Luxembourgish vs German | Can they understand the Luxembourgish language? | #1 

Welcome back!! Can’t wait for the autumn journey

Do some Slavic languages. pls.

@@vexillonerd There are many slavic language videos that he has done in the past. You should be able to find them in his profile.

Thanks😄 I found this video very interesting because I find swiss german very different from Germany's German 😲 I actually didn't know anything about Luxembourg, but I always would like to visit it, maybe in the future, but trying to speak in German😅

Yay🤗

He has quite an encyclopedic knowledge base. The addition of Yiddish to the mix was also a nice touch.

Most Luxembourgers are polyglott (quadrilingual, usually)

Merci

Luxembourger learn german, french and english at school at an early age, so it's quite common here.

@@ftsfootballvlogs4890 Being a citizen of a country surrounded by much larger superpowers... As a (South) Korean, I think I can share the feeling a bit. After the colonial era, Korea has been a chessboard for Russians, Chinese, Japanese and Americans while the South and the North are fighting each other to prove that one's ideology is better than the other's. But Korea has been isolated from its neighbors both geographically and socially for very long time, so Korean people still don't have any strong motivation or compulsion to learn any foreign language, aside of English (which is not really spoken in the country, but only used as a 'job weapon').

That was oddly enough one of the easiest for me. I’m a native Danish speaker and have only ever lived in Denmark.

In my dialect Nopeschlänner is Noboaschlenda and I even took a minute to recognize it. The -p- really threw me off.

Your phrases an empty phrase…

that was a difficult one indeed. My guess is it relates to "neighbor" and "nabuur" in English/Dutch.

@@endthisnonsense7202 Luxembourg was in an Union with the Netherlands in the 1800s so there probably are a lot of words that got mixed up with Dutch I'm not into etymology though.

Alemannic German is so odd. I wonder why is Swiss French so similar to Standard French but Swiss German so different from Standard German.

I'm only learning german, and for me, I didn't hear any significant difference between swiss german and luxembourgish.

as a German I found Swiss German more similar to German than Luxembourgish.

@@gaborodriguez1346 There used to be a Swiss patois, which is close tho the French Savoyard dialect. But it was driven out as a sociolect. There are efforts made to conserve it in the few remote villages where it is still spoken.

@@yassimob3868 As usual, it's a continuum. So it depends what your local variety is. If you are around low-German dialects, Luxemburgish is easier, if you are more around the upper German dialects, Swiss German is closer. A thing I find distinctive about the dialects along the Rhine is the transition of Std German B to W (aber -> awwer). That begins as far south as Alsatian, which despite that is clearly an Alemannic dialect.

Definitely. The one with different English speakers trying to get it was fun, but clearly the wrong group to have a serious attempt at it.

add a frisian speaker in there as well :)

@ecolinguist this is a great idea

adding a scandinavian speaker would be interesting too

What does low German mean?

Also in Northern Germany ("Wat de Buur nech kennt, dat freit he nech"). Ironic how this poses as some sort of regional proverb (both in form and content) while being universal to all varieties of German and even beyond^^

Well let‘s add Dutch then as well. „Wat de boer niet kent, vreet hij niet.“

Wos da Baua ned käinnt, frisst a ned. ;)

same in switzerland

gibts im badischen auch

I feel that Cédric slightly overemphasised the political correctness/"gender studies" buzzwords like "pronouns" (in the LGBT+ sense, rather than the grammatical sense) and "heteronormativity", that, as he himself said, have stabilised neither in Luxembourgish nor in English (although, apparently, less so in Schwyzerdüütsch). This is a rather niche part of the grammar, and it's also a very nebulous part of the grammar, so I personally wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. On one hand this was a very courageous choice... on the other hand, it was a very COURAGEOUS choice, if you get my drift.

@@nmatavka that's a long way of saying "I'm homophobic"

@@pia_mater Nothing homophobic about that. I didn't say anything against Cédric personally, or any other person - this was in re. the material presented (languages are in a state of flux, so maybe wait a bit more before doing presentations like this one).

