Luxembourgish (Language Standardization)

27 Pages·0.49 MB·

by  Gilles P., Moulin C.

Luxembourgish*
Peter Gilles and Claudine Moulin
University of Freiburg, Germany
Centre Universitaire de Luxembourg, Luxembourg
1. Introduction
Luxembourgish (Lëtzebuergesch) is the national language of the Grand Duchy of
Luxembourg.1 In order to describe and understand the history of the standardiza-
tion of Luxembourgish it is necessary to take two aspects into consideration:
a. the historical origin of the nation-state “Luxembourg” and the role Luxem-
bourgish has played in this process.
b. Luxembourg’s multilingual language situation. In the long historical process of
becoming a nation, Luxembourg developed a trilingual language policy, involv-
ing German, French, and Luxembourgish.
Within this context, a speciªc form of language standardization is currently taking
place. The development supports on-going processes of dialect levelling and con-
tributes to the re-shaping of the status, functions and linguistic form of Luxem-
bourgish in relation to the other two languages. Compared to the high level of
standardization of e.g. (Standard) German or English, Luxembourgish is today still
at a relatively early stage of the standardization process (cf. Kramer 1994).
After a summary of the sociohistorical background of Luxembourg’s multilin-
gual speech community in section one, section two deals with the process of norm
selection, focusing mainly on macro-sociolinguistic developments such as the
emancipation of Luxembourgish as a language in its own right, dialect levelling and
the increased use of Luxembourgish as a written language. Section three concen-
trates on aspects of the current process of codiªcation, and ªnally, in section four
issues of norm elaboration and acceptance will be discussed.
304 Peter Gilles and Claudine Moulin
2. Sociohistorical background
Throughout history the territory of the present day Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg
was subject to constant in¶uences from the Romance and the Germanic languages,
their cultures and politics (for a detailed history of Luxembourg, cf. Trausch 1981,
1989, 2002; Calmes 1989). Between the ªfteenth and nineteenth centuries the
Luxembourg area alternately belonged to four diŸerent countries (Austria, Spain,
France, The Netherlands) and was divided several times (1659, 1815, 1839). As a
consequence, parts of the original territory now belong to Germany, France and
Belgium. Following the decisions of the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Luxembourg’s
present-day borders were deªned in the Treaty of London (1839). After having
gained political autonomy, the self-conªdence of the people of “Luxembourg”
increased. In this process the language variety common to all Luxembourgers was
used increasingly as an identity marker, both to strengthen internal cohesion and to
make external distinctions, i.e. to distinguish oneself from other nations. Thus,
during the nineteenth century and especially after the First and Second World
Wars, the regional language Luxembourgish was the most important factor of
national identiªcation and continues to be regarded as a national symbol today
(Newton 1996).
The current Grand Duchy of Luxembourg covers an area of 2586 km2 and has
a population of c. 440,000. The country is densely populated in the central region
around the capital city of Luxembourg and in the south around the city of Esch-sur-
Alzette. About one-third of the population are foreign nationals (approx. 162,000),
making Luxembourg the country with the highest proportion of foreigners within
Europe. The majority of foreign residents are from Italy and Portugal. Additionally
there are approximately 100,000 daily commuters from the border areas of France,
Belgium, and Germany, who work in Luxembourg. Obviously, this situation leads to
a high degree of language contact (HoŸmann 1996). Up until the mid-nineteenth
century agriculture constituted the economic basis of Luxembourg’s economy.
