Gernika-Lumoko euskararen aldakortasuna: aldagai fonetiko zenbait

Abstract

It has been a long time since the international dialectal researches have taken a new course that focuses on urban spoken varieties more than on rural varieties. Moreover, it focuses on the interaction between independent variables and linguistic variables. The aim of this contribution is to show that Basque is not an isolated case in the world; as a living language it has changed through time and it is, indeed, changing nowadays.Therefore, we have researched the variant of the basque spoken in the locality of Gernika. In fact, we have analyzed 6 linguistic variables which present an ongoing despalatalization: variable (iz), variable (it), variable (il), variables (ind) and (ild), variable (i_V) and variable ('zait'). We have studied the realizations of these linguistic variables taking into account some independent variables such as age, gender, origin of parents and the school where they have studied. As we will see, the most important independent variable seems to be the age, as, oldest generation use only the palatal variant, adults use both but in the majority of the cases they use the palatal one, and young generations use only the not-palatalized variant. Gender seems to be important, as women appear to be more innovative than men, using non-palatalized variants. The origin of parents does not seem to be relevant when we refer to young generations, but it does in oldest ones. School seems to be important on young generations, being students of private schools more innovative. We strongly believe that Unified Basque (promoted by Euskaltzaindia, the Academy of Basque, 1968), has a noticeable effect on the spoken language of the youngest generations, as it is widely present in the school system and the media.