Luxembourgish

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 285,000native speakers, resources in the language such as books, newspapers, magazines, television and internet 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.

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 (part of the Province of Luxembourg) 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 (Siebenbürgen). 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 (ADR) 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.

There are several distinct dialect forms of Luxembourgish including Areler (from Arlon), Eechternoacher (Echternach), Dikrecher (Diekirch), Kliärrwer (Clervaux), Miseler (Moselle), Stater (Luxembourg City), Veiner (Vianden), Minetter (Southwest Luxembourg) and Weelzer (Wiltz). 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.

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" (ofizjel lezebuurjer ortografi) 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 (e.g., the use of ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩, the capitalisation of nouns). Similarly, new principles were adopted for the spelling of French loanwords.

fiireje, rééjelen, shwèzt, veinejer (cf. German vorigen, Regeln, schwätzt, weniger) bültê, âprê, Shaarel, ssistém (cf. French bulletin, emprunt, Charles, système) 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 (1955), 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 (2003).