Languages of Luxembourg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The linguistic situation in Luxembourg is characterized by the practice and the recognition of three official languages: French, German and Luxembourgish.

The plurilingualism of Luxembourg results from the coexistence of two ethnic groups, a Romance and a Germanic one.

In the beginnings of the country, French enjoyed the greatest prestige, and therefore its preferential use as the official and administrative language. German was used in the political field to comment on the laws and the ordinances in order to make them comprehensible to everyone. At primary school, teaching was limited to German, while French was taught in secondary education.

The law of July 26, 1843 reinforced bilingualism by introducing the teaching of French in primary school.

Luxembourgish ("Lëtzebuergesch"), a Franconian language of the Moselle region similar to German, was introduced in primary school in 1912. It was formerly sometimes called Mosel-Frankish.

Until 1984, the official use of the languages was based on the grand-ducal decrees of 1830, 1832 and 1834, which allowed the free choice between German and French. French was preferred in the administration. Luxembourgish had no official status at all.

The constitutional revision of 1948 gave the legislature the power to regulate the language by law. On February 24, 1984 a law, passed by the constitutional chamber, made Luxemburgish the national language. Furthermore, this law recognized the three languages of Luxembourg (Luxembourgish, French and German) as official languages. French remains the language of legislation, due to the application of the Napoleonic civil code in Luxembourg.

Luxembourgish is taught in schools after French and German. Moreover, Luxembourgish is taught only one hour per week at secondary school and only in the first years. In secondary school, besides German, French and Luxembourgish, English and either Latin, Spanish or Italian is taught. At the university level, multilingualism makes it possible to Luxembourgish students to continue their higher education in French-, German- or English-speaking countries.

At the political level, Luxembourg contributed to the creation of the European Union through Robert Schuman. Proficiency in several major European languages has made it possible for Luxembourg to be easily integrated into the creation of the European Community and to become a unifying and progressive factor.

German is the primary language of the press and is used for recording police case files. Public service information is in French and German.

Between 2000 and 2002 the Luxembourgish linguist Jérôme Lulling developed a lexical database of 125.000 wordforms for the very first Luxembourgish spellchecker, thus launching the informatization of the Luxembourgish language.