# Bascophone
## English
### Alternative forms

* bascophone

### Etymology

From French bascophone, from basque + -phone. By surface analysis, Basco- +‎ -phone.

### Adjective

Bascophone (not generally comparable, comparative more Bascophone, superlative most Bascophone)
* Speaking the Basque language.
** 1987, Kathleen Wheaton, editor, Spain (Insight Guides), APA Productions, →ISBN, page 252, column 1:The capital of Álava, Vitoria is the largest and least Bascophone of the three Basque provinces and the seat of the autonomous Basque government.
** 1999, Juan Cobarrubias, “Viability of the Basque Language in the Next Millennium”, in William A. Douglass, Carmelo Urza, Linda White, Joseba Zulaika, editors, Basque Cultural Studies (Occasional Papers Series; 5), Reno, Nev.: Basque Studies Program, University of Nevada, Reno, →ISBN, page 77:This determines to a significant degree the level of commitment to push for normalization and the level of tolerance of non-Bascophone speakers in allowing Euskera to penetrate into areas that traditionally have not been Bascophone.
** 2001, Jasone Cenoz, Josu Perales, “The Basque-speaking Communities”, in M. Teresa Turell, editor, Multilingualism in Spain: Sociolinguistic and Psycholinguistic Aspects of Linguistic Minority Groups (Multilingual Matters; 120), Clevedon, Somerset: Multilingual Matters Ltd, →ISBN, part 1 (The Larger Established Minorities), page 100:According to the Euskarari Buruzko Foru Legea (1986) (Foral Law of the Basque language) three linguistic areas are distinguished in Nafarroa: the Bascophone area in the North, the non-Bascophone area in the South and the mixed area which includes the central area of Nafarroa and its capital city.
** 2003, Ludger Mees, “How It Began: the Evolution of Basque Nationalism until the Civil War (1876–1939)”, in Nationalism, Violence and Democracy: The Basque Clash of Identities, New York, N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, page 12:There are no precise statistical figures for the regional and local distribution of the Bascophone population at the beginning of the twentieth century, but due to the massive language-desertion by the locals and the waves of immigration into the new industrial areas it can be taken for granted that in Bilbao and its industrial hinterland Euskara had been reduced to an absolutely marginal and residual position. […] According to [Louis-Lucien] Bonaparte’s figures of the 1860s and the updated version presented by [Ladislao de] Velasco at the end of the 1870s, more than a half of all Spanish and French Basques were euskaldunak, that is, Bascophone.

### Noun

Bascophone (plural Bascophones)
* A speaker of the Basque language.
** 1932, W[illia]m A[lbert] Amiet, “Basque Literature”, in Literature by Languages: A Roll Call, Sydney, N.S.W.: Angus & Robertson […], page 257:However, the Bascophones have their worldly moments, in which they indulge in their national dances, their sad, sweet songs, set in a minor key, and the Souletin dramas, known as “pastorales,” the representation of which may last for seven or eight hours.
** 1985, Adam Ruck, “The Pyrenees”, in Ingrid Morgan, editor, The Holiday Which? Guide to France, 2nd edition, London: Consumers’ Association and Hodder & Stoughton, →ISBN, page 178:Compared with some half-million Spanish Bascophones, there are only about 50,000 in France who speak one of the least comprehensible and least understood languages in the world, the only one in Europe which is not Indo-European, and of which, it is said, the Devil only mastered three words after seven years’ study.
** 1988, Language Problems & Language Planning‎, volumes 12–13, page 229:According to rough estimates, then, Occitanophones number about 2 million, or 15% of the region’s population; Breton speakers about 500,000-800,000, or 23%; Bascophones about 90,000, or 34%; Catalanophones about 260,000, or 87%; Corsican speakers, about 110,000, or 30%, and Flemish speakers, about 70,000 to 100,000, or 40 to 60% (Cirici i Pellicer 1982/83: 94-95; Busquet and Vidal 1980: 34; Còrsega 1984: 27; Wood 1980: 108).
** 1994, Henriette Walter, translated by Peter Fawcett, French Inside Out: The Worldwide Development of the French Language in the Past, Present and the Future, London, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, published 1996, →ISBN, page 87:In 1972 the total number of Bascophones was estimated to be half a million of which some 80,000 were in France.[original: En 1972, on estimait à environ un demi-million le nombre total des bascophones, dont environ 80 000 en France.]
** 1999, Juan Cobarrubias, “Viability of the Basque Language in the Next Millennium”, in William A. Douglass, Carmelo Urza, Linda White, Joseba Zulaika, editors, Basque Cultural Studies (Occasional Papers Series; 5), Reno, Nev.: Basque Studies Program, University of Nevada, Reno, →ISBN, page 76:Thus, when we plan for normalization, we know that the supply of new users of the language can come only through converting the existing non-Bascophone population to Euskera use, increasing immigration and then converting the new immigrants into Bascophones, or increasing the birth rate among Bascophones—or all the above.
** 2001, Jasone Cenoz, Josu Perales, “The Basque-speaking Communities”, in M. Teresa Turell, editor, Multilingualism in Spain: Sociolinguistic and Psycholinguistic Aspects of Linguistic Minority Groups (Multilingual Matters; 120), Clevedon, Somerset: Multilingual Matters Ltd, →ISBN, part 1 (The Larger Established Minorities), page 94:Basque-speaking people are not distributed evenly throughout the Basque Country. The data in Table 3.1 indicate that the proportion of Bascophones is much higher in Gipuzkoa than in the other BAC provinces or Nafarroa.
** 2007, Anne Judge, “Regional Languages Official Elsewhere: Basque, Catalan, Flemish and Alsatian”, in Linguistic Policies and the Survival of Regional Languages in France and Britain, Basingstoke, Hants: Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, part II (The Regional Languages Spoken in Metropolitan France), pages 73 and 75:These surveys were aimed at both Bascophones and non-Bascophones over 15 years old and in both the French and Spanish Basque country. […] 56 per cent of those interviewed expressed the wish that their children be taught Basque at school, 42 per cent from kindergarten. This figure seems remarkably high given that the survey was conducted in the Bayonne–Anglet–Biarritz area, which has the lowest percentage of Bascophones. Finally, Coyos points out that whereas in 2001, 24.7 per cent of the population had a knowledge of Basque, only 5.8 per cent of those observed speaking in the street were using Basque: to speak Basque it is necessary to have a Bascophone to speak to, and it is not always easy to know who does.
** 2011, Philippe Van Parijs, “Notes”, in Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World, Oxford, Oxon: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, pages 245–246:The rule is that public administration at each level, municipal, provincial, and regional, must have a proportion of employees fluent in Basque equal to the (currently much higher) proportion of ‘Bascophones’ in the relevant administrative unit, where ‘Bascophones’ are defined as people who declare on census forms that they can speak or read at least some Basque. […] Even abstracting from the possibility that Basque schools were made more attractive to many case parents because of lower proportions of immigrant children, it is not surprising that the proportion of children attending Basque schools has kept growing, thereby increasing the recorded proportion of ‘Bascophones’ in the population and hence further increasing the demand for proficient Basque speakers in the public sector.