Luxembourgish vs German | Can they understand the Luxembourgish language? | #1

Can German speakers understand the Luxembourgish language? Let's find out. 😎
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📝 Contact details for the guests of the show are:
🎥 Cédric Krummes - LinkedIin: / cedrickrummes
KZbin: @luxpaul
🇦🇹 Marlene Brychta - Instagram: @marlene_492113
🇩🇪 🇺🇸 Nobbi Lampe-Strang - Instagram: @knabebug
🇨🇭 Rikard Karaqi - Instagram: @neonnoen
🕰 Time Stamps:
0:00 - Introduction
2:12 - 1. Sentence
4:34 - 2. Sentence
7:15 - 3. Sentence
14:18 - 4. Sentence
21:03 - 5. Sentence
26:54 - 6. Sentence
🎥Recommended videos:
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🤓🇬🇧 Old English vs Modern English speakers → • Old English Language |...
🤓 🦂 Latin Language Spoken | Can Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian speakers understand it? → • Latin Language Spoken ... ​
🤗 Big hug to everyone reading my video descriptions! You rock! 🤓💪🏻
#Luxembourg

[@Ecolinguist]

I know it's been a while but I'm back! 🤗 I've been recording new episodes over the summer so lots of new videos are coming this autumn! I'll be editing them as fast as I can! 💪

[@FredericaFazbear]

Welcome back!! Can’t wait for the autumn journey

[@vexillonerd]

Do some Slavic languages. pls.

[@taylorfaucett7187]

@@vexillonerd There are many slavic language videos that he has done in the past. You should be able to find them in his profile.

[@marikaserasini2315]

Thanks😄 I found this video very interesting because I find swiss german very different from Germany's German 😲 I actually didn't know anything about Luxembourg, but I always would like to visit it, maybe in the future, but trying to speak in German😅

[@mamymimma]

Yay🤗

[@emberchord]

Also can I just say that the host switching between absolutely perfect pronunciation for each language is very, very, very satisfying.

[@Bilabius]

He has quite an encyclopedic knowledge base. The addition of Yiddish to the mix was also a nice touch.

[@revylokesh1783]

Most Luxembourgers are polyglott (quadrilingual, usually)

[@cedrickrummes3876]

Merci

[@ftsfootballvlogs4890]

Luxembourger learn german, french and english at school at an early age, so it's quite common here.

[@kwj_nekko_6320]

@@ftsfootballvlogs4890 Being a citizen of a country surrounded by much larger superpowers... As a (South) Korean, I think I can share the feeling a bit. After the colonial era, Korea has been a chessboard for Russians, Chinese, Japanese and Americans while the South and the North are fighting each other to prove that one's ideology is better than the other's. But Korea has been isolated from its neighbors both geographically and socially for very long time, so Korean people still don't have any strong motivation or compulsion to learn any foreign language, aside of English (which is not really spoken in the country, but only used as a 'job weapon').

[@desanipt]

I felt Marlene when she saw the "nope" and gave up 😂😂😂

[@peterfireflylund]

That was oddly enough one of the easiest for me. I’m a native Danish speaker and have only ever lived in Denmark.

[@hoathanatos6179]

In my dialect Nopeschlänner is Noboaschlenda and I even took a minute to recognize it. The -p- really threw me off.

[@anastasiadorofeeva4129]

Your phrases an empty phrase…

[@endthisnonsense7202]

that was a difficult one indeed. My guess is it relates to "neighbor" and "nabuur" in English/Dutch.

[@Sky14657]

@@endthisnonsense7202 Luxembourg was in an Union with the Netherlands in the 1800s so there probably are a lot of words that got mixed up with Dutch I'm not into etymology though.

[@yannschonfeld5847]

One of the best if not THE best yet. Any one of these people should be invited back whenever possible. Cedric is obviously very well versed in linguistics. Please bring him back. His understanding and humour are the gems and lights of this brief but lively comparisons and demonstrations. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

[@nmatavka]

I feel that Cédric slightly overemphasised the political correctness/"gender studies" buzzwords like "pronouns" (in the LGBT+ sense, rather than the grammatical sense) and "heteronormativity", that, as he himself said, have stabilised neither in Luxembourgish nor in English (although, apparently, less so in Schwyzerdüütsch). This is a rather niche part of the grammar, and it's also a very nebulous part of the grammar, so I personally wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. On one hand this was a very courageous choice... on the other hand, it was a very COURAGEOUS choice, if you get my drift.

[@pia_mater]

@@nmatavka that's a long way of saying "I'm homophobic"

[@nmatavka]

@@pia_mater Nothing homophobic about that. I didn't say anything against Cédric personally, or any other person - this was in re. the material presented (languages are in a state of flux, so maybe wait a bit more before doing presentations like this one).

[@papaquonis]

As a Danish speaker with a reasonable understanding of German, it's pretty clear I have a much better chance of understanding a Luxembourgish speaker than a Swiss German speaker. Great video!

