ABSTRACT
In Manuel Larramendi’s view all dialects were harmoniously formed and organised and represented an extraordinary source of wealth for the language. In the mid-nineteenth century, Prince Bonaparte’s intervention proved to be decisive, and he had numerous translations done in what he called the “literary dialects,” that is, Lapurdian, Zuberoan, Gipuzkoan, and Bizkaian. The Gipuzkoan Jesuit Agustin Kardaberatz was the first to point to the existence of two varieties of Bizkaian. Following the controversy unleashed around Mogel, a group of churchmen began taking the first steps towards the constitution of a Bizkaian standard dialect. The distancing of the Bizkaian dialect from the rest and its internal fragmentation happened in the nineteenth century, as a result of the zeal with which some activists tried consolidate standard Bizkaian. In the early twentieth century, Manuel Arriandiaga, author of several grammatical studies, already noted some important differences within the Bizkaian dialect which had their origin according to him in the remote past.
