Do they grow beets in Luxembourg?

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2006/06/23 16:53 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2006/06/23/644789.aspx

Well even if they have to go across the border to find people who grow beets, they do have LIPs now.... :-)

Previous posts in the series:

And now you can add Luxembourgish to the list of Language Interface Packs!

A bit about Luxembourgish....

Number of speakers: ~300,000

Name in the language itself: Lëtzebuergisch

Luxembourgish is spoken in the small Western European country of Luxembourg where it is official language since 1984 (together with French and German). Though so closely related to German (see "Classification") that German speakers should have no major problems understanding Luxembourgish, the differences between the two languages in terms of grammar are considerable. Luxembourgish has also borrowed many words from French (from merci for thank you to Prabbeli from parapluie for umbrella).

Interesting facts:
Though Luxembourg is founding member of the European Union, Luxembourgish is not an official language of the EU. In Luxembourg itself laws are not published in Luxembourgish either.

Classification:
Strictly linguistically spoken, Luxembourgish is a West Central German dialect - but due to its standing it can be considered a language on its own (As the saying goes, "A language is a dialect with an army"). Luxembourgish as a Germanic language belongs to the family of Indo-European languages.

Script:
Luxembourgish is written in Latin script. There are four special characters: é, ä, ë and ü.

Enjoy! :-)

This post brought to you by é (U+00e9, a.k.a. LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE)

# Ruben on 23 Jun 2006 8:38 PM:

Lëtzebuergisch is also eerily familiar to many Dutch speakers. It's almost like German reinvented by speakers or southern Dutch dialects.

It's probaly a matter of geography and linguistic similarities--the Dutch and Flemish are only a few dozen miles away :-)

# Serge Wautier on 24 Jun 2006 6:28 AM:

Funny! I never figured Luxemburg had an army. Do you think they might some day decide to invade us, their Belgian neighbours ? Should I rush to my grocer's buy sugar and flour ? :-)

Wait, it even has a website : http://www.armee.lu

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referenced by

2007/06/15 The last XP LIP? We'll head it off at the Pas[hto]

2007/06/02 Azeri zeriouz LIP releaze

2007/03/03 And it won't cost you an arm[enia] or a leg, either!

2006/12/01 Curious Georg[ian] gets a LIP

2006/10/31 Mapudungun is not a map to a dungeon

2006/10/13 Local experiences in Norway: the Nynorsk LIP!

2006/09/25 And then came Inuktitut (ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ)

2006/08/17 You don't order Tatar sauce for your Filet-o-Fish!

2006/07/25 I bless the rains down in Afrika[ans]

2006/07/05 The one with all of the language info

2006/07/01 Give a lady Urdu? (her due?)

2006/06/27 I Tswana know what you're thinking

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