[@gaborodriguez1346]

Alemannic German is so odd. I wonder why is Swiss French so similar to Standard French but Swiss German so different from Standard German.

[@maijaz6228]

I'm only learning german, and for me, I didn't hear any significant difference between swiss german and luxembourgish.

[@yassimob3868]

as a German I found Swiss German more similar to German than Luxembourgish.

[@HotelPapa100]

@@gaborodriguez1346 There used to be a Swiss patois, which is close tho the French Savoyard dialect. But it was driven out as a sociolect. There are efforts made to conserve it in the few remote villages where it is still spoken.

[@HotelPapa100]

@@yassimob3868 As usual, it's a continuum. So it depends what your local variety is. If you are around low-German dialects, Luxemburgish is easier, if you are more around the upper German dialects, Swiss German is closer. A thing I find distinctive about the dialects along the Rhine is the transition of Std German B to W (aber -> awwer). That begins as far south as Alsatian, which despite that is clearly an Alemannic dialect.

[@emberchord]

I am from Austria too, and the "Was der Bauer nicht kennt, das frisst er nicht" is an extremely common saying here as well.

[@KommentarSpaltenKrieger]

Also in Northern Germany ("Wat de Buur nech kennt, dat freit he nech"). Ironic how this poses as some sort of regional proverb (both in form and content) while being universal to all varieties of German and even beyond^^

[@tigervv6437]

Well let‘s add Dutch then as well. „Wat de boer niet kent, vreet hij niet.“

[@TheMikeOrganist]

Wos da Baua ned käinnt, frisst a ned. ;)

[@hy3na739]

same in switzerland

[@julitendo3744]

gibts im badischen auch

[@thkarape]

Loving the germanic language content. An "Old English: Can Dutch, Low German and Hochdeutsch speakers understand it?" video would be awesome.

[@dalebewan]

Definitely. The one with different English speakers trying to get it was fun, but clearly the wrong group to have a serious attempt at it.

[@Edward-it9cr]

add a frisian speaker in there as well :)

[@kevintsap3692]

@ecolinguist this is a great idea

[@demi3115]

adding a scandinavian speaker would be interesting too

[@mee9981]

What does low German mean?

[@epochseven4197]

I think this challenge was especially difficult for the three guests because they had to do the following: 1) understand the spoken and written Luxembourgish 2) translate it to their variety/dialect of German 3) translate it to English (including the exact/specific pronouns and prepositions, etc.) That said, job well done to all of them!

[@johaquila]

It was actually much easier than most similar tasks in this series. That's because until only a few decades ago, Luxembourgish was just a regional dialect of German, making translation to German generally very straightforward. (It was declared the national language of Luxembourg, and therefore a language, in the 20th century. Now practically everyone in the country is trilingual: German, French and Luxembourgish.) On top of that, both the German and the Swiss guy are familiar with German dialects that have similarities to Luxembourgish. Translating to English as well didn't make this any harder; this was just for presentation to an international audience.

that's what made it so briliant to watch

[@MellonVegan]

Dunno, that's not particularly difficult imo. The only real challenge is usually the understanding part and that should be very easy for any German speaker, in this one. The French loanwords were really the only thing that could throw you off. I wonder how this would turn out if they brought in some Germans with particularly thick accents of their home regions (if those even still exist in our generation).

[@leonamay8776]

@@johaquila Swiss German is also "just" a dialects of German. I don't see why that would make the translation more or less straightforward.

[@johaquila]

@@leonamay8776 Extreme similarity due to the fact that (1) both varieties are very closely related and therefore similar to start with, and (2) most of the speakers of the dialect are fully bilingual in the main language. This is the kind of situation where language features are transferred in both directions, making them even more similar. Dialects aren't necessarily very good at changing the main variety, but the main variety has an enormous leveling effect on dialect diversity. Also (3) dialect and main variety aren't really distinguished. People actually speak a blend of the two that sits on different points of the spectrum between them, according to the situation. E.g. relatively pure dialect in their family, slightly more standard mixed in in the workplace or when speaking to dialect speakers of a similar dialect, even more when speaking to non-dialect speakers in an informal situation, and even more when things get 'official' in some way. The result of all this is that translating between varieties of the same language is mostly as easy as (1) replacing a few words, (2) changing the pronunciation according to some simple rules, (3) distinguishing a few grammatical forms in the main language that have already fused in the dialect (the reverse is much rarer) while the overall sentence structure stays the same, and (4) occasionally choosing differently among alternative sentence structures. Translating between closely related but different languages such as German and Dutch or Spanish and Italian is generally quite a bit harder because idiomic expressions tend to diverge rather fast, whereas practically all idiomatic expressions of a standard language are understood and at least occasionally used by its dialect speakers, and most new idiomatic expressions of a dialect can occasionally be heard in the standard language and have a good chance to be integrated into it because they are based on essentially the same cultural background. The main problem with Swiss German for German speakers from a different region isn't in the grammar or the vocabulary. It's the fact that it takes time to tune in to the systematic pronunciation shifts. This problem is admittedly less for Luxembourgish, as Luxembourgish is based on a dialect closer to the one Standard German is based on. So this is an additional reason why Luxembourgish is easy for German speakers.

