Luxembourgish and Limburgish
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[This is a guest post by June Teufel Dreyer, with an added note by VHM]
Watching a Netflix detective film entitled Capitani with instructions that I could listen in either English or Luxembourgish. Never having heard of the latter, I chose Luxembourgish, discovered it was mostly German with some French (always ‘merci,’ never danke), several words with long vowels like Dutch, a few words that seemed neither (nay for no; dai for das) and some words I didn’t get at all. Still wondering why Luxembourgish is considered a language, I googled, found that it was actually classified as a language only in the 20th century. One has to become fluent to obtain citizenship.
An exception to the old saying that the difference between a language and a dialect is that the former has an army and the latter doesn’t. (Technically, of course, Luxemburg does have a military, though not enough to make any of its neighbors nervous).
Note by VHM
As I was familiarizing myself with Luxembourgish (also known as Luxemburgish, Luxembourgian; endonym Lëtzebuergesch), I happened upon another small language in the Google Translate stable of hundreds of languages that was unfamiliar to me, also began with "L" and ended with "mb(o)urgish", had 3 or 4 syllables, and seemed transparently Germanic. That was Limburgish, also Limburgan, Limburgian, Limburgic, East Low Franconian, South Low Franconian, Limburgs, Lèmburgs (Wikipedia; Ethnologue).
I had heard of the small, picturesque country of Luxembourg, so was not too surprised to learn that it had a language. On the other hand, the only thing I knew about Limburg was that it is the source of the name of a soft, pungent cheese beloved of my father and inherited into my repertoire of favored flavors /aromas / tastes, i.e., Limburger. The cheese got its name from the historical Duchy of Limburg, but there is no country, much less one with an army, named Limburg.
…refers to a group of South Low Franconian varieties spoken in Belgium and the Netherlands, characterized by their distance to, and limited participation in the formation of, Standard Dutch. In the Dutch province of Limburg, all dialects, despite their differences, have been given collectively a regional language status, including those comprising "Limburgish" as used in this article.
Limburgish shares many vocabulary and grammatical characteristics with both German and Dutch. A characteristic feature of many dialects of Limburgish is the occurrence of a lexical pitch accent (Franconian tone accent), which is shared with the adjacent Central Franconian dialects of German
Selected readings
- "An army and navy" (12/22/18) — with relevant bibliographical references
- "Of dialects, armies and navies", Johnson, Economist *8/4/10)
- Comments to the previous item
David Marjanović said,
May 9, 2025 @ 4:36 am
Finding both Standard French and Standard German somewhat alien, and wishing to be politically equidistant from France and Germany, Luxembourg took its Moselle Franconian dialects, devised a writing system for them, and started treating the result as a written standard language.
In reality you need to know all three standards to function in Luxembourg.
J.W. Brewer said,
May 9, 2025 @ 6:53 am
I think David M. may be overstating "to function" somewhat, and a high percentage of the country's high percentage of foreign-born workers have passable L2 French but not very passable command of the other two options. I was briefly in Luxembourg last fall and noticed at the train station a Holocaust memorial plaque (apparently put up within the last decade) that is only bilingual, it apparently having been thought an awkward context in which to use Standard German. The Lëtzebuergesch text is "Erënner Dech beim Laanschtgoen drun, datt vun 1941 bis 1943 vun dëser Gare 658 jiddesch Männer, Fraen a Kanner an d'Nazi Ghettoen a Lager déportéiert goufen, wou si kalbliddeg ëmbruecht gi sin.“ Despite the seriousness of the subject matter it's a perfectly normal example of what the language looks like: eye-dialect variant German orthography but with more French lexemes sprinkled in.* The English cognate of "kalbliddeg" is of course "cold-blooded[ly]."
*I was a day or two previously in Strasbourg, where bilingual French/Alsatian street signs have had a recent surge but I didn't see comparably long stretches of running text in Alsatian.
Bybo said,
May 9, 2025 @ 11:57 am
By random chance, I am right in the middle of reading Den Hobbit, the ̶a̶c̶c̶u̶s̶a̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ Luxembourgish rendering of Tolkien's novel.
A lovely read.
Bybo said,
May 9, 2025 @ 12:05 pm
useful link: Zenter fir d'Lëtzebuerger Sprooch (ZLS) (Ausbau stuff …)
cliff arroyo said,
May 9, 2025 @ 3:38 pm
I watched the first season of Capitani a few years ago (but the only option was Polish voice-over so I heard random words but not whole sentences). In general the behavior/body language of characters seemed much more German than French (to the extent I'm familiar with French behavior and body language… which is not much).
I had heard Luxembourguish before on a Dutch satellite station (which had a half hour news program each night). Once on a Sunday walk I came across remnants of an old POW camp restored partly with funds from Luxembourg and the information plaque was in Polish and Luxembourguish (was walking with a friend who had no idea what the language was).
Also of possible interest… IINM Pennsylvania Dutch is from a not that distant variety of German.
A few years ago I read that media Luxembourguish at present mostly seems like barely translate German but I assume that will change over time. When Catalan first began being used in mass media it mostly seemed like translated Spanish and it took a number of years to develop a distinct style.
cliff arroyo said,
May 9, 2025 @ 3:45 pm
I'll add…. Capitani was advertised as the first series in Luxembourguish which is weird. I've visited Malta a number of times (language with a similar number of native speakers IINM) and there have been many, many, many series in Maltese (most cheaply shot on video but still….).
Here's one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EZRJpk1eZI
Brandon Seah said,
May 9, 2025 @ 8:46 pm
The polyglot reporter Philip Crowther grew up in Luxembourg and reports in that language too. To my ears at least his English and German sound like a standard newsroom accent, perhaps others can comment on his other languages. https://youtu.be/svpzkocX8zk?si=wPbcpNFrlwnsuy3Y