What does it feel like to be teaching Euskara so far away from Euskal Herria?
We experience a lot of different feelings that are hard to put into words. On the one hand, we’re not really teachers of Euskara; in other words, we’re not professional teachers. We just try to teach what we know. That’s why we don’t see ourselves as teachers. At the Basque centres we can only teach up to the level we ourselves have of Euskara, while studying and learning as we go along, since we haven’t completed the highest levels of Basque culture and language. Generally speaking, the people who come to class don’t have a great deal of knowledge about Euskara or Euskal Herria; for the most part, they’ve never heard anyone speak Euskara. Some are descendents of Basques and can speak a little, but others can’t, so they start from zero and soon begin to utter a few words in Euskara. That’s when it becomes really exciting for us. It’s like teaching a baby to talk, as if they were being born again, but this time as Basques. Apart from that, at the Basque centre we try to teach Euskara to
