Erasmus: recortes a causa de la crisis

Los intercambios al extranjero están de moda en nuestra sociedad y, hoy en día, ellos también están sufriendo las consecuencias de la crisis. Elixabete Larrinaga, encargada de movilidad de la Universidad del País Vasco, explicará un poco sobre este tema y conoceremos el punto de vista de un estudiante escocés que participa en estos intercambios. Todo esto en la siguiente entrevista.

Interviewing "Zuloak", a basque rock girls' band

In an interview with members of the group, we have told that "Zuloak" comes to make an impact on us. In the interview they have told us about the documentary of the group they were doing directed by Fermin Muguruza and how the group has continued since then.

"Zuloak" is a rock music group and nowadays is composed by three girls,  Tania de Sousa (lead singer), Ainhoa Unzueta (singer and guitar) and Uxue de la Fuente (drums). They are from different places of the  Basque Country, so their songs are written in Basque and also focused on topics like sex or abortion for example. The have said in the interview that they sing songs with provocative lyrics.

Besides the concerts they have to give, on October 5, premiered the movie of the group, directed by Fermin Muguruza.

Tania de Sousa, Ainhoa Unzueta and Uxue de la Fuente give us more details in the following interview. This is "Zuloak":

If you are more interesed on the group you can find here their official webpage. 

Basque in media

Basque is a language that has few speakers if we compared to other languages ​​such as Spanish and to spread this language, communication plays an important role. In media there are three different fields. 

Firstly we have the TV. According to this field, the offer in Basque is very limited but we can find some channel in this language. ETB1 is the most famous one in the Basque Country which contains cultural and news programmes, miscellaneous programmes and sports. Like we can see, the programs they offer are not very varied and there are for adults and for children more than for teenagers. That’s why maybe young people prefer to watch other channels.

The radio offers similar service, with channels like Euskadi Irratia or Gaztea, which are listened in the whole country. In these cases everything is aimed at a younger audience and because of that, radio channels are more attractive for teenagers. For example,  Gaztea Irratia offers a huge range of music and programs in Basque.

Finnaly, the third field is the press. Nowadays there is a single newspaper in Basque that is distributed in the Basque Country, which is called Berria. But  some other newspapers in Euskara have been created in the recent years like Donostialdeko Irutxuloko Hitza. This field is more focused on older people, because teanagers usually read more magazines. If they offered magazines in Basque, the number of young consumers in this area would probably increase.

In conclusion, we think that media has contributed to the promotion of a language that doesn´t have a lot of speakers (as in the Basque language) with the creation of TV, radio channels and newspapers in that language. 

The influence of media in language

As it is known, media has evolved considerably in the last decades thanks, among other things, to new technologies. Consequently, language and its usage have also changed.

TV, mobile phones or telephones are nowadays essential tools in order to be updated, but the most demanded source of information is the Internet. As David Crystal said in How is the internet changing language today?, media (and especially Internet) has always changed the usage of language and the style, in different ways like in text messages or dialogues. As a consequence, spoken and written language has become shorter and plainer.

But even though the usage of language is different, grammar and words haven't changed so much.

Welcome everybody! We would like to welcome and introduce you to our Language In Media blog, where we will talk about the influence of media in language during this course. Just enjoy yourselves!