The brilliant autumn sun is streaming into the classroom, as students wander in. Bonjour, Gudde Moien, says the teacher, Luc Schmitz. It is 8am on Monday morning and people from at least a dozen countries are here to take one of this school’s most popular language courses: Luxembourgish.



Despite gloomy predictions, more and more people want to speak the language, which has been on Unesco’s list of endangered languages since 2010. At Luxembourg’s National Institute of Languages, where Schmitz teaches, enrolments are up. According to Luxembourg’s ministry of culture, more than 6,500 adults were enrolled on Luxembourgish courses in 2016-17, twice the number a decade ago.



Luxembourgish, traditionally just spoken at home, can sound like a curiosity. It was not even a national language of Luxembourg until 1984 and is hardly spoken outside the Grand Duchy. Nearly half of Luxembourg’s 576,000 inhabitants are foreigners, many of whom find it easier to speak one of the country’s other official languages, French and German, or even English. “You can live in Luxembourg without knowing a word of Luxembourgish,” says Schmitz. “[But] it is fun, it expands your view and your children cannot talk in a secret language that you do not understand.”



Now Luxembourg’s government wants to boost the status of the language further with a 40-point action plan that aims to promote it in schools, libraries, government offices and embassies. Luxembourgish will be codified, with an academy, nationwide spelling campaigns and the completion of an online dictionary. Schoolchildren will be able to do poetry slam, creative writing and theatre in the language. The government will also petition Brussels for Luxembourgish to be recognised as one of the EU’s 23 official languages – although the result will be symbolic, rather than scores of jobs for translators.



Quick Guide Luxembourgish key phrases Show Moien. Et freet mech, Iech kennenzeléieren. Ech heeschen Louise an ech sinn amerang, Lëtzebuergesch ze léieren. Hello, pleased to meet you. My name is Louise and I am learning Luxembourgish. Kënnt Dir mir wann ech gelift soen, wou een déi beschte Gromperekichelcher kritt? Please can you tell me where is the best place to try gromperekichelcher (potato pancakes)? Villmools merci. Dës Quetschentaart ass wonnerbar, mä nach ee Béier an ech kippen ëm. Thank you very much. This quetschentaart (plum tart) is really delicious, but if I have one more beer I’m going to pass out. Moien, ech si vun der Britescher Chambre de Commerce an ech geng Iech gär eppes iwwert eis innovativ Gebeesser a Jellien erzielen. Good morning, I am from the British board of trade and I’d like to tell you about our innovative jams and marmalades. Séier! Ech muss Lëtzebuergesch léieren, ech geng gär mäi Chef bei der Europäescher Kommissioun beandrocken. Quick! I need to learn Luxembourgish, as I want to impress my boss at the European commission. D’Englänner hätte gär alles an de Rescht och nach dobäi. Virdru ware se dran, mat villen Opt-outen. Elo wëlle se eraus, mat villen Opt-Inen. Mir sinn dach hei net op Facebook, wou et e Status “et ass komplizéiert” gëtt. The UK wants to have its cake and eat it. Before they were in and they had many opt outs. Now they want to be out with many opt ins. We are not on Facebook where there is an “it’s complicated” status.

(said Luxembourg prime minister Xavier Bettel October 2016) Ech kann net gleewen, dass ee säi Facebook Account op Piratenenglesch astelle kann, mä net op Lëtzebuergesch. I can’t believe I can have a Facebook account in pirate English, but not Luxembourgish. Komesch, de Lëtzebuerger hire Motto ass “Mir wëlle bleiwe wat mir sinn”, an dobäi si se eent vun deene Länner, déi am meeschte fir d’EU sinn. Strange, the Luxembourgish motto is “We want to remain what we are”, and yet it is one of the most pro-EU countries. Translation by Sandra Schmit

“The goal is not to make Luxembourgish the official language, but to allow it to coexist with the other official languages, French and German,” Guy Arendt, Luxembourg’s culture minister, told the Guardian. “I am not one of those who believes our language is on the point of dying or disappearing. Emails, SMS and social networks have made Luxembourgish, in its written form, more used than ever before.”



Luxembourgish is also being heard on the big screen. Jérôme Weber, a film director, says more people want to shoot films in Luxembourgish. “It is quite a big trend right now, to push the Luxembourgish language and culture and I want to be part of it.” His latest film, The Past We Live In, is about an old man’s memories of being conscripted into the Wehrmacht during the second world war. Weber says it was obvious this Luxembourgish story should be told in the national language. Yet the influence of English is hard to break; he writes his scripts in English first.

Sandra Schmit, an author and translator, thinks Luxembourgish is becoming “a real literary language”, like English in the time of Chaucer. In her spare time, she teaches Luxembourgish to a dozen people, including Syrian and Iraqi refugees, who have been unable to get places in over-subscribed formal classes. “When I was a child [foreigners] would never consider learning Luxembourgish because they think French is enough, whereas now, people see it as the language of integration,” she says. “If you want to be friends with Luxembourgers and not just have a polite conversation it is really much better to learn Luxembourgish.”



Mir wëllen iech ons Heemecht weisen (We want to show you our home) from the songwriter Serge Tonnar draws on the words of Luxembourg’s best-known 19th-century poet, Michel Lentz, to contest scepticism about the arrival of more than 400 refugees.

Luxembourgish is, however, unlikely to supersede French or German. Of 134 books published in Luxembourg in 2015-16, only 7% were in Luxembourgish, according to Schmit. The biggest social media companies also do not seem to care: Facebook allows users to have accounts in pirate English, but not Luxembourgish. Twitter has Esperanto among its 34 languages, but no Lëtzebuergesch.



One senior government official qualifies the optimism: “If you speak to our parents and grandparents, people will tell you that [the quality of] Luxembourgish is much poorer.”



Nor has angst about the decline of Luxembourgish gone away. A 2016 petition to the Luxembourg parliament calling for action to “save the Luxembourgish language” attracted a record number of signatures for the Grand Duchy. An earlier petition complained about Luxembourgers’ tendency to pepper their native language, related to German, with French words.



These are only the latest skirmishes over Luxembourg’s identity since the 1980s. Kristine Horner, director of the Centre for Luxembourg Studies at Sheffield University, says the government plan and petitions reflect “a movement not to take Luxembourgish for granted any more”. She rejects the suggestion of any narrow, nativist instinct in the plan to promote Luxembourgish.

“I am surprised in a nice way,” she says. “The idea of the old multilingualism was that [children] speak only Luxembourgish at home, they get to school and they learn to read and write in German, and then learn standard French.”

She thinks the new strategy shows a more flexible approach, allowing students to build up literary skills in whatever language they work best in, with “a special place for Luxembourgish”.



Back in the classroom, Schmitz’s students are sharing their reasons for grappling with Luxembourgish’s tricky prepositions.

Jahiro Flores, a 46-year old accountant from Venezuela, has lived in Luxembourg for seven years. Realising that a short-term stay had become a long-term home, he decided to learn Luxembourgish to communicate better with his neighbours.

Katrine Sawyer, a British official at the European court of justice, meanwhile, needs the language to obtain Luxembourgish nationality, a decision she took after the Brexit vote. She already speaks French and German and is finding Luxembourgish “very valuable” in her everyday life in a small village.

She thinks her neighbours are pleased she is making the effort, though confesses that her already-fluent children find it “incredibly embarrassing”.