It was actually much easier than most similar tasks in this series. That's because until only a few decades ago, Luxembourgish was just a regional dialect of German, making translation to German generally very straightforward. (It was declared the national language of Luxembourg, and therefore a language, in the 20th century. Now practically everyone in the country is trilingual: German, French and Luxembourgish.) On top of that, both the German and the Swiss guy are familiar with German dialects that have similarities to Luxembourgish. Translating to English as well didn't make this any harder; this was just for presentation to an international audience.

that's what made it so briliant to watch

Dunno, that's not particularly difficult imo. The only real challenge is usually the understanding part and that should be very easy for any German speaker, in this one. The French loanwords were really the only thing that could throw you off. I wonder how this would turn out if they brought in some Germans with particularly thick accents of their home regions (if those even still exist in our generation).

@@johaquila Swiss German is also "just" a dialects of German. I don't see why that would make the translation more or less straightforward.

@@leonamay8776 Extreme similarity due to the fact that (1) both varieties are very closely related and therefore similar to start with, and (2) most of the speakers of the dialect are fully bilingual in the main language. This is the kind of situation where language features are transferred in both directions, making them even more similar. Dialects aren't necessarily very good at changing the main variety, but the main variety has an enormous leveling effect on dialect diversity. Also (3) dialect and main variety aren't really distinguished. People actually speak a blend of the two that sits on different points of the spectrum between them, according to the situation. E.g. relatively pure dialect in their family, slightly more standard mixed in in the workplace or when speaking to dialect speakers of a similar dialect, even more when speaking to non-dialect speakers in an informal situation, and even more when things get 'official' in some way. The result of all this is that translating between varieties of the same language is mostly as easy as (1) replacing a few words, (2) changing the pronunciation according to some simple rules, (3) distinguishing a few grammatical forms in the main language that have already fused in the dialect (the reverse is much rarer) while the overall sentence structure stays the same, and (4) occasionally choosing differently among alternative sentence structures. Translating between closely related but different languages such as German and Dutch or Spanish and Italian is generally quite a bit harder because idiomic expressions tend to diverge rather fast, whereas practically all idiomatic expressions of a standard language are understood and at least occasionally used by its dialect speakers, and most new idiomatic expressions of a dialect can occasionally be heard in the standard language and have a good chance to be integrated into it because they are based on essentially the same cultural background. The main problem with Swiss German for German speakers from a different region isn't in the grammar or the vocabulary. It's the fact that it takes time to tune in to the systematic pronunciation shifts. This problem is admittedly less for Luxembourgish, as Luxembourgish is based on a dialect closer to the one Standard German is based on. So this is an additional reason why Luxembourgish is easy for German speakers.

same

Lol same

Haha😂 me too

Just hard for Luxemburgers to understand schwitzerdütsch😂

Funny thing was I didnt really understand anything but as soon as it was written down it was easy

"more than just a charming way of pronouncing" I think you made a very important finding. Even among the 'dialects of the same language' in the same region can differ in grammar in very strange ways if we provide right questions. This kind of research is called "Microtypology".

I wished we Austrians could also be that proud of our language. Even though Austro-Bavarian, as well as Alemannic, are recognized as independant languages, they don't have an offical status anywhere (except for Cimbrian in Italy, which belongs to the Austro-Bavarian group, but it only has a few hundred speakers). Most Austrians don't even know this facts and give up their local Bavarian or Alemannic dialects in favour of a German regiolect, because propaganda tells them that good German equals better intelligence and opportunities.

@@Leo-uu8du Yeah, I understand why this happens in poor countries, such as when Peruvian Indians switch from Quechua to Spanish, but that the same stupid homogenising mechanism has to operate even in some of the most affluent countries in the world is really exasperating.

@@Leo-uu8du i don't think that's realistic because you want one language in one country most of the times and Luxembourg is small enough that they just had one main dialect they could make they're own language of. How would you fit all Austrian dialects in one ruled language that's why you stay with Hochdeutsch it's the easier way

Knowing some French actually did help me with Luxembourgisch. Very interesting mix, all in all!

