Basque Dialects
The relation between the Standard Basque and the local dialects is well summarized as follows by William Haddican:
| “ | Batua was not primarily intended as a replacement for local dialects, but rather to complement them as a written standard and for inter-dialectal communication. Nevertheless, dialect speakers often view Batua as more objectively "correct" than their own dialect. | ” |
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—William Haddican |
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The following dialects were the pre-Batua Basque and make up the colloquial or casual register of Basque, the Euskara Batua being the formal one. They were created in the Middle Ages from a previously quite unified Basque language, and diverged from each other since then due to the administrative and political division that happened in the Basque Country.
They are spoken in the Spanish and French Basque regions. Standard Basque was then created using Gipuzkoan as a basis, also bringing scattered elements from the other dialects. They are typically used in the region after which they are named, but have many linguistic similarities.
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Read more about this topic: Standard Basque