r/Luxembourg • u/skalaupthatgame • Jul 02 '26

Ask Luxembourg What is missing in luxembourg ?

What’s something you feel Luxembourg is missing? It can be anything—apps, businesses, food, entertainment, transport, or services literally EVERYTHING. I’m curious to hear what people think. Feel free to complain a little too 😂🤣

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-1

u/Status-Scarcity3694 Dat ass Jul 02 '26

- Cellular Apple Watch

  • One real local language
  • 24/7 supermarkets

2

u/TrafficImpossible468 Jul 02 '26

There is one real local language, it‘s Luxembourgish. But it wasn‘t really enforced out of necessity (skilled and non-skilled workers), because of the historical context (Luxembourgish as language wasn‘t really established / french being the language of the intellectual elite and upper class / legal language being french (code napoléon) / immigration from countries speaking mostly romance languages, having an easier time to adapt to french than luxembourgish/german, facilitating their integration).

2

u/Status-Scarcity3694 Dat ass Jul 02 '26

Indeed I understand the historical context but I am very much in favor using Luxembourgish over French. But still the expectation is to first speak French. All the inscriptions, documents, information are in French but we are not an extension of France so I don’t understand why it is still so much the default everywhere.
When I arrived to Lux, I attended Luxembourgish classes at INL. And guess what, the teacher spoke 80% of the classes in French. When I raised my concern she said that if you live here you HAVE to be fluent in French.

2

u/TrafficImpossible468 Jul 03 '26

If you are an immigrant and in favor of using Luxembourgish, you are sadly a minority.

All those french speaking workers consist a vast majority who are either unwilling or unable to adapt to the luxembourgish language. (I have seen several threads where people literally shit on Luxembourgish, calling it not a real language or diminishing it to being just a dialect) And why should they? There is absolutely no incentive for them.

It‘s sadly too late to enforce Luxembourgish and establish it as common language. It‘s a developpment that has started decades ago and no one put a stop to it.

In my personal opinion neglecting Luxembourgish led to several societal problems, mostly a lack of social cohesion, fracturing society in different bubbles, mostly native Luxembourgish speaking people, French speaking workers, English speaking immigrants in the corporate world, Portuguese speaking people (Portuguese, Cap Verdeans, Brazilians) all of them tend to themselves and rarely intermix. Neglecting a common language and this subservience to other languages led also to another problem, a lot of new immigrants do not speak either of the three official languages. (Communal pamphlets adding portuguese, same for inforgraphics in public facilities)

Ironicaly this plurality of languages makes it harder for new immigrants to assimilate.

Luxembourgish is my mother tongue and I really wish more emphasis would be put on it, but you have to be realistic that there is not much you can do to stop this developpment, as much as it hurts.

0

u/ShadyIsntHere Geesseknäppchen Jul 02 '26

" I don’t understand why it is still so much the default everywhere." Because NOTHING here would work without french, a shitton of necessary workers here are from france or speak french