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In this paper we propose a phonological analysis of the souletin writer Belapeire's Catechima laburra ("Short Catechism") (1696), which seems reliably to reflect many phonetic traits of his dialect, as shown by the comparison with other texts, mainly from the XVII and XVIII centuries. This research is based on three previous works (see Agirre 1997): an exhaustive description of spellings, a critical edition of the catechism, and a vocabulary collecting all the words employed in it, Our aim being to complete the information offered by Mitxelena in his Fonética Histórica Vasca ("Basque Historical Phonetics"), we will deal with u>ü, o>u, au>ai and eu>ei changes, with ei/ai alternations, with accommodation phenomena derived from vowels in hiatus, with palatalization, aspiration, sibilant neutralization after n and l, voiced fricative sibilants, trills, and so on.
We will take into account that spelling is often preservative and, therefore, it does not always match phonetics. Moreover, written language has its own features, which make an important difference between written and spoken language. So, it is fundamental for us to determine exactly the frequency of variants and of all the words in general. Finally although doing assessments of earlier language stages may be a dangerous task: it would certainly be a more dangerous one if we look at present-day geographical distribution of linguistic features as if it could be immutable.
