Bilingüismo, monolingüismo y sesquilingüismo en la Comunidad Autónoma Vasca

Abstract

Thirty years have gone by since the Basque Autonomy Statute (“Guernica Statute”) first came into force, which established co-officiality between Basque and Spanish in the entire Comunidad Autónoma Vasca (CAV: Basque Autonomous Community). An ambitious educational plan in Basque has been introduced with the Law 10/1982, November 24th 1982, Basic Law of Normalization in the Use of Basque). However, the presence of this language in the daily life of the CAV is far from relevant. Two circumstances contribute to this fact: the non-existence of monolingual Basque speakers and the great percentage of monolingual Spanish speakers. If at least the latter were competent enough in listening comprehension (i. e., if they substituted their monolingualism for semi-bilingualism, as Ch. Hockett put it), this would encourage a kind of situation which has rarely ever taken place: communicative situations in which one speaker spoke in Basque and the other one in Spanish.