My sister has called me to ask me to take care of her dog, because she is working hard in the office and if I were to do her a favor and she is clear that I will do it because she would prefer not to go home all day. It’s not a task that drives me crazy, but I’ve gone to the neighborhood of Rosadia to look for the dog. Once in my sister’s house, the animal greets me with a sludge of joy that I personally welcome, although from time to time it also makes me look back to see if Silvia, or her boy, has arrived with me.

Already in my house, I’ve called a friend I haven’t seen in a long time to propose a bucolic walk with dogs by the river that would make me bored if I went alone – I’m a very interested person.

Then, as I heard his voice on the other side of the thread, I remembered that someone had told me that he had seen a great fall on the previous occasion. I didn’t think so on the phone.

Next to the river we play with the dog, I call him, I throw stones at him, then – it’s a concrete order – I don’t have to let him scratch them, but, since he doesn’t bring stones to steal them, I have to follow him, running small, to remove him from between his teeth, giving him a comic image, at least my friend laughs at me, which, if it’s true that he’s overwhelmed, consoles me a bit.

“The chain is broken,” my friend said. I don't understand him. I look at the dog’s leash, worried that it has been broken and afraid of going home without tying the dog, also for the possible fine, but above all, since it does not obey me little or nothing (with what do I tie it?, will I have to carry it in my arms –about 30 kilos, I calculate the opinion–? ), for comedy. But the leash is intact; I have begun to suspect that my friend is talking to me about her fiancé.

“You have interrupted the chain,” he repeated, taking up the position, “I am surprised that you are Basque and you write in Basque (very well, by the way),” he told me, literally, in the face of the impressions of humility (false, by the way) on my part, “that the dog has not been educated in Basque.” This language, I remember in my Gulf the topic, which speaks with children and pets, sometimes exclusively. Perhaps the secret of thousands of years of survival. “Why are you talking to Zakurne about the Basque Country?”

Caught in the void, I don’t know the answer, even if at some point he is a Basque Language Minister, an intern, seeing my merits in being nominated compromised, “I have improvised a moral regulation of the Basque Language”, applied so far with instinct and confusion, which I will have to look at from now on without fail:

The first rule: With the children of Basque parents who always talk to me (and who I am) about the Basque language, or with their parents in front of their children, do not speak Basque.

The second rule: Ignore those parents (now!) their efforts to change the language in the face of their descendants – apic posterity.

The third rule: Don’t use more or less technical Basque words (les mandé unas drills) or toponymic words (vais a subir a Iruña? ).

The fourth rule: In friendships where the use of Erdara has been established, do not use Basque militantly when entering the “Basque environment”, such as Nafarroa Peatonal, as is customary in automatic mode. The same is true when a true Basque from abroad (i.e. from Gipuzkoa) fits in the squad.

Rule number five...
“I mean, the opposite of what the normal Basque does”, his friends with a desperate mourning.
“Yes, more or less.”