Hi, my name is Rosa and I will be the Publicity Officer for The Linguist this year! I’m a second year language student studying Advanced German and Intermediate Spanish.This summer, I worked as an Au Pair for a family in the Basque Country in Spain, near Bilbao.

While working in a family with two children (seven months and three years old, who I was teaching English) I learnt a lot about both Spanish and Basque. I would often spend days with the large extended family, none of whom spoke much English, which helped me to learn the language a lot. Because I was a beginner at Spanish, there was a significant language barrier, so we had to act out or describe words that we didn’t know to understand each other. 

I had some incredible experiences with the family, including seeing the sturgeon Moon, named after the fish that could be caught in its light, and shooting stars from a meteor shower. The town I lived in was in the middle of the mountains with little light pollution, so the sky was clear enough to see the constellations and Venus every night, and it looked stunning. In the day, I could walk straight from the house to hiking trails in the mountains, which were so big and remote I wouldn’t see another person for hours and only pass small farmhouses every hour or so. The views from the mountains were breathtaking, and being completely surrounded by nature felt calming and awe-inspiring, and was a massive change from living in Birmingham.

I was also with the family for their seven month old’s first words, which were “Aama” and “Aita”, meaning Mummy and Daddy in Basque, and it was incredible to be a part of the family for such an important moment in their lives. My host parents spoke with me about the importance of keeping the Basque language alive, and said that they were a part of a group of teachers in their school dedicated to practising Basque and making sure it is still commonly spoken. They tried to always make the first word in every conversation in Basque, to avoid defaulting to Spanish, which they knew everyone could speak. Everyone  there made a conscious effort to keep it as the region’s first language, and  at one town’s fiesta, there was even a free outdoor concert entirely in Basque, with famous bands from the Basque country!

Basque is the oldest surviving language in Europe, and can be traced back to the cavemen. It wasn’t influenced by Roman or Arabic like Spanish was, as it is surrounded by mountains, making it difficult to access on foot. The Basque culture is still proudly shown in their fiestas, which I was able to experience through their traditional food, drinks, outfits, parades and dances. I was lucky enough to be in Spain during the Fiesta season, and could spend my weekends in nearby towns and cities taking part in the celebrations. At one Fiesta, we competed in a “marmitako” cooking competition, which is a traditional Basque fisherman’s stew made of tuna and potatoes. There were thousands of people cooking and drinking in tents on the street, and my group won third place for our dish! The sense of community through Basque traditions was amazing, and I will never forget how kind and welcoming the people there were to me.

Rosa Greenhalgh