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It''s more than thirty years since Mikel Morris first landed in the Basque Country, and thirty since he began writing his Basque-English dictionary. Unsurprisingly he has a lot to say, both about the place and its language, and is frequently unreserved in his opinions: ''Basques have a terrible complex, they can''t imagine a life without Spanish. They often think they can''t... and I say "why can''t you?" Perhaps that''s my American arrogance?''

One may wonder why an American would devote so many years to a dictionary for which for a long time there was apparently little to no support within actual Basque circles. His first reason was personal necessity: ''One of my big problems when I was learning Basque was that I always had to look up words in Spanish. I couldn''t imagine why there wasn''t (a Basque-English dictionary). One day someone said, "Why don''t you do one?" and I said "I don''t know how," and he said, "Who knows?" I thought "that''s right".''

Aside from general scepticism from all sides, many of the obstacles Mikel faced were linguistic ones: ''I discovered that (Basques'') knowledge of their language is quite limited... quite shallow. For example, they don''t know how to say knuckle.'' (After conducting a quick experiment on three of my Euskaldun colleagues, I discover this to be true). ''That made it much more difficult,'' he explains.

The (first) dictionary

Mikel''s dictionary project started in 1979. Nineteen years later, in 1998, two dictionaries were published: the Morris Pocket and the Morris Student Plus (which has since had a second edition). Unsurprisingly, knuckle is one of the entries as are knuckle down and knuckle under, in keeping with Mikel''s passion for breadth and depth in his publications: ''Each word is like a prism; there are lots of different colours, shades and hues of meaning. It''s very interesting,'' he enthuses.

''I still think the Spanish-Basque dictionaries are of poor quality and you can quote me on this,'' he continues, ''I mean the typical thing they have under Book are examples like This is a good book. That''s great, but why not Book ''em Dano?'' (reference to 1970s TV show Hawaii 5-0).

The Student Plus contains entries like fuddy-duddy, fudge and, well, other f-words, which are marked with a bomb. The soon-to-be-published Morris Magnum will be no different in this respect: ''I worked really hard on the bad words. It was an interesting undertaking, finding equivalents for four-letter words. In no other dictionary have they made such an effort as me to include taboo words... I don''t care if it''s taboo; that''s interesting,'' he insists fervently.

It was seventeen years before Mikel received his first proposal from a publisher, although he did not accept it: ''They wanted something small because there wasn''t a market. They thought in a philistine way.'' But small is not Mikel''s style: ''I always tell people here, it doesn''t matter how few you are. Look at the Greeks. They say it''s because I''m American and that''s probably right... there is something in the American optimism. My mother always told me, "the sky''s the limit" so I think, ''well, I can probably do it. Damn it, I''m going to try and I''m going to do it big.''

Publication at last

Mikel eventually ended up accepting an offer from (the now defunct) Klaudio Harluxet Foundation, which co-published both 1998 publications. Until that point, however, the main problem was that no-one believed in either him or his dictionary. ''I didn''t have friends, I didn''t have connections, I didn''t have wealth. I didn''t have anything; all I had was my determination. I knew what I was doing was right but I didn''t have any support.''

Mikel''s ''determination'' and - arguably - downright stubbornness are what saw the dictionaries finally reach fruition: ''I just kept on keeping on. If you do it for six years and then stop you think ''but what about those six years?''... My wife would ask "why are you doing this?" and I''d say "I''ll die if I don''t; I''ll do this or die." Especially as everybody told me I couldn''t. They told me it was impossible,'' he adds.

The eventual publication of the dictionaries was a huge step forward, but Mikel still feels strongly that things do not go far enough. He is not overly worried about the survival of Euskera: ''I think Basques are so stubborn they''ll just fudge along. I would like to see Basque thrive but I don''t think it will. I don''t think they''re interested.''

Mikel''s radical solution is to have English rather than Spanish as a second official language: ''Be like the Scandinavians. The Swedes know there''s not much information in Swedish, so they have English as their second language... Icelandics have six newspapers in Icelandic and a strong presence on the internet and they have a population of 300,000.. and they all speak English!''

New projects

Mikel''s latest Basque dictionary is the Morris Magnum, for which, perhaps surprisingly, he received backing from the Spanish government. Completed but not yet published, it is five times bigger than the original Student. Despite that, Mikel''s not satisfied with it: ''I had to do it in a year. I proposed a large thick Texas steak but was forced to serve Spam.'' He continues: ''People don''t care about culture here; they don''t see the big picture. They just like bricks,'' a reference to the size of the tome.

Somewhat discouraged by Basques, Mikel has lately moved his sights further a field, with Chinese-English and Thai-English dictionaries both currently in the pipeline. Both will take a long time, he says, but interestingly Chinese proves easier to catalogue than Basque simply because ''even though it''s a totally different language and writing, they do have a word for it; it''s just a question of hunting it down.''

How is his Thai? ''I know enough to make jokes in it; I can''t talk about Buddhist philosophy but I can get by,'' he explains.

So back to Euskera: what two phrases would he teach to an Erdaldun? ''My favourite ones are "On Egin", enjoy your meal, and "Ilarte bizi", until you die; live. Carpe Diem in other words.''

Any final words of wisdom to Basque-speakers who are, after all, less than one million in number? Essentially, size doesn''t matter: ''A spider can jump from a balcony and survive; if a horse jumps, it will die.''