Have you been struggling with your Luxembourgish lessons? Well, never fear! Mike McQuaide, aka An American in Luxembourg, has done what no man has done before and discovered a way to learn Luxembourgish easily.*

*Please take with a liberal amount of salt.

McQuaide's method bridges the gap between English and Luxembourgish. With a few key suffixes, any English word can easily become Luxembourgish.

Starting his video off with the more traditional "Moien, Ech sinn de Mike,"  McQuaide then goes on to introduce his rather unconventional method. The ambitious video, How to speak Lëtzebuergesch, was posted on Facebook on 5 February and only lasts two and a half minutes.

As easy as pie

McQuaide's method is simple and above all, simply requires the "bendy thing", aka the suffix "ray-er-run". Using the example of 'I go home', he translates it to "Ech goréieren home".

Then, McQuaide goes through a number of other verbs to prove his theory.

If you're happy to start exploring McQuaidian Luxembourgish, the following verbs are a good start:

  • Eat = "eatéieren"
  • Drive = "Ech drivéieren"
  • Swim = "Ech Swiméieren"

RTL

© facebook / an american in luxembourg

McQuaidian Luxembourgish isn't just limited to verbs, he also has a handy hack for nouns. The suffix in this case is "ee-yoh-nin."
Examples:

  • information  = "informatiounen" (not technically wrong!)
  • "I go home" = "Ech goréieren Homeiounen"
  • "I ride my bike" = "Ech rideéieren my Bikeiounen”
  • "I eat my dinner" = “ech eatéieren my dinneriounen”

For those seeking more of a challenge

McQuaide doesn't stop at the basics, he also has some recommendations for those hoping to pass as true Luxembourgish linguists. Sprinkle "little nonsense words" like "esou", "sech", "dobäi", "schon" and "eemol" like
into your sentences to pass for a true native.

As a result, the advanced version of 'I want to go home' becomes "Ech wantéieren sech esou Homeiounen eemol schon opgegoréieren".

One final tip from McQuaide is to always end sentences with Äddi tchao tipptopp". Luxembourgish? Nailed in two and a half minutes.

The National Institute of Languages may not be keen to adopt this liberal method, so perhaps don't test your new linguistic skills with true Luxembourgish sticklers.

The Luxembourgish language boom

As an aside, the entertaining video does serve as a reminder that both Luxembourgish and English belong to the Germanic family tree. That said, English originates from the western Anglo-Frisian branch, whereas Luxembourgish belongs to the Central German subgroup.

The roots of both languages could definitely explain some similarities between the two, but that alone wouldn't justify the McQuaidian approach to Luxembourgish.

However, Luxembourgish has never been as popular as it is now: nearly 400,000 people worldwide speak the language!