Luxembourgish
Language · official in 1 country
Lëtzebuergesch was counted as one more German dialect until about the Second World War. Since then it has gone through ausbau, gaining a standard of its own, and Luxembourg now calls it the national language: a standard form of Moselle Franconian, written in the Latin alphabet, and one of three administrative languages beside German and French.
The language on record
- Own name
- Lëtzebuergesch
- ISO 639-1
- LB
- ISO 639-3
- LTZ
- Script
- Latin
- Family
- West Germanic
- Official in
- 1 country
Where Luxembourgish is official
Luxembourg alone lists Luxembourgish as official, and there it shares the status with French and German as one of three Amtssprachen.
Official beside Luxembourgish
About Luxembourgish
Where Luxembourgish comes from
Luxembourgish is a standard form of Moselle Franconian, a West Germanic variety related to the High German dialects. Similar Moselle Franconian dialects of German are spoken in the Eifel and Hunsrück regions of Germany and by the Transylvanian Saxons in Romania. Across the border these dialects carry far fewer French loanwords. The oldest known text, according to the National Library of Luxembourg, is the Codex Mariendalensis: a poem of nearly 6,000 lines on the life of Yolanda of Vianden, written in the early 14th century and found at Ansembourg Castle in 1999.
How the spelling was settled
Proposals go back to the middle of the 19th century. The first official system, the OLO of 5 June 1946, let speakers write words as they pronounced them and dropped German conventions such as ä, ö and capital nouns. It was too far from what readers knew and did not catch on. The spelling worked out for the Luxemburger Wörterbuch, published in five volumes between 1950 and 1977, became official on 10 October 1975 and was revised on 30 July 1999.
The alphabet is the 26 Latin letters plus é, ä and ë. A rule of final n deletion, the Eifel Rule, is shown in writing: fënnefandrësseg, thirty-five, keeps its n, and fënnefavéierzeg, forty-five, loses it.
Who uses it and for what
Most Luxembourgers also speak Standard German and French, both languages with large resources of their own, so print and broadcast media in Luxembourgish stay limited. After the 1999 election, knowledge of the language was made a criterion for naturalisation. The Chamber of Deputies rejected a proposal in 2024 to seek official status for it in the European Union. It is also spoken in the Arelerland of Belgium and in small parts of Lorraine.
Common questions
Questions about Luxembourgish
Is Luxembourgish a dialect of German?
It was treated as one until about the Second World War. It has since developed a standard of its own and a regulatory body, and is regarded as a separate language, although it stays close to the High German dialects.
Which letters does Luxembourgish add to the alphabet?
Three: é, ä and ë. Loanwords from French and German usually keep their own accents, as in Boîte or blöd.
What does the Eifel Rule do?
It deletes a final n in certain contexts, and the spelling records the deletion, so a writer has to apply the rule to any word ending in n or nn.
Can Luxembourgish be learned as a foreign language?
Yes. The Institut National des Langues Luxembourg administers four certificates, the Lëtzebuergesch als Friemsprooch series, on the ALTE framework, and the University of Sheffield has had a Centre for Luxembourg Studies since 1995.