Kirolkidea, a new microsite designed to promote the use of the Basque language in sports, is now available. It is an initiative of UZEI in collaboration with the Directorate of Youth and Sports of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, which also has the support of Kutxa Fundazioa.

Many people who practice sports, as well as several professionals and agents in this field, often struggle to express themselves in Basque in a technically accurate and professional manner. Sports regulations are often not available in Basque, which means the terminology for these concepts is not sufficiently fixed for each sport.

This situation creates an insecurity that goes beyond simple misunderstandings, significantly diminishing the potential of Basque as a communication tool. Consequently, in the formal field of sports, there is a risk of consolidating the use of monolingual communication processes in Spanish for the sake of “security” and “ease.”

This issue affects a particularly sensitive aspect: the promotion of the use of Basque among the youngest people. In linguistic transmission beyond informal conversation, if educators and sports technicians lack confidence in using Basque, it becomes challenging for young people to adequately learn about the sport in Basque. Consequently, the valuable social potential that sports have to normalize the language among youth is weakened.

UZEI, with its experience in developing terms in Basque for various sports, has launched this initiative to cover areas still pending. In this first phase, four sports have been prioritized: weightlifting, canoeing, triathlon and bowling. Bilingual lexicons have been created with a total of 770 concepts, following UZEI’s quality standards.

Visit https://kirolak.uzei.eus and discover the terminology of these sports disciplines.