Pronunciation matters

Make your life easier

If you have decided to start learning Lëtzebuergesch for whatever motivation, you have already gained my respect.

It is a difficult challenge, I know. Especially, since most people have many other obligations in their day to day life, such as family, work and social events (maybe not now during the pandemic but be sure, they will return).

This is why it is of the utmost importance to avoid these three mistakes when starting to learn Luxembourgish. There is a big chance that you will end up regretting it further down the line, since it will undoubtedly create so much more work for you and frustrate you to a point where it might ends up hurting your learning endeavours.

In this first of three posts, let’s have a look at the first primordial aspect to consider at the beginning of your language journey.

Embarrassing Misunderstandings

Have a look at the following two sentences:

“Wat leiers du do Tom?”

“Kuck! Den Thierry reiert am Dëppen.”

If these make perfect sense to you, given that you understand the necessary vocabulary, then you should definitely have a look my pronunciation class. And if you do not understand these sentences, let me translate what the speaker probably intended to say: “What are you studying there, Tom?” and “Look! Thierry stirs the pot.”

Now, spelled and pronounced as above, these sentences mean something totally different than what the person intended to say. The first one would mean: “What are you droning about there, Tom?” and the second one could be interpreted as “Look! Thierry is throwing up in the pot.”

“ ´ “ Makes all the difference

This is what the sentences should look like.

“Wat léiers du do Tom?”

“Kuck! Den Thierry réiert am Dëppen.”

Now, there is no doubt about the meaning of the sentences, as long as they are pronounced correctly as indicated by the acute accent “ ´ “ above the e. Unfortunately, there is much more where this came from and to make things worse, the problem is not limited to the acute accent but also to other Luxembourgish sounds, most notably the “ë” sound.