Don’t Learn German. Please.

The German Pitfall

It is tempting to think: “Since I am going through the trouble of learning Luxembourgish, why not study German right along with it. The two are practically the same, am I right?” Yes, at its core, Luxembourgish is a germanic language and runs on a very similar grammatical and lexical operating system. But in many aspects the two languages are also far from the same. It’s this complicated relationship that ends up throwing many students off track and in practically all cases, it is their Luxembourgish that suffers.

Not real Luxembourgish

The result is quite disheartening: German words are strung together and sentences are sprinkled with some Luxembourgish pronouns to pass them off as Luxembourgish. And I do not blame students for that. It is simply what happens when you try to learn both languages at the same time, especially when you have no prior background in germanic languages. Being the language wizards they are, most Luxembourgers will of course understand you, but your effort will probably not be considered a true and admirable Luxembourgish speech act.

Be patient

So if your initial goal is to learn and become good at Luxembourgish, please stay away from German (or Dutch for that matter) at least until you have built some solid foundation in the language. Afterwards, and once you have a deeper understanding of the language, it might even be a helpful tool at mastering a further germanic language.

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