Luxembourgish


Luxembourgish is a West Germanic language that is spoken mainly in Luxembourg. About 400,000 people speak Luxembourgish worldwide.
The language is standardized and officially the national language of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. As such, Luxembourgish is different from the German language also used in the Grand Duchy. The German language exists in a national standard variety of Luxembourg, which is slightly different from the standard varieties in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Another important language of Luxembourg is French, which had a certain influence on both the national language, Luxembourgish, and the Luxembourg national variety of German. Luxembourgish, German and French are the three official languages of Luxembourg.
As a standard form of the Moselle Franconian language, Luxembourgish has similarities with other High German dialects and the wider group of West Germanic languages. The status of Luxembourgish as the national language of Luxembourg and the existence there of a regulatory body have removed Luxembourgish, at least in part, from the domain of Standard German, its traditional Abstand and ausbau languages#Roofing. It is also related to the Transylvanian Saxon dialect spoken by the Transylvanian Saxons in Transylvania, contemporary central Romania.

History

The Codex Mariendalensis, a nearly 6000-line epic poem about the life of the 13th-century Yolanda of Vianden, has been described by the National Library of Luxembourg as the earliest known text written in Luxembourgish. It was published in the early 14th century and discovered in 1999 at Ansembourg Castle.
Luxembourgish was considered a German dialect like many others until about World War II but then the language underwent ausbau, creating its own standard form in vocabulary, grammar, and spelling and therefore is seen today as an independent language. Luxembourgish managed to gain linguistic autonomy against a vigorous One Standard German Axiom by being framed as an independent language with a name rather than as a national pluricentric standard variety of German.
As Luxembourgish has a maximum of some 285,000 native speakers, resources in the language, like books, newspapers, magazines, television, internet, etc., are limited. Since most Luxembourgers also speak Standard German and French, there is strong competition with these languages, which both have large language resources. Because of this, the use of Luxembourgish remains limited.

Language family

Luxembourgish belongs to the West Central German group of the High German languages and is the primary example of a Moselle Franconian language. Furthermore, it is closely related to Transylvanian Saxon which has been spoken since the High Middle Ages by the Transylvanian Saxons in Transylvania, present-day central Romania.

Speech

Luxembourgish is considered the national language of Luxembourg and also one of the three administrative languages, alongside German and French.
In Luxembourg, 77% of residents can speak Luxembourgish, and it is the primary language of 48% of the population. It is also spoken in the Arelerland region of Belgium and in small parts of Lorraine in France.
In the German Eifel and Hunsrück regions, similar local Moselle Franconian dialects of German are spoken. The language is also spoken by a few descendants of Luxembourg immigrants in the United States and Canada.
Other Moselle Franconian dialects are spoken by ethnic Germans long settled in Transylvania, Romania.
Moselle Franconian dialects outside the Luxembourg state border tend to have far fewer French loanwords, and these mostly remain from the French Revolution.
The political party that places the greatest importance on promoting, using and preserving Luxembourgish is the Alternative Democratic Reform Party and its electoral success in the 1999 election pushed the CSV-DP government to make knowledge of it a criterion for naturalisation. It is currently also the only political party in Luxembourg that wishes to implement written laws also in Luxembourgish and that wants Luxembourgish to be an officially recognized language of the European Union. In this context, in 2005, then-Deputy Prime Minister Jean Asselborn of the LSAP rejected a demand made by the ADR to make Luxembourgish an official language of the EU, citing financial reasons and the sufficiency of official German and French. A similar proposal by the ADR was rejected by the Chamber of Deputies in 2024.

Varieties

There are several distinct dialect forms of Luxembourgish including Areler, Eechternoacher, Dikrecher, Kliärrwer, Miseler, Stater, Veiner, Minetter and Weelzer. Further small vocabulary differences may be seen even between small villages. These varieties are grouped into North, East, South, and Center dialects which can be automatically categorised with a correctness of about 80%.
Increasing mobility of the population and the dissemination of the language through mass media such as radio and television are leading to a gradual standardisation towards a "Standard Luxembourgish" through the process of koineization.