@@Quarton sounds a lot like Kölsch to me, but as far as I know it has nothing to do with the Kölsch dialect.

luxemburgers try to Gallicise as much as possible (French being the top administrative language, with French vocab trickling down to the common speech) - this goes back to hatred of the Nazis.

But ist is quite ununderstandable for us Dutchies...

@@joe_razor Luxemburg liegt doch näher an Köln als an München also ist schon was dran.

yes because luxemburgish is a moselfränkischer dialekt :D

For me as a Dutch person with Limburgish origins Luxemburgish is quite easy to follow since it resembles Limburgish quite a bit.

@@keigezellig Luxembourg+Limburg+Saarland when? :)

As a Flemish Belgian I also watched Hei Elei Kuck Elei when I was young. Strangly enough the Swiss dialect resembles a lot to a combination of German and different Flemish dialects.

At the time, commercial television was not allowed in the Netherlands. RTL found a way around regulations by broadcasting that programme from about 1am to 7 in a loop, thereby having enough to qualify as a foreign broadcaster that happens to broadcast in the Dutch language occasionally, and in that way being allowed on Dutch cable

Wait what ?? I'm german & RTL is a well known german tv channel. So i would never have guessed it's from luxembourg. I'm fr really surprised :0

Good luck finding a native speaker of Manx. But yeah, it would be nice to see indeed.

Manx would be very hard to find. Norbert could go even further and find a Welsh, Breton and Cornish speaker (Not sure how authentic the Cornish would be because it's only speakers now are revived speakers.).

I volunteer for Irish

The sad part is that most of them speak English to speak to one another.

@@lissandrafreljord7913 We all speak English to each other. Not going to say whose fault that is *cough England Cough*

I second this. I would love to have Yiddish in this mix

Austrians speak Hochdeutsch the exact same way as Bavarians, so they could have just had either the German or Austrian combined and then added a Yiddish Speaker or a Low German speaker like you said.

@@Wasserkaktus It's not exactly the same. In Austria you normally learn Austrian German, which has a different pronounciation and grammar to Federal German. While the grammar might be the same used by Bavarians in speech, the pronounciation differs, as it is kind of based on Viennese, while in Bavaria people use either Federal German or Bavarian pronounciation. This is most obvious for the letters a and r, but overall there aren't many differences between the three Standard Germans (Austrian, Swiss, Federal) anyway.

@@Leo-uu8du They're the same language and the same ethnic people, no matter how much Austrians try to deny and distance themselves from these "inconvenient" facts. You can't build a multi-ethnic empire and define yourselves as one ethnic group, just to then deny it once some bad history emerges.

@@Wasserkaktus Austrians are an ethnic group on their own as per definition of an ethnicity, but that's an unrelated topic. Anyways, as I wrote, the three Standard Germans are pretty much the same everywhere, even more so than American English vs. British English, because in case of English at least the orthography differs as well.

He already did a Rumansch one four months ago.

@@floridianwolf1029 Oh!! I didn’t see!

I don't understand why is Rumantsch called Rumantsch. If it can perfectly be "Grison".

@@gaborodriguez1346 Because they call their own language Rumantsch, maybe? (There actually is a "Rumantch Grischun", which is the unified compromise over the various variations.) In Tyrol they call their variant "Ladinisch" (Latin), while the Friulians went with naming their language after the region.

@@gaborodriguez1346 Grischun is a dialect of Rumantsch

Haha, I thought the same the other way round. When we would talk very slowly to each other in Schwiizerdütsch and Lëtzebuergesch (is that how it’s written?) we could probably understand quite a lot. That would be a fun challenge to see how good this would work. 😃

@@MischMagnifique "Lëtzebuergesch" is perfect, but most people here don't care a lot about orthography and grammar. My generation was the first to learn our Mother tongue at school (became an official language decades later with German and French), elderly just write as they think it would be correct. Would be a funny challenge, I'm in.

