While it is treated as stylish to write in Biscayan and the dialect is still spoken generally in about half of Biscay and some other municipalities, it suffers from the pressure of Spanish.

Herriaren lekukoak (Elkar, 2004), the name given to Biscayan is the Western Dialect, due to its use not being limited to the province of Biscay, but with users in some Gipuzkoan regions such as Debagoiena (mainly) and Debabarrena, and also some Alavan municipalities such as Aramaio (Aramayona) and Legutio (Villarreal).

According to a study by Yrizar, this dialect was spoken in the seventies by around 200,000 people,[4] with the number of estimated speakers approaching 300,000 by the eighties.

Biscay was formerly included, along with Alava and the Valley of Amezcoa, within the ecclesiastical circumscription of Calahorra, which explains the wide influence of the Western Dialect in these regions.

[7] One of the current main experts in local vocabulary is Iñaki Gaminde, who in the last years has extensively researched and published on this subject.