Mikel Zalbide

Zalbide was born in San Sebastián. He studied engineering at the University of Navarra. From a young age, he worked in those areas where Basque needed to be developed.

He has done extensive work in the planning of the corpus of Euskera. In 1972, while still a student, he was one of the founders of Elhuyar Kultur Elkartea. In addition to creating the first technical-scientific journal in Euskera, he took part in the preparation of didactic material and launched studies on word formation.[1]

Since the creation of UZEI (Unibertsitate Zerbitzuetarako Euskal Institutua) in 1978, he has been technically responsible for the area of science and technology. He worked at UZEI, among other things, in the dictionaries of Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics. He also studied the formation of lexicon and taught courses on the subject. Finally, he is the author of the systematization work carried out in UZEI around the writing and pronunciation of lexical loans.[1]

From 1979, he was one of the participants of the initiative to create a Basque University. He was a member of the Joint Commission created by the pre-autonomous entity Basque General Council, and the University of Bilbao (later the University of the Basque Country). This joint commission was named "Commission for the planning of the Basque University" and within it was created a subcommittee on linguistic standardization. Mikel Zalbide was responsible for that working group.

Since 1981, he has worked in the Department of Education, Universities and Research of the Basque Government, as head of the Euskera Service.[2] He retired in 2014. As head of the Basque Department of the Department of Education, he has taken part in the main projects developed by the Administration to fix the teaching of Euskera and the levels of knowledge of that language.

In the fields of pedagogy and education he has participated in the working groups for the implementation of various projects: the EIMA (Euskal Ikasmaterialgintza) program for the creation of didactic materials in Euskera (both textbooks for Primary Education and Secondary, as audiovisual material and software) and to ensure the quality of the language; the NOLEGA program and the ULIBARRI project, with the aim of reinforcing the use of Euskera in the school environment; the Plan for Euskaldunizar the Educational Administration. It has also been committed to analyze the linguistic competencies of Models A, B, and D, draw conclusions and propose improvement measures.

He was appointed a member of the Royal Academy of the Basque Language - Euskaltzaindia in 1983. Before that, in 1976, he was a member of the institution's subcommittee on mathematics.[2] In the Academy he has done important work in the fields of lexicology and lexicography: he has been a member of the Lexicography Commission and the Jargon Section. In both cases he has held the position of secretary for some years.

On the other hand, within the same Euskaltzaindia, he has been responsible for management of the Commission for the Establishment of Lexical Criteria (LEF in its acronym in Euskera). Around this line of work the projects of fixation of the writing of the lexical loans, the Basque General Dictionary and the EEBS project (Egungo Euskararen Bilketa Sistematikoa) were developed.

Since April 27, 2006, he is an academic in number. He read his address to San Sebastian on June 2, 2007.[3]

He is currently working on the Joanes Etxeberri project (Euskararen Historia Soziala - EHS Euskera Social History). This project, created in 2007, is developed in the field of historical sociolinguistics, analyzing the social evolution of Euskera and languages that have been in contact with Basque through time.[4]