From the 1890s onwards an important and in¶uential heavy industry with mines and
steel works was established in the south. After the steel industry crisis in the 1970s,
Luxembourg successfully changed into a modern service society with in¶uential
ªnancial services. The rate of unemployment is low (2001: 2.6 %).2
Dating back to mediaeval times, the linguistic substrate of Luxembourg con-
sists predominantly of a Germanic variety (or rather Germanic varieties) with
considerable in¶uence from French. Varieties of French and German, and later also
Standard German were used mainly in administration, educational and cultural
institutions, thus forming a bi- or trilingual situation. Today the language situation
is characterized by “medial diglossia” with a distinction between written and
spoken language varieties. Luxembourgish is the only means of oral communica-
Luxembourgish 305
tion between native Luxembourgophone speakers; it is unusual for these speakers
to use French or German, e.g., at home, with friends, at work (for details, cf. Berg
1993: 18–85). It is only in encounters with non-Luxembourgophones that one of
the other languages is spoken. On the other hand, French or German are used
mainly as written languages (for descriptions of the multilingual situation, cf. Berg
1993; Davis 1992, 1994; Weber 1994, 2000, 2001). It will be illustrated in section
two that this situation has been changing for the last twenty years and the use of
Luxembourgish as a written language has increased signiªcantly. As a result, Ger-
man and to a lesser extent French are beginning to lose some of their presence in
written language domains. One important consequence of medial diglossia is that
there is almost no (situational) code-switching between the three languages (an in-
depth analysis of code-switching in Luxembourg has yet to be undertaken, cf. Krier
1990, 1992). On the other hand, lexical borrowing from French, German, and
English is quite frequent (Weber 1994).
Although Luxembourgish is the language used predominantly in oral commu-
nication and is associated with a high national-symbolic value, this sociolinguistic
status is not re¶ected in the education system. For native Luxembourgers,
Luxembourgish is learned as a ªrst language; during early childhood, French or
German are neither acquired nor used. While the language used in kindergarten is
still restricted to Luxembourgish, the situation changes at primary school. Here,
school children are confronted with German and French and a substantial part of
the curriculum is consequently devoted to the teaching of these languages. Except in
sports, music and arts classes, the designated languages of instruction are German
and French (starting in the second grade). Nevertheless, it is common practice and
inevitable that teachers and pupils use Luxembourgish in class. However, the
mother tongue Luxembourgish does not form a central part of the curriculum and
only a few hours are designated to Luxembourgish; this time is used mainly for
reading, story telling, singing and local history. Luxembourgish grammar and
orthography are not taught systematically because of possible interference problems
with German for the Luxembourgophone children, as well as possible di¹culties for
the children with a foreign (in most cases: Romance) language background. As a
result of the heavy work load, especially in the language subjects, the lessons
dedicated to Luxembourgish are often used for other purposes. Additionally,
teachers are not trained systematically in teaching Luxembourgish as a ªrst language
nor (with regard to the large number of non-Luxembourgish, mostly Romano-
phone, children) in teaching Luxembourgish as a foreign language. The compila-
tion of teaching materials and suitable grammatical descriptions is only in its early
stages. A new syllabus and teaching materials are currently being developed. In the
future these might lead to a modiªcation of the status of Luxembourgish in the
education system (for a description of Luxembourg’s school system, cf. Kraemer
306 Peter Gilles and Claudine Moulin
1993). Within the last several years, Luxembourgish has also gained importance as
a foreign language. Over the last ten years, teaching programs have been developed
for adult learners from diŸerent countries and also for commuters from France,
Belgium, and Germany working in the service sector.3 The lack of descriptive and/
or normative grammars is especially felt in this ªeld. From a linguistic as well as from
a didactic point of view, this augments the need for “Standard Luxembourgish”.
With regard to the school system a remarkable discrepancy thus exists: Luxem-
bourgish as the ªrst language of many children and as the national language of the
country is only rudimentarily taught in school. Nevertheless, Luxembourgish plays
an important, though uno¹cial, role on the spoken level and in the everyday life of
all children.
3. Norm selection
In this section, norm selection will be analyzed from two diŸerent angles: ªrst an
overview of the sociolinguistic history of Luxembourgish will be presented, focus-
ing on aspects of language use, domains and attitudes/prestige. The following
section will discuss the more strictly linguistic aspects of norm selection.
