Joan Perez de Lazarraga facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Juan Pérez de Lazarraga
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| Born | c. 1548 |
| Died | 11 April 1605 (aged 56–57) Larrea, Álava, Crown of Castile
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Juan Pérez de Lazarraga (Basque: Joan Perez Lazarraga; around 1548 – 11 April 1605) was a Basque writer. He was born and died in Larrea, Álava, a town in Spain. Lazarraga came from a noble family and was the Lord of Larrea.
He is famous for a special old book, called a manuscript, that was found in 2004. This book was written in an old form of the Basque language from Álava that no one had seen before. It is very important for people who study languages.
About His Life
We don't know much about Juan Pérez de Lazarraga's daily life. His father was Pedro Pérez de Lazarraga, and his mother was Elena López de Uralde Ordoñana. He was the oldest of five children. Experts believe he was born sometime between 1547 and 1550.
He might have been in Madrid around the year 1567. In 1575, he married Catalina González de Langarica y Vicuña. They had two children, a son named Agustín and a daughter named María. Agustín later took over as the Lord of Larrea. Juan Pérez de Lazarraga passed away in his hometown on April 11, 1605. Before his special manuscript was found, people mostly knew him for writing about his family's history.
His Amazing Manuscript
Juan Pérez de Lazarraga was one of the few writers who wrote in Basque during the Renaissance period. His important manuscript was found in 2004 in an old shop in Madrid. The government of Gipuzkoa bought it and made it available for everyone to see online.
This manuscript is one of the very few Basque-language texts that have survived from the 1500s. It is also the oldest one from the southern part of the Basque Country. The discovery of this book is very important for understanding the Basque language. It shows how the Basque dialect of Álava and Western Basque used to be spoken, with words and forms that were unknown until then.
The manuscript has two main parts:
- The first part is an unfinished story about shepherds, called a pastoral romance. It was inspired by a famous Spanish book called Diana.
- The second part contains 46 poems. Most of them (35) are in Basque, and the rest (9) are in Spanish.
See also
In Spanish: Juan Pérez de Lazarraga para niños
- Bernard Etxepare - another Renaissance Basque writer
