Lëtzebuergesch And Its Competitors: Language Contact In Luxembourg Today

Abstract

Abstract It is not difficult to argue that Luxembourg is ‘a linguistic melting pot’. Multilingualism in the present-day grand duchy is virtually a matter of inheritance. In the ‘Old’ Luxembourg which existed until 1839 (see Map 1.2), German and French language communities had been taken into separate account by the administration since at least the time of John the Blind’s decree of 1340 formally recognizing a quartier allemand and a quartier wallon. ‘New’ Luxembourg (see Map 1.3) differs only in that the French which is used as one of the official administrative languages and which exists in harmony with standard German and the Lëtzebuergesch substratum, no longer has any group of indigenous speakers left among the native population (see Section 2.r.2). Indeed, with regard to both French and standard German, natives of the grand duchy then as now use only one form of speech in communication with their fellow citizens, namely their own mother tongue, Lëtzebuergesch, and while both French and standard German continue as languages of school and government administration, in many spheres of private and public life the use of Lëtzebuergesch, particularly in written form, has expanded over the course of the last twenty years. It is therefore no longer a rarity to find Lëtzebuergesch being used for obituaries, commercial advertisements, shop signs, street furniture, or on the sides of commercial vehicles.