From 1839 to the beginning of the twentieth century
The language history of Luxembourgish as a national language begins with the
foundation of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg on 19 April 1839, when Luxem-
bourg reached almost complete independence under complicated historical cir-
cumstances (cf. Trausch 2002: 208–214). Luxembourg, however, remained the
personal property of the king of The Netherlands until 1890. Although Luxem-
bourg was de facto trilingual (German, French, Luxembourgish) during the nine-
teenth century, the language situation was generally regarded as bilingual: only the
“true” languages German and French (in their perceived standardized forms) were
accepted as legitimate languages and were used both in writing and speaking.
Luxembourgish, on the other hand, was considered to be only a dialect. Two main
arguments supported this view:
a. Luxembourgish was seen as a vernacular, a spoken variety used in everyday
life that was hardly ever used as a written language. Accordingly, Luxem-
bourgish was not considered as a language in its own right in the multilingual
setting.
b. There was no doubt that the origin of Luxembourgish had to be interpreted
within the general language and dialect history of German. Luxembourgish
was considered a dialect of German and thus part of a larger dialect region,
Luxembourgish 307
comprising areas in Luxembourg and Germany (and also, to a lesser extent,
in Belgium and France).
In terms of German dialectology, the Luxembourgish-speaking region belongs to
the so-called Central Franconian dialect area (more speciªcally to the western part
of Moselle Franconian; cf. Gilles 1999). As a matter of fact, the dialects spoken on
both sides of the Luxembourg-German border exhibit a great deal of similarity and
were regarded as being part of the same (German) system.4 Thus, Luxembourgish
was clearly seen as being directly dependent on and dominated by the German
standard language. As a consequence, it didn’t seem justiªed to label Luxem-
bourgish a language of its own. This view is clearly illustrated in the ªrst available
descriptions of Luxembourgish. In Hardt’s (1843) description Luxembourgish is
regarded as dialect — or more speciªcally, Luxembourgish was described as con-
sisting of three major dialects: luxemburgische mundarten (‘Luxembourg dialects’).
Edmond de la Fontaine (1855), one of the ªrst poets to use Luxembourgish in
writing, stressed the dependence of Luxembourgish on German by using the label
Luxemburger deutsche Mundart (‘Luxembourg German dialect’). In the same vein,
Klein (1855: 50) used the term unsere mundart (‘our dialect’) and noted that
the relationship between German and Luxembourgish is too close as to describe
Luxembourgish as a language in its own right. Up until the beginning of the
twentieth century, the close relationship between standard German and Luxem-
bourgish was articulated among Luxembourgers by using the distinguishing
language names Däitsch (‘German’, here with the meaning ‘Luxembourgish’)
and Houdäitsch (‘High German’, here with the meaning ‘Standard German’; cf.
HoŸmann 1996c).
Although the linguistic form of Luxembourgish was seen as being part of the
German language throughout the nineteenth century, language attitudes pointed
in another direction. Right from the foundation of the nation-state in 1839,
Luxembourgish was considered an important factor in deªning and maintaining
the national identity of Luxembourg. In contrast to the pluricentric languages of
their German and French neighbours, Luxembourgish was a “language” that was
unique to Luxembourg. It is characteristic of nineteenth century descriptions to
recognize the dependence of Luxembourgish on German and, on the other hand, to
emphasize that Luxembourgish has developed into an important factor of national
identiªcation and integration. For example, Klein (1855) uses the term unsere
mundart (‘our dialect’) in parallel with the term unsere sprache (‘our language’)
which is indicative of the incipient changes in the self-consciousness of Luxem-
bourg as a nation.
