WHAT IS A BERTSO?

   A bertso is a stanza. It contains verse, foot and rhyme.

   This berso is made up of eight verses or lines, and four feet. The foot is the part of the berso that is placed between rhyming lines. The last word in the foot is the rhyme, in this example the words zena, sena, zuzena and izena. The foot usually, though not necessarily, consists of two verses.

   Bersos can have very different meter. The berso above is an example of an eight-verse major stanza (major zortziko), which consists of eight stanzas with 10 / 8 syllables each, and four feet. The rhyming words are in the even-numbered, eight-syllable verses. The eight-verse minor stanza (minor zortziko) has fewer syllables, 7 / 6, although the rest of the characteristics are the same. There are also ten-verse major and minor stanzas (major and minor hamarreko), obviously comprising ten verses. These are the four most common meters, although there are others: six verses with rhyme, seven verses with rhyme and so on.

RHYME

   Rhyme is the correspondence of terminal sounds of words. The rhyme in bersos is considered either 'rich' or 'poor'. Bersolaris strive at making the entire final syllable of the rhyming words, as well the vowels in the previous syllables, sound alike. A rhyme is considered poor when only the vowels in the final syllables have the same sound, or if the rhyme is made by adding a suffix or using different forms of the same verb.

   The words containing the rhyme of a verse must be different. If the same word (with the same form and meaning) has been used in two of the rhyming words, the bersolari is said to have committed a 'poto'. A poto is a mistake and is considered in bad form. However, if the rhyme-containing words are the same word, but with different meanings, it is not considered a poto:

   In the second berso, the rhyme-containing words have two different meanings, and therefore it is not a poto.

THE TECHNIQUE OF IMPROVISATION

       Bersolaris, in addition to improvising what they are going to say and how they will go about saying it, have to follow strict berso rules on rhyme, meter, melody and so on.

   After deciding on meter and melody, the bersolari creates the second-to-the-last verse, the one that will go between the final two rhyming verses. Everything else that is said throughout the berso basically sets the stage, leading up to this final inter-rhyme verse. This is the verse that bears the weight of the entire berso, giving it its reason for being, its 'punch line'. If it is good it will remain etched in the audience's memory. For example, in the town of Itsasondo, Mikel Mendizabal put forward the following topic for bersolari Andoni Egaña: "Ume negarra ala despertadorea?"(A crying child or an alarm clock?). Egaña created this final inter-rhyme verse:
   

   After metering out the idea and preparing it for the final inter-rhyme verse, he chose from any number of eligible words, ones containing the same sound as the final rhyming word (dio-ta): konta, gorrota, bota and inporta. Finally, he began to recite the verse, filling it in with rhyming words as he went along, and naturally keeping the best for last. This is the berso he came up with: