Overview

Here I am! Or here I will be, but a lot smaller and somewhere in the town itself, not looking over it like some great "Photo Booth" genie!

Why did I choose to study the Basque language? I am Basque! Or half-Basque. My mother's parents both immigrated to the United States from the French Basque country in the years preceding and following World War I.

Below is a picture of my my grandmother Marie, née Intchauspe, who came to this country probably in 1914 and my grandfather Ambrose Lascor.

My grandfather's uniform, in particular the fez, would seem to indicate that he was in the French army in North Africa before joining his brothers in the western United States. I could not find any record of my grandmother's entry into the U.S. on-line but I know from my mother that she came here aboard a ship that probably left from a southern French port. As a man and a soldier, my grandfather would have enjoyed more latitude than my grandmother. Records from Ellis Island indicate that he arrived in New York in 1922 in steerage aboard the White Star Line vessel ADRIATIC, a ship that called on the northern French port of Cherbourg, far from the Basque country of his birth.

Euskera was the language my grandparents used to communicate with each other when they didn't want their three children, Gene, Elizabeth and my mother Marie, to understand what they were saying. Nonetheless, my mother naturally picked up more than a little bit of the Basque language. She has phonetically written down for me some of the things that she remembers:

Bak ee a ema sah soo! (Give me some peace!)

No lah seera? (How are you?)

Oon cha. Eta Soo? (Fine, and you?)

Dem borra ederra da e oon. (It's lovely weather today.)

Seh na ee doo soo? (What do you want, a slap?)

One would assume that this last question was spoken in great exasperation after repeatedly making the initial demand for a little peace.

My mom and me.