It seems justiªed to interpret the developments within the nineteenth century
as prerequisites for language standardization: during this time, the creation of the
308 Peter Gilles and Claudine Moulin
nation-state was directly linked to an increase of positive emotional attitudes
towards Luxembourgish. Luxembourgish became (and continues to be) a national
symbol. From then onwards Luxembourgish was not longer regarded as a “worth-
less” dialect/vernacular but rather as a “worthy” language, and subsequent eŸorts
with regard to the standardization of form and functions of Luxembourgish began
to take place. The ªrst tentative steps towards language standardization were tightly
linked with the evolution of a national literary tradition. The poets and novelists of
the nineteenth century created the ªrst spelling systems for Luxembourgish and
sometimes also brief grammatical sketches. First descriptions of Luxembourgish
were also published (see below). However, as a written language Luxembourgish
was used predominantly in literature and only occasionally in newspaper articles.
These nineteenth century language descriptions can be interpreted as signs of a
linguistic interest that was, however, restricted to the cultural elite of Luxembourg.
The impact of these ªrst standardization attempts on the language behaviour of the
larger population was rather minute.
Beginning of the twentieth century to 1945
The strengthened national identity supported the use of Luxembourgish — which
had by now become the accepted name for the language — as the general spoken
language among Luxembourgers from no later than 1900. More speciªcally, a
situation characterized by medial diglossia emerged: Luxembourgish functioned as
the main spoken variety and commanded high national-symbolic value and high
social prestige, whereas German and French remained the main languages of the
written domains. At the same time tendencies towards linguistic purism can be
noted. The young national language was viewed as being under pressure from
German and French. Lexical borrowing from these in¶uential languages — which
was frequent — seemed to threaten the integrity and “purity” of Luxembourgish.
Lists containing words which were regarded as not being part of the Luxembourgish
system were published to help reduce the in¶uence of the neighbouring languages
(e.g. Comes 1932). During World War I and World War II strong anti-German
feelings existed in Luxembourg, and everything connected with Germany and
German was emphatically rejected. Luxembourg suŸered heavily under the occupa-
tion of Nazi-Germany (cf. Newton 1996: 186Ÿ.). In 1941, the German government
initiated a census on nationality and language in Luxembourg. The census was
conducted to conªrm the common view that Luxembourgish was a German dialect
and that Luxembourg should thus be incorporated into the German speaking
territories. Crucial for this were the three questions concerning the nationality, the
ethnic identity and the “mother tongue” (see Weber 1946; Trausch 1989; Trausch
2002: 248–250). The instructions indicated that Luxembourgers should not
Luxembourgish 309
answer with Lëtzebuergesch; they were told that a dialect could not be regarded
as a ªrst language and examples of dialects were given (among them, of course,
Luxembourgish). These controversial census questions led to a national movement
among the population and the slogan “dräimol Lëtzebuergesch” (‘three times
Lëtzebuergesch’; i.e. to give the answer Lëtzebuergesch to all three questions) re¶ects
the strong feelings of national identity and unity which existed among the popula-
tion. The census was cancelled in the last minute by the Germans when it became
clear that it would not lead to the expected results. The debate which surrounded the
census clearly illustrates the symbolic power of Luxembourgish.
1945 to today
After World War II the rejection of anything connected with the German language
and Germany in general was still manifest. Words and syntactic constructions that
were too closely connected to Standard German were avoided or excluded from the
Luxembourgish norm. With regard to the vocabulary of Luxembourgish this ten-
dency led to a decrease in lexical borrowing from Standard German while borrow-
ing from French increased. Although it was still accepted that Luxembourgish
shared a common linguistic origin with German and the German dialects on the
other side of the border, any kind of sociolinguistic dependence on or subordina-
tion under the neighbouring language was rejected.
The multilingual language situation was o¹cially recognized by the language
law of 24 February, 1984 (loi sur le régime des langues). In this law all three languages
received recognition as administrative languages, and French was recognized as the
language of legislation. Furthermore, Luxembourgish was now o¹cially given the
status of a “national language”. This was formulated in article one: “La langue
nationale des Luxembourgeois est le luxembourgeois” (‘The national language of
Luxembourg is Luxembourgish’). From that point, Luxembourgish could be used
in nearly all (oral and written) o¹cial contexts. It was one of the aims of the
language law to strengthen the sociolinguistic status of Luxembourgish vis à vis
German and French in order to facilitate the development of a written form of
Luxembourgish. The passing of the law was, however, neither combined with
speciªc goals to change the current situation of language use, nor was there an
explicit attempt to create normative grammars, dictionaries or teaching materials.
