80 Basque–Americans who completed a questionnaire aimed at examining their language attitudes towards Basque, Spanish, French and English, as well as their command of these languages. Thirty of the participants were also interviewed in order to research the issues in greater depth. The results show that, although the attitudes held towards the different languages are in general very positive, the attitudes towards Basque warrant particular attention, even though language attitudes and language competence are far from comparable.

Keywords:

• diaspora
• identity
• language maintenance
• competence
• attitudes

Acknowledgements

This study was made possible thanks to a research grant awarded by the University Studies Abroad Consortium (USAC) and which allowed the author to spend a month in the west of the USA to carry out fieldwork and to take advantage of all the research resources available at the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. I would also like to express my sincerest gratitude to the three reviewers for their helpful comments, although any inaccuracies or mistakes that remain are obviously my own responsibility.