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.

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.

Grammar

Nominal syntax

Luxembourgish has three genders, and three cases. These are marked morphologically on determiners and pronouns. As in German, there is no morphological gender distinction in the plural.
The forms of the articles and of some selected determiners are given below:
As seen above, Luxembourgish has plural forms of en, namely eng in the nominative/accusative and engen in the dative. They are not used as indefinite articles, which—as in German and English—do not exist in the plural, but they do occur in the compound pronouns wéi en and sou en. For example: wéi eng Saachen ; sou eng Saachen. Moreover, they are used before numbers to express an estimation: eng 30.000 Spectateuren.
Distinct nominative forms survive in a few nominal phrases such as der Däiwel and eiser Herrgott. Rare examples of the genitive are also found: Enn des Mounts, Ufanks der Woch. The functions of the genitive are normally expressed using a combination of the dative and a possessive determiner: e.g. dem Mann säi Buch. This is known as a periphrastic genitive, and is a phenomenon also commonly seen in dialectal and colloquial German, and in Dutch.
The forms of the personal pronouns are given in the following table :
The 2pl form is also used as a polite singular ; the forms are capitalised in writing:
Like most varieties of colloquial German, but even more invariably, Luxembourgish uses definite articles with personal names. They are obligatory and not to be translated:
A feature Luxembourgish shares with only some western dialects of German is that women and girls are most often referred to with forms of the neuter pronoun hatt:

Adjectives

Adjectives show a different morphological behaviour when used attributively and predicatively. In predicative use, e.g. when they occur with verbs like sinn, adjectives receive no extra ending:

De Mann ass grouss.
D'Fra ass grouss.
D'Meedchen ass grouss.
D'Kanner si grouss.

In attributive use, i.e. when placed before the noun they describe, they change their ending according to the grammatical gender, number and case of the noun:

de grousse Mann
déi grouss Fra
dat grousst Meedchen
déi grouss Kanner

The definite article changes with the use of an attributive adjective: feminine d' goes to déi, neuter d' goes to dat, and plural d' changes to déi.
The comparative in Luxembourgish is formed analytically, i.e. the adjective itself is not altered. Instead it is formed using the adverb méi: e.g. schéin → méi schéin

Lëtzebuerg ass méi schéi wéi Esch.

The superlative involves a synthetic form consisting of the adjective and the suffix -st: e.g. schéin → schéinst . Attributive modification requires the emphatic definite article and the inflected superlative adjective:dee schéinste Mann déi schéinst Fra
Predicative modification uses either the same adjectival structure or the adverbial structure am+ -sten: e.g. schéin → am schéinsten:

Lëtzebuerg ass dee schéinsten / deen allerschéinsten / am schéinsten.

Some common adjectives have exceptional comparative and superlative forms:

gutt, besser, am beschten
vill, méi, am meeschten
wéineg, manner, am mannsten

Several other adjectives also have comparative forms, not commonly used as normal comparatives, but in special senses:

al → eeler Leit, but: méi al Leit
fréi → de fréiere President, but: e méi fréien Termin
laang → viru längerer Zäit, but: eng méi laang Zäit

Word order

Luxembourgish exhibits "verb second" word order in clauses. More specifically, Luxembourgish is a V2-SOV language, like German and Dutch. In other words, we find the following finite clausal structures:

the finite verb in second position in declarative clauses and wh-questions
the finite verb in first position in yes/no questions and finite imperatives
the finite verb in final position in subordinate clauses

Non-finite verbs generally appear in final position:

compound past tenses
infinitival complements
infinitival clauses

These rules interact so that in subordinate clauses, the finite verb and any non-finite verbs must all cluster at the end. Luxembourgish allows different word orders in these cases:
This is also the case when two non-finite verb forms occur together:
Luxembourgish allows prepositional phrases to appear after the verb cluster in subordinate clauses:

Vocabulary

Luxembourgish has borrowed many French words. For example, the word for a bus driver is Buschauffeur, which would be Busfahrer in German and chauffeur de bus in French.
Some words are different from Standard German, but have equivalents in German dialects. An example is Gromperen. Other words are exclusive to Luxembourgish.

Selected common phrases

Note: Words spoken in sound clip do not reflect all words on this list.

Dutch	Luxembourgish	Standard German	English
Ja.	Jo.	Ja.	Yes.
Nee.	Nee.	Nein.	No.
Misschien, wellicht	Vläicht.	Vielleicht.	Maybe.
Hallo.	Moien.	Hallo.	Hello.
Goedemorgen.	Gudde Moien.	Guten Morgen.	Good morning.
Goedendag. or Goedemiddag.	Gudde Mëtteg.	Guten Tag.	Good afternoon.
Goedenavond.	Gudden Owend.	Guten Abend.	Good evening.
Tot ziens.	Äddi.	Auf Wiedersehen.	Goodbye.
Dank u or Merci.	Merci.	Danke.	Thank you.
Waarom? or Waarvoor?	Firwat?	Warum? or Wofür?	Why, What for
Ik weet het niet.	Ech weess net.	Ich weiß nicht.	I don't know.
Ik begrijp het niet.	Ech verstinn net.	Ich verstehe nicht.	I don't understand.
Excuseer mij or Wablief?	Watgelift? or Entschëllegt?	Entschuldigung?	Excuse me?
Slagerszoon.	Metzleschjong.	Metzgersohn. / Metzgerjunge.	Butcher's son.
Spreek je Duits/Frans/Engels?	Schwätzt dir Däitsch/Franséisch/Englesch?	Sprichst du Deutsch/Französisch/Englisch?	Do you speak German/French/English?
Hoe heet je?	Wéi heeschs du?	Wie heißt du?	What is your name?
Hoe gaat het?	Wéi geet et?	Wie geht's?	How are you?, How is it going?
Politiek Fatsoen.	Politeschen Anstand.	Politischer Anstand.	Political decency
Zo.	Sou.	So.	So.
Vrij.	Fräi.	Frei.	Free.
Thuis.	Heem.	zu Hause. / Heim.	Home.
Ik.	Ech.	Ich.	I.
En.	An.	Und.	And.
Mijn.	Mäin.	Mein.	My.
Ezel.	Iesel.	Esel.	donkey, ass.
Met.	Mat.	Mit.	With.
Kind.	Kand.	Kind.	Child, kid
Weg.	Wee.	Weg.	Way.
Aardappel.	Gromper.	Kartoffel/Erdapfel.	Potato.
Brood.	Brout.	Brot.	Bread.