However, the language law was used by pressure groups to support the develop-
ment of language planning and to actively encourage the increased use of
Luxembourgish in writing. One of the most in¶uential pressure groups is Actioun
Lëtzebuergesch founded in the 1970s. The main interest of this group is to promote
the extensive use of Luxembourgish in writing, to limit the integration of loan-
words and to provide instructions and templates for various types of text; these
310 Peter Gilles and Claudine Moulin
templates are published in the journal Eis Sprooch (‘Our language’) and are also
available on the internet (http://www.eis-sprooch.lu). According to Weber (2000,
2002), the language law initiated a clear appreciation of Luxembourgish. This is
re¶ected in the increasing demand for language courses, language materials for
language teaching and learning, as well as general information about the language.
During the post-war years the necessary prerequisite steps for the standardiza-
tion of Luxembourgish were ªnally accomplished. Only after the autonomous
sociolinguistic status of the language had been recognized (especially with reference
to Standard German), could the issue of standardization (in a narrower sense) of
the linguistic form of Luxembourgish be addressed. Compared to some of the long
lasting standardization histories of many of the other Germanic languages, the
standardization of Luxembourgish has started only recently.
4. Norm selection of the linguistic form
Two main processes, initiated at the beginning of the twentieth century and gaining
more and more ground after World War II, are currently taking place in Luxem-
bourg. These two processes interact with the on-going standardization eŸorts:
a. a process of dialect levelling is leading to the development of a supra-regional
variety that may become a standard variety in the spoken domain,
b. the use of Luxembourgish as a written language is noticeably increasing.
Dialect levelling
As a language originally restricted to spoken domains, Luxembourgish continues to
show extensive regional variation. This is documented by various descriptions of
individual dialects as well as the comprehensive dialect survey published in
the Luxemburgischer Sprachatlas (‘Linguistic Atlas of Luxembourg’; Bruch and
Goossens 1963). The material provided by the dialect atlas is, however, today largely
outdated.
Although Luxembourg constitutes a rather small geographical area, at least
four smaller dialect areas can be distinguished on the basis of the dialect atlas:
a. the eastern area on the Luxembourg/German border has dialect features
resembling those of the Moselle Franconian varieties spoken in Germany
around the city of Trier;
b. the large, but sparsely populated northern area shows features of the varieties
spoken around the German cities Bitburg and Cologne;
c. the features of the southern area resemble the Moselle Franconian varieties
found in the Lorraine area of northern France;
Luxembourgish 311
d. ªnally, a central area comprises the largest part of the country; this area is
densely populated, and it is here that the capital city of Luxembourg and
most of the economic, political, cultural and educational facilities and
institutions are located (cf. Bruch 1953a, 1954; Gilles 1999).
Although the phonetic/phonological diŸerences between the four dialects can be
quite vast, they are nevertheless mutually intelligible. Examples of regional varia-
tion are provided in Table 1.
Table 1. Examples of words in their o¹cial spelling and their phonetic representa-
tions in the four sub-dialects of Luxembourgish.
Centre South East North
Nuecht ‘night’ nu6çt nu6t nf:xt nɑIt/na:çt
fueren ‘to drive’ fu6r6n fu6r6n fu6r6n fUɑr6n /fa:r6n
Leit ‘people’ lɑIt l7t lɑIt l7kt
haut ‘today’ hɑ~t hot hɑ~t hokt/hɑkt
midd ‘tired’ mIt mIt meit mikt
Brout ‘bread’ bro~t bro~t brut brukt
Téi ‘tea’ tei tei ti: ti:
mir ‘me/we’ mi:! m7:! mi:! m7:!
