The Basque-Icelandic Pidgin
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/iceland-revo...
>"The decision to do away with the decree was more symbolic than anything else," Westfjords district commissioner Jonas Gudmundsson told reporters last month. "We have laws, of course, and killing anyone — including Basques — is forbidden these days."
leges posteriores priores contrarias abrogant
So no, killing a Basque person would have been legally no different than killing anyone else.
There was also a law on the books until 1991 that you could legally kill Turks on sight, due to an incident that didn't even involve Turkish people to begin with[2] (Icelanders at the time apparently didn't differentiate them from Algerians).
It was repealed, but not due to any legal practicality. The Turkish national team refused to travel to Iceland unless the law was repealed, so it was struck from the books as a purely symbolic gesture.
At the time, Algeria was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire
Seems the original Vikings were afraid of being Viking'd themselves and put into Law?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaying_of_the_Spaniards
17th century Iceland during a famine year was a very, very bleak place.
¡Ahí Va La Hostia Pues, Inaki!
Europe has so many of these small disputes and treaties that make absolutely no sense what so ever if solely looked at through a modern lens and with no context. As a person born in the US to a European parent it was so odd to see these little details when visiting, even within Spain itself.
Specifically, and relevant to this topic, the Basque Country which has a long history of secession from the Spanish Kingdom. Catalunya is another as is Valencia, due to the horrible violence of the Spanish Civil War, but I had known of that already.
The notion of Autonomous communities is almost antithetical to a nation state/uniter kingdom model, and yet you have it and it exists within the EU. And then when it tries to to exercise those rights it gets people thrown in jail as seen with the successful 2017 Catalan separation vote, that saw its proponents get thrown in jail, beaten and chased by secret police from Madrid and saw its leader Carles Puigdemont fled to Brussels where he still has standing as a member of Parliament somehow. He recently spoke out about the CCP's brash and belligerent violence in Hong Kong, and sought to enact legislation to curtail it.
And then in the South you have Gibraltar, a part of the UK, which is some how autonomous but still physically in the Iberian peninsula.
I wonder if there will be a time when the whole UK vs Iceland thing over Icesave will come up in some obscure way, as the UK put Iceland as a rouge nation on the terrorist watch-list for their refusal to bailout them out in the 2008 financial crises [0].
0: https://www.icelandreview.com/news/iceland%E2%80%99s-preside...
That is a really biased, inaccurate way to describe the legal ramifications of the Procés. I won’t hijack the conversation but people, don’t store this as fact without reading more about it. It’s quite a convoluted situation but it is pretty clear imho that just painting it as “Spain is an oppresive state” is a ridiculous simplification.
Agur!
(It's been too long since I visited your country - such a beautiful place!)
As a Spaniard, it was really surprising to see how popular the Basque language is around those circles. I think it's a mix of the historical quirkiness of it being a pre-roman western European language, and the bragging potential for language learners due to how niche and unrelated to other languages it is.
If you ever need to make some money on the side, there are sites where you can book conversations with native speakers to practice, and basque is really in demand, so an euskaldun can make good money :)
Please share with me some links to those sites where I could make some side money just by speaking some Basque, sounds like a good mental break from programming :)
Very glad you enjoyed it, and if you drop by Barcelona where I live now, I'll happily make sure you try 4 or 5 instances of the single best paella in the world.
That paella sounds nice. Barcelona is also a great city, great food, culture, beaches, amusement park on a mountain! Seville, Madrid, Cordoba and Granada, even Valladolid are also great. The only Spanish city I didn't like was Malaga. In fact, I think that in general Spain is excellent at urbanism and liveable cities.
https://www.mulherportuguesa.com/receita/bacalhau-a-bras-tra...
I'm glad I already finished my beer, otherwise I would have spilled it over my keyboard xD (I'm Spanish too, from Cáceres)
"Certain surprising similarities among pidgins and creoles spoken in places distant from each other and with different linguistic components in their formation have led some linguistic to formulate a monogenetic theory that would trace many pidgins and creoles to a common ancestor: A Portuguese based pidgin or even to the Lingua Franca or Sabir spoken in the Mediterranean Basin from the Middle Ages (Whinnom, 1977)."
Even after the middle ages Portuguese seems to be an especially common source of pidgins, found in South east Asia, Africa and the Caribbean (curiously, in now Dutch territories) among other places.
https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/jpcl.4...
