Luxembourgish Lessons #1: Basics

[PatrickOsa]

This is a test to see the look of the Luxembourgish lessons once I release the grammar portion of the course, just to get a general feel of how I would handle things, as well as to give a brief introduction for what's to come.

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Basics 1

Nouns
In Luxembourgish, in the same manner as in German, all nouns are capitalized. For instance, “the hat” would be written as den Hutt, and “my apple” as mäin Apel. This will make identifying nouns easier.

Three Genders
Nouns in Luxembourgish have one of three genders: masculine, feminine, or neuter. This makes it very important to learn the grammatical gender of a new word along with the word itself in order to make grammatical conjugations easier as new features are introduced.

In terms of the nominative case, there are two main definite articles and two indefinite articles. The definite article “Den” (the) is reserved for masculine nouns and the article “D’” for feminine and neuter nouns, while the indefinite article “en” (an) is reserved for masculine and neuter nouns and the article “eng” for feminine nouns.

Quick Note: The article “D’” applies to all feminine and neuter nouns, regardless of whether the word starts with a consonant or vowel

Here is a chart to show the application of these articles:

Eifeler Regel
Now, you may be thinking “Wait…why is there no ‘n’ in De Mann when the masculine article is ‘Den’? Is this a typo?”. This is where the idea of Eifeler Regel (Eifel Rule) in Luxembourgish comes into play. For now, we won’t go into too much depth into Eifeler Regel, but these are the basics:

The letter -n (or -nn if they’re in a pair) at the end of words is deleted depending on the beginning of the next word. For example:

“Den Apel” (The apple), “Den Hutt” (The hat), but “De Mann” (The man)

Eifeler regel does not apply:

1. If the following word begins with d, h, n, t, or z
2. If the following word begins with a vowel
3. If the word is at the end of a sentence

We will discuss more on Eifeler Regel in later lessons

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Next Lesson

• Luxembourgish Lessons #2: More on the Eifel Rule

[LauraKnight2]

Wow, just wow.

[Caroline695818]

Mëtteg Patrick, méchs du nach weider mam Ausbau vum Lëtzebuergeschen op Duolingo? Ech proposéiere mech fir matzemaachen. Meng Schüler géife sech freeën an där sinn et der eng ganz Rei :) Mell dech einfach! Caroline

[Rachel411575]

I am so happy I found this post! My boyfriend is from Luxembourg and his parents hardly speak any English. My German is okay and we could talk but I want to be able to communicate with them through Luxembourgish. Thank you so much for doing this! I plan on reviewing all of your work!

[Jarrett544701]

Thank you for these lessons! I recently started looking into what Luxembourg is like (geography, food, and culture) and I like what Luxembourg has to offer. By studying your lessons, I think I will have a much better time when I visit Luxembourg.

[alkmaar67]

I hope you will get to visit as it's a cracking little place and of course great for polyglots! I used to go to the Polygot Club every week when I lived there.

[AKicsiMacska]

I have a question!

You said that the eifel rule doesn't apply if the word is at the end of the sentence... so "De Mann" would become "Den Mann" if it was at the end of a sentence?? Like I punch den Mann???

[PatrickOsa]

I probably should've made this a little more clear, but when I said that the Eifel rule doesn't apply at the end of the sentence, I was referring to just the word at the end of the sentence. In your example, the word I'm referring to is Mann, not den. So the sentence would still be "I punch de Mann.". Eifel rule applies to individual words, not word groups.

[AKicsiMacska]

Okay Thank you! So If I were to say like "I punch the..." even if the should be "de" it would be "den"

I don't really know any other luxembourgish words, but I'm assuming "the" isn't the only word that this applies to...