[@crimsonsmirk]

(German native speaker here) First 2 sentences: easy, understood them completely just by listening. 3rd: 60 % listening, 90 % reading. 4th: 5 % listening (only September really) and realising Luxembourgish is more than just a charming way of pronouncing German.

[@kwj_nekko_6320]

"more than just a charming way of pronouncing" I think you made a very important finding. Even among the 'dialects of the same language' in the same region can differ in grammar in very strange ways if we provide right questions. This kind of research is called "Microtypology".

[@Leo-uu8du]

I wished we Austrians could also be that proud of our language. Even though Austro-Bavarian, as well as Alemannic, are recognized as independant languages, they don't have an offical status anywhere (except for Cimbrian in Italy, which belongs to the Austro-Bavarian group, but it only has a few hundred speakers). Most Austrians don't even know this facts and give up their local Bavarian or Alemannic dialects in favour of a German regiolect, because propaganda tells them that good German equals better intelligence and opportunities.

[@dumupad3-da241]

@@Leo-uu8du Yeah, I understand why this happens in poor countries, such as when Peruvian Indians switch from Quechua to Spanish, but that the same stupid homogenising mechanism has to operate even in some of the most affluent countries in the world is really exasperating.

[@finneich5105]

@@Leo-uu8du i don't think that's realistic because you want one language in one country most of the times and Luxembourg is small enough that they just had one main dialect they could make they're own language of. How would you fit all Austrian dialects in one ruled language that's why you stay with Hochdeutsch it's the easier way

[@kamrat_ett1722]

It really sounds like Dutch + German + a tiny bit of French to me. As I Dutchman I love this language.

[@Quarton]

Knowing some French actually did help me with Luxembourgisch. Very interesting mix, all in all!

[@joe_razor]

@@Quarton sounds a lot like Kölsch to me, but as far as I know it has nothing to do with the Kölsch dialect.

[@DrWhom]

luxemburgers try to Gallicise as much as possible (French being the top administrative language, with French vocab trickling down to the common speech) - this goes back to hatred of the Nazis.

[@Doeff8]

But ist is quite ununderstandable for us Dutchies...

[@ChrisOrban79]

@@joe_razor Luxemburg liegt doch näher an Köln als an München also ist schon was dran.

[@shaorandra]

I am Swiss and I just learnt how much luxembourgish I can understand :O This is fascinating!

[@Ainikki]

same

[@hypercumstone44]

Lol same

[@maeru_689]

Haha😂 me too

[@almightya3591]

Just hard for Luxemburgers to understand schwitzerdütsch😂

[@pingo6874]

Funny thing was I didnt really understand anything but as soon as it was written down it was easy

[@parmentier7457]

I am Dutch and learned Luxembourgish every morning as a child before going to primary school. Dutch commercial television was introduced in the 1990s under the name RTL 4 (Radio Television Luxembourg). Every morning at 7:00 am, I watched the Dutch cartoons, but it started with ‘Hei Elei Kuck Elei’. This was a Luxembourg news program. Strangely enough, I understood what the Luxembourg newscaster was saying. And so I watched this every morning for about five years.

[@keigezellig]

For me as a Dutch person with Limburgish origins Luxemburgish is quite easy to follow since it resembles Limburgish quite a bit.

[@Eugensson]

@@keigezellig Luxembourg+Limburg+Saarland when? :)

[@lindamaes6454]

As a Flemish Belgian I also watched Hei Elei Kuck Elei when I was young. Strangly enough the Swiss dialect resembles a lot to a combination of German and different Flemish dialects.

[@gwaptiva]

At the time, commercial television was not allowed in the Netherlands. RTL found a way around regulations by broadcasting that programme from about 1am to 7 in a loop, thereby having enough to qualify as a foreign broadcaster that happens to broadcast in the Dutch language occasionally, and in that way being allowed on Dutch cable

[@nosc132]

Wait what ?? I'm german & RTL is a well known german tv channel. So i would never have guessed it's from luxembourg. I'm fr really surprised :0

[@kulvrik4529]

I am a native speaker of the Moselle Franconian language, I live in the state of Saarland, Germany. The similarities between my local dialect and luxembourgish are enormous!!

[@criff85]

yes because luxemburgish is a moselfränkischer dialekt :D

[@horacethrace]

Hoping for Manx, Irish and Scottish Gaelic

[@arthur_p_dent]

Good luck finding a native speaker of Manx. But yeah, it would be nice to see indeed.

[@Wasserkaktus]

Manx would be very hard to find. Norbert could go even further and find a Welsh, