Luxembourgish

Abstract

Luxembourgish (local language name: Lëtzebuergesch [ˈlətsəbuəjəʃ], French name: Luxembourgeois, German name: Luxemburgisch) is a small West-Germanic language mainly spoken in the multilingual speech community of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, where it is one of the three official languages alongside German and French. Being the first language of most Luxembourgers it also has the status of the national language (since 1984). Although in its origin Luxembourgish has to be considered as a Central Franconian dialect, it is nowadays regarded by the speech community as a language of its own. As a consequence, German is considered a different language. An official orthographical system has been devised. Luxembourgish is used very frequently in day-to-day oral communication at all social levels; it is very common on local radio and television; it is the only language spoken in parliament sessions and it is also very often used at the workplace. Although the vocabulary of Luxembourgish has a substantial number of loan words from French and German, the morpho-syntax follows Germanic patterns. Luxembourgish today has approximately 400,000 speakers, including many L2 speakers (around 43% of the population does not have the Luxembourgish nationality).

Accepting a “New” Standard Variety: Comparing Explicit Attitudes in Luxembourg and Belgium

“…The geographical localisation of standard and vernacular regions, which was reported in perceptual studies, is in line with dialectological and phonological studies (Bruch 1953;Gilles 1999). The varieties in the Éislek region are reported to constitute a separate dialect area, which retains most regional features and differs markedly from the varieties in the Alzette valley (Entringer et al 2018;Gilles 1998;Gilles and Trouvain 2013). The Moselle Franconian of the Éislek region-especially the vernacular of the most northerly part, namely Canton Clervaux-is closely related to Moselle Franconian in the Belgische Eifel (Bruch 1953;Mattheier and Wiesinger 1994;Wiesinger 1982b).…”

New language versions of MAIN: Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives – Revised

“…For the adaptation of MAIN into Luxembourgish, morphosyntax and syntax as well as the lexicon are of most interest. For an overview of the phonetics of Luxembourgish, see Gilles & Trouvain (2013).…”

Stressed /e/ Centralization into Schwa and Related Mid Vowel Developments in Catalan and Elsewhere in the Romania

“…The provenance of those vowel variants from stressed schwa is also consistent with the following instances of sound change and allophonic co‐occurrence in dialectal zones outside N. Italy: Stressed schwa has been replaced by [ɔ] in Cerkno Slovene ( pos for Standard Slovene [pəs] ‘dog’; Lencek : 145). The change /ə/ > [ɛ] has taken place in Ladin (see section ), in Balearic Catalan localities and Old Eastern Catalan (section ), and in Afrikaans ([ˈsɛmpəl] simple , [wɛ̃:s] wins ; Swanepoel : 26). Moreover, in Kurdish, [ɛ] and [æ] are stressed allophones of /ə/ which alternate with [ə] in unstressed position (McCarus : 15). The mid front rounded vowel [œ] may also be a phonetic variant of stressed schwa, as suggested by the substitution of Latin /e/ by [œ] in W. Landais Gascon (see section ), and also by the fact that /ə/ is often produced with slight labialization in stressed position in Luxembourgish (Gilles & Trouvain ). An even more frequent outcome of stressed schwa, i.e., the low vowel [a] or related vowel realizations such as [ɐ], has been reported to occur in Ladin (section ), in Old Macedonian dialects (Koneski : 65) and in Upper Carniola Slovene (Lancek : 147). The same change has also taken place historically in a number of Austronesian languages (Adelaar : 208, Jukes : 650), and alternations between stressed [ə] and [a] are relatively frequent in the world's languages whether in allophonic relationship or in free variation (see Pandharipande, : 790 for Marathi and Raun : 98 for Moksha). …”