A petition to popularise the Luxembourg language has been launched in Luxembourg
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In a country where three languages are official and English is rapidly gaining ground, Luxembourgish risks losing not only its priority but also its written form. The author of a new petition numbered 3836, Aleks Jevdokimov, disagrees. In the document, he calls for Luxembourgish to be made a compulsory school subject with a clear programme covering grammar, spelling and writing development.
Today, as the initiator emphasises, although the language is widely used in oral everyday communication, it remains virtually unlearned in written form, even among schoolchildren. Many people can speak Luxembourgish but cannot write it correctly. As a result, the language is perceived as "inferior" or "imperfect", which exacerbates its displacement by other languages, especially in the written and educational spheres.
The document proposes four key measures at once:
- Introduce the compulsory subject "Luxembourgish: writing and grammar" in both primary and secondary education programmes.
- Start teacher training with a focus on the didactics of Luxembourgish and its normalised orthography.
- Develop and implement modern textbooks and manuals adapted to a multilingual educational environment.
- Establish official language tests along the lines of DELF (French) or Goethe-Zertifikat (German) so that students can prove proficiency in the national language.
The petition emphasises that being able to write and read Luxembourgish is not only a matter of culture, but also of self-confidence and a sense of belonging. In a multilingual country, full command of the national language becomes a bonding element rather than a factor of exclusion.
The wording of the appeal is respectful of the multilingual nature of the country, but at the same time insists on the threat of the disappearance of the written tradition of Luxembourgish. As the author emphasises: "The national language, if well taught, is not an instrument of division but a symbol of respect and unity".
