“It’s the speakers who make the language”, says ZLS director

“Preparing Luxembourgish for digitisation and for artificial intelligence is the biggest challenge for the language today”, explains Alexandre Ecker, the new manager of ZLS, the Centre for Luxembourgish language, who appeared on RTL Radio on Monday.

It is about “producing valuable data to feed the new digital systems”, in order for the systems to have a “good” understanding of the Luxembourgish language. In other languages, there are already very efficient recognition programmes which enable to to talk into your phone and then receive a written message. Soon, a similar transcription programme for Luxembourgish will hit the market: d’Schréifmaschinn (the typewriter in English) and it works well.

Moreover, the University of Luxembourg is working on another project. Their systems will even tackle the dialects of the language, adds Ecker. In this context, contact has been taken up with firms of the big four such as Apple and Google. They are “not interested in linguistic recognition programmes that are ready to use, yet they would like to integrate the data into their own systems.”

“Gare la box” (Watch out), “maach keng Fisematenten” (Don't be silly)

There are a lot of beautiful old words in Luxembourgish, and they need to be used otherwise they will just disappear. “It’s the speakers who make the language”, claims Ecker.

The ZLS has published a useful series of “Lëtzebuerger Wuertschatz” which are Luxembourgish dictionaries that explain the most ancient and unknown expressions, among others. There is also a volume in planning which concentrates on the young colloquial language. Several new projects are going to be announced during the Walfer Bicherdeeg book fair.

Luxembourgish, a modern language 

“Luxembourgish is a modern language” underlines the director of ZLS. Thus it is also “normal that anglicisms become more and more frequent” in Luxembourgish.

On the one hand, “because those words signify new things which do not exist in Luxembourgish. The best example is IT, for which numerous new words have appeared, since they describe things that originate in the Anglo-Saxon sphere.” It is a “completely expectable evolution, which is also noticeable in French and German.”

On the other hands these anglicisms are normal because “young people use these words and they influence the language, as I have already said.” The centre is there to “observe this phenomenon and join it.” “If we see that a word has really become established and has found its place in everyone’s use, then we will add it to the LOD”, the Luxembourgish Online Dictionary.

ZLS's other endeavours 

A new language is going to be added to the LOD soon, but  Ecker has not wanted to reveal which one just yet. The Luxembourgish glossary will also be made more complete.

One volume which will be published soon elaborates on Luxembourgish animals and another one will focus on insults. “We have actually realised that insult definitions are very appreciated. While analysing the search data, the insults are, by far, in pole position”, concludes Ecker.