The fourfold division of dialects was probably stable until the beginning of the
twentieth century. Since then, and with an increased speed for the last ªfty years,
modiªcations of the dialect division and of the dialects themselves have been noted.
With regard to phonetics/phonology a process of dialect levelling — which had
already been noted in its initial stage by Engelmann (1910) — continues. This
development was thought to threaten the structure of three of the four dialect
regions as it leads to an increased level of structural homogeneity across the diŸerent
dialect regions. Originally this process was interpreted as re¶ecting the formation of
a new variety, a koiné, which supposedly emerged from a mixing of the various sub-
dialects of Luxembourgish (Engelmann 1910; Bruch 1954; HoŸmann 1996c). In-
stead of replacing the older sub-dialects, this new variety was thought to serve as an
overarching variety and as a means of supra-regional, national communication.
Furthermore, it has been claimed that this Luxembourg koiné was characterized by
simpliªcation and reduction of structural features and was thus less complex than
the sub-dialects, making it a kind of “compromise variety”. This interesting concept
was developed rather impressionistically without any empirical proof. Nevertheless,
the earlier notion of a supra-regional variety dominating local and regional dialects
can be interpreted in terms of language standardization: the newly emerging koiné
serves as a standard variety for spoken language use at the national level. The
hypothesis of koiné development was, however, not based on empirical linguistic
312 Peter Gilles and Claudine Moulin
studies and relied mostly on anecdotal observations. Rather, it re¶ects a speciªc
ideological strategy in the context of language standardization. Discussions among
Luxembourg linguists show strong ties to a standard language ideology (Milroy
2001) which is driven by an attitudinal rejection of (mainly regional) variation and
a general longing for a common language. The idea of a Luxembourg koiné should
be interpreted as a deliberate attempt by linguists to establish the foundations of a
standard language for Luxembourgish based on spoken (dialectal) varieties (Gilles
2000). Instead of koinéization in its proper sense (i.e. including both dialect levelling
and simpliªcation; cf. Siegel 1985; Trudgill 1986), only dialect levelling is taking
place. Gilles (1999) has shown that the variety spoken in the large central area is
spreading into the surrounding southern, eastern, and northern areas. Due to this
development, older dialectal features in the aŸected areas are being replaced by
central Luxembourgish variants. As a consequence, regional phonetic/phonological
variation is being reduced and homogeneity is increasing.
The levelling process is, however, far from complete. It probably started at the
end of the nineteenth century and has accelerated dramatically since World War II,
with increased social and regional mobility as supporting factors. Today, older
dialect features are being replaced by newer central Luxembourgish ones, especially
in the speech of younger speakers. Nevertheless, the older dialect features are still
present and, as a result, most varieties contain a mixture of old and new forms.
Varieties of Luxembourgish speech will vary quantitatively with regard to this
mixture and their use of variants from the central varieties. Compared to the
peripheral dialects, the expanding central variety is characterized by an increased
level of phonological complexity (exceptions, syncretism, lexicalization). The domi-
nant variety in this levelling process is thus not characterized by simpliªcation and/
or reduction of structural complexity, which are seen as characteristic and necessary
aspects of koiné development. In the context of this levelling process the phonetic/
phonological system of French and German have no substantial eŸect on the
Luxembourgish system. Obviously, dialect levelling has implications for language
standardization: regional variation is reduced and the variety with the largest
geographical coverage which, more importantly, constitutes the basis of most
cultural, economical, educational institutions, is spreading throughout the country.
The on-going process can thus be described as standardization of the spoken form
of Luxembourgish, which is far from complete.
Use of Luxembourgish as a written language
As mentioned before, the production of written texts in Luxembourgish began in
the nineteenth century with poems, plays and novels by Anton Meyer (1801–1857),
Edmond de la Fontaine (1823–1891), Michel Lentz (1820–1893), and Michel