Neologisms

Neologisms in Luxembourgish include both entirely new words, and the attachment of new meanings to old words in everyday speech. The most recent neologisms come from the English language in the fields of telecommunications, computer science, and the Internet.
Recent neologisms in Luxembourgish include:

direct loans from English: Browser, Spam, CD, Fitness, Come-back, Terminal, Hip, Cool, Tip-top
also found in German: Sichmaschinn, schwaarzt Lach, Handy, Websäit
native Luxembourgish
* déck as an emphatic like ganz and voll, e.g. Dëse Kuch ass déck gutt!
* recent expressions, used mainly by teenagers: oh mëllen!, en décke gelénkt or ''cassé''

Academic projects

Between 2000 and 2002, Luxembourgish linguist Jérôme Lulling compiled a lexical database of 125,000-word forms as the basis for the first Luxembourgish spellchecker.
The LaF is a set of four language proficiency certifications for Luxembourgish and follows the ALTE framework of language examination standards. The tests are administered by the Institut National des Langues Luxembourg.
The "Centre for Luxembourg Studies" at the University of Sheffield was founded in 1995 on the initiative of Professor Gerald Newton. It is supported by the government of Luxembourg which funds an endowed chair in Luxembourg Studies at the university.
The first class of students to study the language outside of the country as undergraduate students began their studies at the 'Centre for Luxembourg Studies' at Sheffield in the academic year 2011–2012.

Endangered status claims

UNESCO declared Luxembourgish to be an endangered language in 2019, adding it to its Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.
Additionally, some local media have argued that the Luxembourgish language is at risk of disappearing, and that it should be considered an endangered language. Even though the government claims that more people than ever are able to speak Luxembourgish, these are absolute numbers and often include the many naturalized citizens who have passed the Sproochentest, a language test that certifies the knowledge of merely A.2. in speaking and B.1. in understanding.
Luxembourgish language expert and historian Alain Atten argues that not only the absolute number of Luxembourgish speakers should be considered when defining the status of a language, but also the proportion of speakers in a country. Noting that the proportion of native Luxembourgish speakers has decreased in recent decades, Atten believes that Luxembourgish will inevitably disappear, stating:

It is simple math, if there are about 70% foreigners and about 30% Luxembourgers, then it cannot possibly be said that Luxembourgish is thriving. That would be very improbable.

Alain Atten also argues that the situation is even more dramatic, since the cited percentages take only the residents of Luxembourg into account, excluding the 200,000 cross-border-workers present in the country on a daily basis. This group plays a major role in the daily use of languages in Luxembourg, thus further lowering the percentage of Luxembourgish speakers present in the country.
The following numbers are based on statistics by STATEC and show that the percentage of the population that is able to speak Luxembourgish has been constantly diminishing for years :

Year	Percentage
1846	99.0%
1900	88.0%
1983	80.6%
2011	70.51%
2012	70.07%
2013	69.65%
2014	69.17%
2015	68.78%
2016	68.35%
2017	67.77%

It has also been argued that two very similar languages, Alsatian and Lorraine Franconian, which were very broadly spoken by the local populations at the beginning of the 20th century in Alsace and in Lorraine respectively, have been nearly completely supplanted by French, and that a similar fate could also be possible for Luxembourgish. Another example of the replacement of Luxembourgish by French occurred in Arelerland, where the vast majority of the local population spoke Luxembourgish as a native language well into the 20th century. Today, Luxembourgish is nearly extinct in this region, having been replaced by French.
According to some Luxembourgish news media and members of Actioun Lëtzebuergesch, the biggest threat to the existence of Luxembourgish is indeed French, since it is the language of most official documents and street signs in Luxembourg; this considerably weakens the possibility for Luxembourgish to be practiced by new speakers and learners. In most cases, this passively forces expats to learn French instead of Luxembourgish.
In 2021 it was announced that public announcements in Luxembourgish at Luxembourg Airport would cease; it would only be using French and English for future public announcements. This will cause Luxembourgish to go unused at Luxembourg Airport after many decades. Actioun Lëtzebuergesch declared itself to be hugely upset by this new governmental measure, citing that other airports in the world seem to have no problems making public announcements in multiple languages. According to a poll conducted by AL, 92.84% of the Luxembourgish population wished to have public announcements to be made in Luxembourgish at Luxembourg Airport.
ADR politician Fred Keup has claimed that Luxembourgish is already on its way to complete replacement by French.