I came across this article from the francophone newspaper L’essentiel. I was honestly surprised by it said. 48.9% of residents use Luxembourgish as the first language on daily basis. I find rather surprising? Living in Luxembourg-City I sometimes *never* hear it. What do you think?
by qdrgreg
10 comments
I personally use mostly English, followed by French (mostly because cross-bordering from France and Wallonia can’t speak another language than French lol)
Let’s not forget that 114k live in the city and 550k live outside of the city. In rural parts , everyone speaks Luxemburgish.
But yes in the city you won’t hear it a lot which is kind of sad tbh.
I only use Luxembourgish in the city when I want a French person to speak English to me.
70% of the city is foreign, so it makes sense that Luxembourgish isn’t spoken. I live in the East and Luxembourgish is the main language. I rarely hear French; in fact most will switch to English if I speak French.
It’s also where people shop. If you go to Auchan you won’t hear much but Cactus you will hear a lot.
I think even in Luxembourg city, there are a lot more people speaking lëtzebuergesch than what a *non-lëtzebuergesch-speaking* external observer would hear. My partner and I (both lux natives) were in the city on Saturday and we mostly spoke lëtz. I have a “theory” here 😂 : if you are not a native speaker, your ears tend to pick up your own language a lot more/better than any foreign language, i.e. if you were hearing 10 people speak, of which 9 spoke lëtz and 1 english, you’d probably hear the english speaking out of the crowd much easier and more prominently and your opinion might be biased towards “english is spoken more”.
*Daat ass aawer jhust eng Beierdeckelrechnungstheorie…*
Luxembourg city, concerning language and culture is (weirdly) not representative for Luxembourg. In many parts of the country, mostly rural, Luxembourgish is the only spoken language you will find really.
I think the emphasis lays on residents. This statistics would look very different if they would look at the people working in Luxembourg. I think that most children who grow up in Luxembourg and pensioners who live in Luxembourg speak Luxembourgish as their first language. We are housing an Ukrainian refugee family at home and their 3 year old child speaks Luxembourgish better than Ukrainian because she learned it in the crèche and speaks it with other children.
Also apart of all of this you should consider that Luxembourgish people are used to switch to the language of the person they are speaking with. So when you see 2 Luxembourgers and an French walking on the sidewalk, chances are you will hear them speaking French.
Yes, as “Moien” is counted as “use in a daily basis”
In Luxembourg city, it is quite different from the rest of the country. Here in the North people will mostly use Luxembourgish, and there are a lot of people that rather speak German than French.
Well the city is 1/6 of the pop so it makes sense. I know that outside luxembourg city it’s quite common, to be faire english is mainly used in Kirchberg then it feels like people tend to speak french
When in Lux City, I will speak Luxembourgish when I’m with Luxembourgish-speaking friends. Otherwise, you will hear me speak French (with sales assistants) or English if I’m hanging out with English-speaking friends. It all depends on who I need to interact with.