Euskaldun
Definition: “One who has Basque” or “Basque-speaker”; an understanding of a shared culture
Origin: Basque
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My book THE CRIME WITHOUT A NAME was released on October 12, 2021 and NPR has picked it as one of the top books of the year!
You can order the book—including the audiobook—and watch recordings of my book tour discussions at Eaton and the New York Public Library at thecrimewithoutaname.com.
***At the end of the newsletter, there is information about an online event I am having on April 7***
American English is a language whose speakers embrace the phrases “talk is cheap” or “easier said than done,” and we are not inclined to grasp how these phrases teach us that our words and our language are supposed to be meaningless.
Obviously, American English-speakers do not consciously embrace our linguistic negation. Instead we simply believe that negation and erasure are the inevitable status quo regarding our language, and due to this belief we aspire to find something that is not meaningless. For Americans, action has become the repository of meaning, and actions are allegedly not as cheap as words.
Yet in this elevation of actions ahead of words, we have erased or at the very least minimized the significance of the words and thoughts that must proceed and guide the actions. This linguistic erasure creates a status quo where senseless, thoughtless actions become the norm, and yet no one feels empowered to or capable of saying the words that could prevent these destructive actions.
From SCL’s inception, countless people have questioned the significance of words and language to make sustainable change, and have requested that I focus more on actions instead. In a world where “talk is cheap” people will yearn to support expensive actions.
This week’s word, Euskaldun, demonstrates how language can be the heartbeat of a culture, and also how for those who diminish the significance of language, the meaning of profound words can get lost in translation.
To Have Basque
As an American, I learned nothing about Basque culture and language in school, and my interest in Basque arose from my passion for soccer (football) and interest in the French national team.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, the French national team had a player named Bixente Lizarazu, and I immediately wondered where that name came from. In 1998, France hosted the World Cup and the diversity of the national team symbolized the growing diversity of France. The team’s diversity meant that the players' names came from basically every part of the world that France had colonized: the Caribbean, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Oceania; but Lizarazu’s name had nothing to do with European attempts to colonize the globe.
Lizarazu was Basque and he came from the French Basque region, and not the larger Spanish Basque region. From this point, I became intrigued by the reality of a culture existing across national borders that spoke a language that was clearly neither French nor Spanish. In fact, Basque is a pre-Indo-European language, so it has been spoken in the region prior to the arrival of Indo-European languages 12,000 years ago.
The Basque language, or Euskara, pre-dates Europe as we know it. It makes sense that they would value their language as an expression of their culture instead of as feeble sounds that mean less than actions. When you speak Euskara, you are articulating an understanding of the world that precedes everything we know about European culture and existence.
Yet when “Euskaldun” is translated into English, an Indo-European language, much of the meaning of the word is lost. People now “speak” Basque instead of “having” Basque. Linguistically, emphasis has now been placed on the action, “speaking” and not the philosophy and culture that is associated with “having.”
The prioritization of action ahead of culture also creates a profound problem because it also impacts how we define the meaning of “having.” By “having Basque,” one does not possess an individualistic sliver of Basque culture. Having does not also come with ownership. The “having” in Euskaldun is an acknowledgement that the spirit of a shared culture flows through you, and this will mean that your actions are shaped by the spirit of a culture. Its shared language manifests as an extension of this ancient culture.
By articulating an understanding of the world, especially one that is more than 12,000 years old, you certainly have something meaningful. These words are not an empty gesture, and for a people without a recognized nation-state their language is a vital feature of keeping their culture alive.
By speaking the Euskara language, one has an essential piece of Basque culture and is thus an Euskaldun. In fact, we all have an essential piece of our culture when we speak our language, and we should be troubled if our language diminishes the significance of this reality.
Empty Words & Easier Said Than Done
I have always been annoyed at the emptiness of American English and how many of our words and phrases are intentionally misleading. When Americans say they want to “grab a coffee,” it is expected that neither person actually intends to grab coffee.
We say “let’s grab coffee” because we know that it is the nice thing to say, but we also do not expect the nice thing to occur. We know that this phrase is more often than not a linguistic charade, but we accept this bad faith because it has long been our norm. We are unaccustomed to a world where “grabbing coffee” with an acquaintance literally means meeting up for coffee.
When a society is accustomed to empty words and phrases, we will then make new phrases to describe their emptiness. America’s linguistic emptiness is also shaped by the linguistic obsolescence of capitalism encouraging us to prioritize monetization and to think of words, places and people as disposable, so it is logical that our empty words would be described as “cheap.”
Additionally, if our words are empty and have little attachment to the actions they profess, such as getting coffee, then we will also cultivate phrases to describe how we do not expect people to be able to do what they say. And this is where we find “easier said than done.”
I have disliked this phrase for as long as I can remember because it is literally a meaningless phrase that exists to describe a meaningless way of life. Unless you are a newborn baby or a person with a speech or hearing impairment, it will always be easier to say an action than do an action.
The phrase is the equivalent of saying “water is wet.” It merely states the obvious, yet in American English this phrase exists as a justification for planned or anticipated failure.
We are told to not expect someone to be able to do something that either themselves or someone else has articulated because the act of doing is harder than the act of saying. This phrase exists to not just condone, but to predict failure in every aspect of life. Since everything is harder to do than to say one’s inability to do what they say has now become a normalized failure, but this failure now extends to every aspect of life.
This phrase embraces a meaningless language where the words hold very little attachment to their meaning and their subsequent actions. One merely speaks, but does not actually have anything but empty words and the charade that Americans love to play where we pretend that the words have meaning when we know that they actually do not.
When we speak American English, we do not have the spirit and culture that the Basque people cultivate with Euskaldun.
Ethnocide is the destruction of culture while keeping the people, so to counter ethnocide we must cultivate sustainable culture, cultural naissance, and one of the first steps to creating a sustainable culture that can last for thousands of years is the cultivation of a meaningful language whose spirit, purpose, and connection to place can reside within everyone who speaks it.
This Thursday, April 7 at 10pm EST / 7pm PST I will be speaking at “Rising Up for Human Dignity: Resisting Cultural Erasure” as part of Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month.
The event is in partnership with the Oregon Historical Society (Thus the late start time for those of us on the east coast). The moderator for my talk with be Jennifer Fang (my old roommate!), so in addition to discussing my book we will talk about how cultural erasure impacts Asian communities in the United States.
The talk is online and totally free. Here’s the registration link and I look forward to virtually seeing you guys.