Luxemblog Part 4
2020 has been a strange year, to say the least. It has been a dark and confusing time where yesterday it was March and today it’s December?! Many families have lost loved ones too soon to an illness that has turned all our lives upside down in a short period of time. Teenagers and young adults have missed out on some of the most formative moments of student life: formals (proms) cancelled, exchanges abroad cut short and students left unable to properly say goodbye to friends as they leave school for good. Yes, 2020 has been pretty gloomy. But it has also been a special year for me personally, not least because September marked four years since I moved to Luxembourg.
What makes this tiny country particularly unique is its incomparable international character – I’ve travelled quite a bit (pre-COVID-19, of course) but I have never seen anywhere that could compete with the multicultural melting pot that is Lëtzebuerg. With almost 50% of the country’s 600,000+ inhabitants being foreigners, hearing (and communicating in) several languages in a day is a common occurrence. In the space of 20 minutes walking down a street you can hear French, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Italian, English, Arabic, Dutch and, if you’re lucky, Luxembourgish, the gem that is mostly hidden from the world beyond Luxembourg’s borders but which locals use with pride everyday – in addition to all the other languages they learned in school or at home!
Considering the country’s multicultural and multilingual nature, it is certainly possible to get by or even spend your whole life living and / or working in Luxembourg without speaking Luxembourgish, especially if you can communicate in one of the country’s two other official languages (French and German) and / or in English. Nevertheless, I am a firm believer that to fully get to the heart of a people, you need to speak their language. I would argue that this is especially true in Luxembourg, where the development of the Luxembourgish language has been crucial in moulding a national identity since the Second World War. Up until then, Luxembourgish was considered to be no more than a German dialect, rather than a language in its own right. In fact, it wasn’t until 1984 that Luxembourgish became the national language of Luxembourg.
Even today, this fascinating language remains fluid in terms of orthography – perhaps unsurprisingly considering it was mainly a spoken language up to the 19th century. Since 2008, interest in learning the language has grown among foreign residents (like yours truly) wishing to obtain the Luxembourgish nationality. This brings me to another important personal achievement in 2020: in March, just ahead of Luxembourg’s first lockdown, I passed the Sproochentest, the Luxembourgish language test required to become a Luxembourger. Now I just need to pass a cultural knowledge test and next year, after 5 years of residence, I can apply for my Luxembourgish passport!
That being said, my Luxembourgish language learning journey began even before I considered applying for the nationality (I am already an EU citizen after all – one of the perks of being born in Northern Ireland and not mainland Britain!). As mentioned earlier, being able to communicate in the language of a country’s people is key to integration. And, me being a Grade A language nerd, I simply couldn’t resist the challenge of learning a new language! Especially one as intriguing and exclusive as Luxembourgish – imagine going abroad (i.e. pretty much anywhere outside Luxembourg) and being able to speak a secret language hardly anyone else understands!
The fact that Luxembourgish is not widely spoken outside of the Grand Duchy, however, does not necessarily mean it is a difficult language to learn. There are a lot of similar words in Luxembourgish and English and if you already understand French and / or German, Luxembourgish is not so different (especially from German in terms of grammar). My only complaint is that it is so similar to German that I mix the two languages up!
On the one hand, it’s not like in bigger countries like France or Spain where locals generally expect foreigners to speak or at least make an effort to learn the language (which isn’t actually that much to ask). In Luxembourg, the locals are impressed even by a simple “Moien!” (hello) or “merci!” (thank you) from their foreign co-inhabitants. On the other hand, the fact that it is so easy to survive in Luxembourg without knowing the national language can be detrimental to the learning process: in France and Spain, I could (or was forced to) practise those languages daily; in Luxembourg, I’ve found it can be difficult to keep a conversation going in Luxembourgish when the native speaker in front of you speaks perfect English… or worse, when you unwittingly try to speak Luxembourgish with another foreigner!
But alas, it’s all part of the experience of living in this multicultural little gem nestled in the heart of Europe.
