Luxembourgish language

Luxembourgish
Lëtzebuergesch 
Pronunciation: 'lətsəbuərjəʃ
Spoken in: Luxembourg, Belgium, France, Germany 
Region: Europe
Total speakers: 300,000
Language family: Indo-European
 Germanic
  West
   High German languages
    West Central German
     Luxembourgish 
Official status
Official language in: Flag of Luxembourg.svg Luxembourg
Regulated by: Conseil Permanent de la Langue Luxembourgeoise (CPLL)
Language codes
ISO 639-1: lb
ISO 639-2: ltz
ISO 639-3: ltz
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Luxembourgish (Lëtzebuergesch, French: Luxembourgeois, German: Luxemburgisch, Dutch: Luxemburgs, Walloon: Lussimbordjwès), also called Luxembourgian, also spelled Luxemburgish, is one of the West Central German dialects of High German spoken in Luxembourg. About 300,000 people worldwide speak Luxembourgish.

Contents

Language family

Luxembourgish belongs to the West Central German group of High German languages, and is the primary example of a Moselle Franconian language.

Usage

Luxembourgish is the national language of Luxembourg, but it is only one of three administrative languages (along with French and German).[1]

Luxembourgish is also spoken in small parts of the surrounding countries of Belgium (in the Province of Luxembourg near Arlon), France (in small parts of the Lorraine) and Germany (around Bitburg and Trier). In Germany and Lorraine it is simply considered the local German dialect. Since the Second World War, however, the language has not been taught in these countries, with the result that use of Luxembourgish is largely restricted to the older generations.

Furthermore, the language is spoken by a few descendants of Luxembourg immigrants in the United States, and a closely related variety is spoken by emigrants to Transylvania, Romania (Siebenbürgen).

Varieties

There are several distinct dialect forms of Luxembourgish including Areler (from Arlon), Eechternoacher (Echternach), Kliärrwer (Clervaux), Minetter, Miseler (Moselle), Stater (Luxembourg), Veiner (Vianden), Minetter (Southern Luxembourg) and Weelzer (Wiltz). Further small vocabulary differences may be seen even between small villages.

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 (for example Lorraine Franconian); it instead forms a dialect continuum of gradual change.

Spoken Luxembourgish is relatively hard to understand for speakers of German who are not familiar with Moselle Franconian dialects, though they can usually read the language. For Germans who are familiar with Moselle Franconian dialects, it is relatively easy to understand Luxembourgish, but more difficult to speak it properly because of the French influence. Even literary German, as it is written in Luxembourg, tends to include many French words and phrases.

There is no mutual intelligibility between Luxembourgish and French or any of the Romance dialects spoken in the adjacent parts of Belgium and France.

Erna Hennicot-Schoepges, President of the Christian Social People's Party of Luxembourg 1995-2003, was active in promoting the Letzebuergesch language beyond Luxembourg's borders.

Written Luxembourgish

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, however, until the adoption of the "OLO" (ofizjel lezebuurjer ortografi) on 5 June 1946.[2] The proponents of this orthography were less interested in imposing a standardised spelling for the language than in providing a system for speakers of all varieties of Luxembourgish to transcribe words the way they pronounced them. Furthermore, the rules were evidently designed so that these phonetic transcriptions would resemble the corresponding German (or French) words as little as possible. For example:

The political motivations behind certain decisions (e.g., never to use "ö" and "ä", or not to capitalise nouns as in German) are easy to imagine, but this proposed orthography was a failure precisely because it distanced itself so drastically from existing "foreign" standards that people were already familiar with.

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 (1955), provided the basis of the standard orthography that became official on 10 October 1975.[3] Modifications to this standard were proposed by the Conseil permanent de la langue luxembourgeoise and adopted officially in the spelling reform of 30 July 1999.[4] A detailed explanation of current practice for Luxembourgish can be found in Schanen & Lulling (2003).

Alphabet

The Luxembourgish alphabet consists of the 26 Latin letters plus three modified letters: "é", "ä", and "ë". In loanwords from French and German, other diacritics are usually preserved:

Eifeler Regel

A striking phonological process in Luxembourgish causes the deletion of final [n] in certain contexts. This phenomenon was originally documented in the late 19th century for the dialect of the Eifel region, hence the name Eifeler Regel (Eifel Rule).[5]

Since Luxembourgish orthography strives for phonetic accuracy, this deletion of n is also reflected in writing. Nowadays the Eifeler Regel is presented as a spelling rule, but its correct application still depends on a knowledge of spoken Luxembourgish. The rule targets words ending in -n or -nn, and since this is an extremely common ending for verbs, plural nouns, and function words (e.g. articles, pronouns, prepositions) in Luxembourgish, its effects are widespread. The basic rule can be described as follows (see Schanen & Lulling 2003):

It is important to know that many words ending in -n or -nn are not affected by the Eifeler Regel:

In fact, n as a stem consonant (as opposed to part of a grammatical ending) is generally stable in content words, with notable exceptions such as Wäi(n) (wine), Stee(n) (stone), geschwë(nn) (soon).

When final -n is dropped from a plural noun whose singular form also ends in -e, a diaeresis must be used to distinguish the plural:

Grammar

Nominal syntax

Luxembourgish has three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and has three cases (nominative, accusative, and dative). 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:

nominative/accusative
singular plural
masculine feminine neuter
definite den d' d' d'
def. emphatic deen déi dat déi
demonstrative dësen dës dëst dës
indefinite en eng en —
negative keen keng keen keng
"his" säin seng säin seng
"her/their" hiren hir hiert hir
dative
singular plural
masculine feminine neuter
definite dem der dem den
def. emphatic deem där deem deenen
demonstrative dësem dëser dësem dësen
indefinite engem enger engem —
negative kengem kenger kengem kengen
"his" sengem senger sengem sengen
"her/their" hirem hirer hirem hiren

Distinct nominative forms survive in a few nominal phrases such as der Däiwel ("the devil") and eiser Herrgott ("our Lord"). Rare examples of the genitive are also found: Enn des Mounts ("end of the month"), Ufanks der Woch ("at the beginning of the week"). The functions of the genitive are normally expressed using a combination of the dative and a possessive determiner: e.g. dem Mann säi Buch (lit. "to the man his book", i.e. "the man's book"). 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 (unstressed forms appear in parentheses):

nominative accusative dative
1sg ech mech mir (mer)
2sg du (de) dech dir (der)
3sgm hien (en) hien (en) him (em)
3sgf si (se) si (se) hir (er)
3sgn hatt (et) hatt (et) him (em)
1pl mir (mer) äis/eis äis/eis
2pl dir (der) iech iech
3pl si (se) si (se) hinnen (en)

The 2pl form is also used as a polite singular (like French vous, see T-V distinction); the forms are capitalised in writing. Women and girls can be referred to with forms of the neuter pronoun hatt:

Dat ass d'Nathalie. Hatt ass midd, well et vill a sengem Gaart geschafft huet. ("That's Nathalie. She is tired because she has worked a lot in her garden.")

Adjectives

Luxembourgish morphology distinguishes two types of adjective: attributive and predicative. Predicative adjectives appear with verbs like sinn ("to be"), and receive no extra ending:

Attributive adjectives are placed before the noun they describe, and change their ending according to the grammatical gender, number, and case:

Interesting to note is how the definite article changes with the use of an attributive adjective: feminine d goes to déi (or di), 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 (compare the use of -er in German and English; tall → taller, klein → kleiner). Instead it is formed using the adverb méi: e.g. schéin → méi schéin

The superlative involves a synthetic form consisting of the adjective and the suffix -st: e.g. schéin → schéinst (compare German schönst, English prettiest). Attributive modification requires the emphatic definite article and the inflected superlative adjective:

Predicative modification uses either the same adjectival structure or the adverbial structure am+ -sten: e.g. schéin → am schéinsten:

Some common adjectives have exceptional comparative and superlative forms:

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:

Ech kafen en Hutt. Muer kafen ech en Hutt. (lit. "I buy a hat. Tomorrow buy I a hat.)
Wat kafen ech haut? (lit. "What buy I today?")
Bass de midd? ("Are you tired?")
Gëff mer deng Hand! ("Give me your hand!")
Du weess, datt ech midd sinn. (lit. "You know, that I tired am.")

Non-finite verbs (infinitives and participles) generally appear in final position:

Ech hunn en Hutt kaaft. (lit. "I have a hat bought.")
Du solls net esou vill Kaffi drénken. (lit. "You should not so much coffee drink.")
Nëmme Lëtzebuergesch schwätzen! (lit. "Only Luxembourgish speak!")

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:

Hie freet, ob ech komme kann. (cf. German Er fragt, ob ich kommen kann.)
Hie freet, ob ech ka kommen. (cf. Dutch Hij vraagt, of ik kan komen.)

This is also the case when two non-finite verb forms occur together:

Ech hunn net kënne kommen. (cf. Dutch Ik heb niet kunnen komen.)
Ech hunn net komme kënnen. (cf. German Ich habe nicht kommen können.)

Luxembourgish (like Dutch but unlike German) allows prepositional phrases to appear after the verb cluster in subordinate clauses:

alles, wat Der ëmmer wollt wëssen iwwer Lëtzebuerg
(lit. "everything what you always wanted know about Luxembourg")

Vocabulary

Luxembourgish has borrowed many French words. For example, the name for a bus driver is Buschauffeur (also Dutch), which would be Busfahrer in German and Chauffeur de bus in French.

Some words are different from High German but have equivalents in German dialects. An example would be the word potato, which is Gromper in Luxembourgish, but pomme de terre in French and Kartoffel in High German. Other words are exclusive to Luxembourgish, for example the word for match, which is Fixfeier.

Selected common phrases

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

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:[6]

Academic projects

Between 2000 and 2002, the Luxembourgish linguist, Jérôme Lulling, compiled a lexical database of 125,000 word forms as the basis for the very first Luxembourgish spellchecker (Projet C.ORT.IN.A).

The LaF (Lëtzebuergesch als Friemsprooch – Luxembourgish as a Foreign Language) 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 Centre de Langues Luxembourg, which is a member of the ALTE.

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Mémorial A no. 16 (27 February 1984), pp. 196–197: "Loi du 24 février 1984 sur le régime des langues".
  2. ↑ [1] Mémorial A no. 40 (7 September 1946), pp. 637–641: "Arrêté ministériel du 5 juin 1946 portant fixation d'un système officiel d'orthographe luxembourgeois".
  3. ↑ Mémorial B no. 68 (16 November 1976), pp. 1365–1390: "Arrêté ministériel du 10 octobre 1975 portant réforme du système officiel d'orthographe luxembourgeoise".
  4. ↑ [2] Mémorial A no. 112 (11 August 1999), pp. 2040–2048: "Règlement grand-ducal du 30 juillet 1999 portant réforme du système officiel d'orthographe luxembourgeoise".
  5. ↑ Kiehl, Johannes. (2001) Regularität und Variabilität der n-Tilgung im Lëtzebuergeschen ("Eifeler Regel"). Ein unüberwachtes, induktives Lernverfahren. Magisterarbeit im Fach Computerlinguistik, Universität Trier.
  6. ↑ Lulling, Jérôme. (2002) La créativité lexicale en luxembourgeois, Doctoral thesis, Université Paul Valéry Montpellier III.

References

Books

In English

In French

In German

External links

Spellcheckers and dictionaries

Modern Germanic languages

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