@@Sky14657 Oooh, interesting! So your elders handle it a bit like we do still in Switzerland? Because we don't have any orthography or rules for how to write, everybody just writes how they speak when writing in Swissgerman. Often times, elderly people don't write Swissgerman at all, but stick to Standard German. We are still considered "a German dialect", not a language in its own right, since Swissgerman consists of different Allemanic dialects. Therefore it would be hard to make up rules, because the various dialects differ greatly from each other, and I doubt that they would all give in to a "standard variant". 😅 Are there different dialects in Luxembourgish?

at full speed? You may want to try Bern if you're struggling with speed :) But I agree, this was quite interesting. I think the same was true for the Austrian lady. And the reason could be that Austrian, Swiss German and Luxembourgish are all Upper German dialects (east, west and central). However, Standard German (very often falsely called "Hochdeutsch") is acutally a lower German (Niederdeutsch) dialect. So the German guy should have had the hardest time. Not only did he not practice his mother tongue as much living in the USA most of his life, he also was the closest to speak Standard German.

@@psibiza Is Luxemburguish really high german though? I thought Franks spoke middle german.

Oh my goodness, and how!

Thank you!

@@NobbiMD thank YOU!

ok

Exactly! Sounded really similar to the Dutch expression.

You might have spotted a connection: Franconian languages.

The same in German 👍

One thing Luxembourgish and Dutch have in common -apart from the historico-political connection- are emphatic vowels, especially the many different "e-sounds".

And there we are in Plattgerman as well. Almost the same everywhere.

Das hann isch aa vermissd.

@@seorsamaclately4294 Isch aach

"Es Anita gebbt Mutter..."😂

😂

I wonder if this one would translate to English as "What the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve over".

@@DavidPaulMorgan you mean aus dem Auge, aus dem Sinn (out of sight, out of mind)?

I'm confident it exists in every continental Germanic language.

He doesnt, its his motherlanguage

Merci Krishna! Cool, dass de Conlange gären hues. Hit me up, seems like you're a brother from another mother. Äddi!

Of course is Luxembourgish still a german dialekt and a part of the the Moselle Franconian language. Only difference is som french words the people of luxembourgh integratet in their local dialect! A german from the other side of the border nearly talk the same and even I can understand most of that, what they speak in your beautiful small country ;-)

Haha I am from Luxembourg, I played football once with some dutch kids in Den Haag when I was little, I kept talking Luxembourgish and they talked Dutch, neither of us really understood what the other was saying exactly but we both got the point xD

Same in the UK: "What you doing that for?!"

@@cedrickrummes3876 In my southern Scots dialect (a variety of lalans) we can say "What for no?" meaning "Why not?". My dad's answer was always "Because for weel", which doesn't really mean anything.

Yep, same.

also, the British English pronunciation

But careful it is not one

@@cyrildewaha but he has a point. kerkraads is an ripuarian variety and close with luxembourgish

yes, there are a lot of isoglosses that group Limburg dialect sounds and luxemburg sounds together.

@@ricardodeooij4961 Yes sure maybe, I don't know about that

@@DrWhom Luxembourg*

Merci Roger! Schottland ass e schéint Land.

True, I find Swiss German really adorable sounding, it has a nice lilt to it. Especially when a cute guy like Rikard speaks it lol. Or my lovely Swiss/Swedish cousin who has a very pleasant Swiss accent when she speaks Swedish too, since she's lived all her life in Switzerland.

Absolutely. And the voice! :)

C’était très difficile pour moi à comprendre ! 😂

thanks hehe

It is a German dialect

I can translate this one!

That's coming in part 2. :)

@@Ecolinguist ah cool!

I thought the same!

I think Norbert can be allowed to experiment a little with the form 😉 I don't find it to be a big deal, and this way it might get a little more accessible for people who find it a bit challenging to read subtitles when the subject is a complex matter like e.g. grammar, like the Lux guy does in the video. Just my thoughts.

Interessant. Ich konnte Rikards schweizerdeutsch sehr gut verstehen. Und ich fand es sehr romantisch. 🤪

Ich komme aus Magdeburg und mir geht's genauso

Gruß auch von Mannheim!