I would read the next to last line as: "you have run ashore?"
>Virtually all words are of Germanic origin. There are some possible explanations for this fact. The French component may have disappeared by the time it was recorded, but the pidgin preserved its name. It is also possible that the Frenchmen who went there were actually Flemish-speaking fishermen from the area around Dunkerque, France.
ju haber runet på den lange
I lived in Spain for 5 years, and 4 out of those 5 I dated a basque girl.
Basques are really proud of their culture and specially their language that is, at the same time, highly "dialectal" (If there's such a word). My gf at the time was from San Sebastian, but lived in a small town near Bilbao called Amorebieta.
She studied in the university of Pamplona, Navarra; she had a roomate from Vitoria, the capital of Álava province (One of the 3 provinces that make Euskadi, the basque country * .) and there were many occurrences where one had to explain to the other the meaning of a word they used. They also are a bit wary of the "euskara batúa" (The "standard" basque) although it worries them more the fact that it seems the language is slowly being lost.
I picked several words along the way and I also asked her to teach me some phrases, one in particular that I still remember (although may be not 100% accurately):
Nirea da printxesen artean politena
and she would scream in joy when I'd repeat that in front of her female friends.
* Navarra also has a strong basque heritage, but is not considered part of the basque country due to events in the spanish history were it would negotiate some political rights separately, and is a "principado" (principality? Princedom?).
They are also very, very tight knit families - Basques are somehow highly matriarchal - and they take proud in remembering all their "8 last names" (Specially if they all are of basque origin). Friend groups are also very tight knit, and a lot of people keep friendships they developed at an early age through their whole life.
Basques are also incredible loyal and hardworking people; but they also party like no one.
In Amorebieta a the time - ~2005 - I think there were only 4 or 5 bars, and on weekends people would go rotating constantly through them all (This was not particular to the town, but something that was normal for basques). On Sundays and holidays it was normal to find in the afternoon entire families having a drink at the sidewalk in the bars.
I know people from the UK had a certain fame about drinking, but let me tell you _nobody_ drinks & party like the Spaniards, and basques are at the top 3 of the Spanish nationalities of the list.
There's a rather entertaining book called "The Basque History of the World" [0] that claims, among other things, that the basques were also in America before Columbus and that more or less we own them the invention of salted cod that made possible the long journeys around the globe.
I left Spain 13 years ago, and to this day one of the things I miss the most is my basque family.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Basque-History-World-Story-Nation/dp/...
I don't quite recall which one I read first (It was around 15 years ago, and my memory is a disaster) but I do recall that one of them took me to the other.
Your phrase in Basque is accurate, standard orthography would be "printzesen" but it's pronounced quite similarly and in many areas exactly the same.
Basque people are very social, and a lot of that socialization happens around drinking. Usually not as heavy drinking as in other countries, but lower graduation alcohol and slower pace, but it happens for many hours, so it does end up being a lot. The plus side, it's hard to feel alone around here. The con, of course the liver suffers, and the excessive social life can end up feeling suffocating (you can opt out, but, especially in smaller towns, it takes some effort).
Navarre was a completely independent kingdom until 1521 when it was invaded by Castille, although stayed as a separate kingdom and legal entity within the non-homogeneous political complex of Spain until around 1850, when it became a province with some unique foral rights. These days it's an autonomous community within Spain with some extra rights (critical: tax collection & budgeting), same as the three traditional provinces of the Basque Country. There are many cultural and social ties between the Basque provinces and Navarre, also a few lighter ones with the French Basque area, and the areas collaborate, but they are distinct political entities today. Personal, cultural, social and nationalistic ideas and feelings with regards to this are on a very wide spectrum.
If there was one word I knew I wouldn't get right, it was that one ;) I appreciate the correction.
I do miss going from bar to bar having a zurito.
As well, Here in Argentina it's very difficult to get "dry" sidras as the ones you have in Spain, and I love them.
Regarding Navarra, I knew about the complex relationship there is between it and the basque country; your comment about the wide spectrum of feelings is on point.
I can't comment about the rest of Europe - I suspect at least France & Germany, being the bigger countries over there have a similar structure - but Spain is really a group of several nations knitted together, each with it's own character - and more often than not, allegiances.
One thing I truly learn over there was to not call all of the Spaniards "gallegos" because of this, and I learned to appreciate and love the differences. But my heart goes to the basque country.