Basque People Research Paper

The Culture of the Basque People

Ashley Kane

Georgia Gwinnett College

Basque Culture 2

The Basque People The Basque people are an ethnic group who have their own language and are actually growing around the world. They mostly started with Spanish or French roots. The Basque people can be found in small groups in many different areas of Europe. Some of these areas are; British Columbia, Quebec, and the Eastern seaboard in Canada. They can also be found all over the United States.

The Basque language is spoken by about 660,000 people. Their language includes the Roman alphabet. “Basque first appeared in writing in Latin religious texts, the Glosas Emilianenses, dating from the 11th century according to Ager

Basque women are noted not only for the excellence of their home cooking, but also their success as restaurateurs"” (Hudgins, 2016). The Basque also use meats like lamb, beef, and pork in their cooking and vegetables, potatoes, tomatoes, and spices like paprika also. They use a lot of cream, butter, mushrooms, and milk in their cooking. Mushrooms are really important to the Basque people. They travel in different seasons when the mushrooms grow just to pick them and bring them home to cook with.

Some traditional Basque dishes are, angulas in Spain. It is silvery-white baby eels and is really expensive. Marmitako is a traditional Basque stew made with white-fleshed bonito and potatoes. Another Basque meal is bacalao which is dried sea cod. They also pair their meals with sauces whose colors are the same as the Basque flag. These sauces are a red sauce made with onions and red peppers, green sauce made with parsley, peas, and asparagus, and a special kind of white sauce. Another dish that the Basque make is baby squid that is tinted black by the squid’s own ink. Piperade is a Basque dish made with peppers, eggs, ham, onion, garlic, and tomatoes. Some traditional Basque deserts are leche frita which is fried milk, thick custard squares, intzarusalsa which is walnut cream soup, mamiya which is milk curds flavored with lemon and sugar, and fruit compotes made with red wine and spices according to Hudgins,

There are so many languages that have been lost because people stop speaking them and try to blend in more with the Western culture. However, fighting to keep a language alive is really important so I thought that was really interesting. I also thought that it is probably something really important that people from the Basque culture could teach others. The fact that they are actually able to learn how to keep their language alive and have the tools to do it is something that they could help others with. Just bringing the knowledge that this can actually be done and that smaller cultures can have their own language and continue having their own Basque language for hundreds of years is something that could bring hope to other cultures in different areas that may be afraid of losing their own language. The Basque culture has continued to spread rather than to get smaller which is really good because I think it is important for cultures, old and new, to continue in the world in order to keep our world diverse. If we didn’t have diversity we wouldn’t have the different foods we eat, the different languages we have, and we wouldn’t have the knowledge about other countries and