4/11/14 - The Basque people

1. Who was Orson Welles?

George Orson Welles was born the 6th of May of 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He was an American actor, director, writer and producer who worked in theater, radio and film. 

He is best remembered for his innovative work in all three media: in theatre, most notably Caesar (1937), a groundbreaking Broadway adaptation of Julius Caesar; in radio, the 1938 broadcast "The War of the Worlds", one of the most famous in the history of radio; and in film, Citizen Kane (1941), consistently ranked as one of the all-time greatest films.

2. Note main ideas described in documentary related to the basques:

• The Basques tought that Adan and Eva were Basques. For them, to speak Spanish was a treachery but foreing people or Spanish people tought that their language was very strange.
• The biggest industry was the smuggling. They also used to hunt pigeons with a tactic that nowadays is alive in a village called Etxalar. Is a tactic where you hunt the pigeon with some traps.
• There had been a big change there, which is that young men went to America to worked like shipherds because there was work.
•  In the video we can see a case, he is a man who went at first like shipherd, then he started like truck driver and later on, he bought his own sheeps.He explains in the video that at first is very difficult because you have to learn the language and you have not free time because you are always caring the sheeps.
• This man came back to live there, in the village,  with his family and then he got married with a girl from there. 

3. Develop in depth two of them. Provide a critic view from your standpoint such as: basque, non-basque, other...

 

The Basque language:

In my opinion, as a person who has been studying basque for 12 years, Basque language is undervalued. 

I think that we are loosing a really interesting language (because we don't really know where it come from), which, as my mum says, is the languge of our ancestors. 

After the Francos' dictatorship the number of Basque speakers was reduced, and also with the ETA movement it was bad-seing, so people wasn't interested in learning it.

Thankfully this has changed, now in nearly of the schools of Navarre you have te option of study Basque, it is being promoted.

In my opinion people connect the Basque language with the terrorism, and ther is still people that think that all Basques are terrorists. I think this is really sad, because they are estereotyping. Things have changed and I my opinion it that Basque language is as acceptable as French, English or Catalan.

We should promote the Basque learning because it is part of our culture and we can't loose it.