Surrounding languages

There is no distinct geographic boundary between the use of Luxembourgish and the use of other closely related High German dialects ; it instead forms a dialect continuum of gradual change.
Spoken Luxembourgish is relatively hard to understand for speakers of German who are generally not familiar with Moselle Franconian dialects. They can usually read the language to some degree. For those Germans familiar with Moselle Franconian dialects, it is relatively easy to understand and speak Luxembourgish as far as the everyday vocabulary is concerned. The large number of French loanwords in Luxembourgish may hamper communication about certain topics or with certain speakers.

Orthography

Standardisation

A number of proposals for standardising the orthography of Luxembourgish can be documented, going back to the middle of the 19th century. There was no officially recognised system until the adoption of the "OLO" on 5 June 1946. This orthography provided a system for speakers of all varieties of Luxembourgish to transcribe words the way they pronounced them, rather than imposing a single, standard spelling for the words of the language. The rules explicitly rejected certain elements of German orthography. Similarly, new principles were adopted for the spelling of French loanwords.
  • fiireje, rééjelen, shwèzt, veinejer
  • bültê, âprê, Shaarel, ssistém
This proposed orthography, so different from existing "foreign" standards that people were already familiar with, did not enjoy widespread approval.
A more successful standard eventually emerged from the work of the committee of specialists charged with the task of creating the Luxemburger Wörterbuch, published in 5 volumes between 1950 and 1977. The orthographic conventions adopted in this decades-long project, set out in Bruch, provided the basis of the standard orthography that became official on 10 October 1975. Modifications to this standard were proposed by the Permanent Council of the Luxembourguish language and adopted officially in the spelling reform of 30 July 1999. A detailed explanation of current practice for Luxembourgish can be found in Schanen & Lulling.

Alphabet

The Luxembourgish alphabet consists of the 26 Latin letters plus three letters with diacritics:,, and. In loanwords from French and Standard German, other diacritics are usually preserved:
  • French: Boîte, Enquête, Piqûre, etc.
  • German: blöd, Bühn, etc.
In German loanwords, the digraphs and indicate the diphthong, which does not appear in native words.

Orthography of vowels

Eifeler Regel

Like many other varieties of Western High German, Luxembourgish has a rule of final n-deletion in certain contexts. The effects of this rule are indicated in writing, and therefore must be taken into account when spelling words and morphemes ending in or. For example:
  • wann ech ginn "when I go", but wa mer ginn "when we go"
  • fënnefandrësseg "thirty-five", but fënnefavéierzeg "forty-five".

    Phonology

Consonants

The consonant inventory of Luxembourgish is quite similar to that of Standard German.
  • occurs only in loanwords from Standard German. Just as for many native speakers of Standard German, it tends to be simplified to word-initially. For example, Pflicht is realised as or, in careful speech,.
  • is realised as when it occurs after, e.g. zwee .
  • appears only in a few words, such as spadséieren .
  • occurs only in loanwords from English.
  • have two types of allophones: alveolo-palatal and uvular. The latter occur before back vowels, and the former occur in all other positions.
  • * The allophone appears only in a few words, and speakers increasingly fail to distinguish between the alveolo-palatal allophones of and the postalveolar phonemes.
  • Younger speakers tend to vocalize a word-final to.

    Vowels

  • The front rounded vowels appear only in loanwords from French and Standard German. In loanwords from French, nasal also occur.
  • has two allophones:
  • * Before velars: close-mid front unrounded, which, for some speakers, may be open-mid, especially before. The same variation in height applies to, which may be as open as.
  • * All other positions: mid central vowel, more often slightly rounded than unrounded.
  • Phonetically, the long mid vowels are raised close-mid and may even overlap with.
  • * before is realised as.
  • is the long variant of, not, which does not have a long counterpart.
  • appears only in loanwords from Standard German.
  • The first elements of may be phonetically short in fast speech or in unstressed syllables.
  • The and contrasts arose from the former lexical tone contrast; the shorter were used in words with Accent 1, and the lengthened were used in words with Accent 2.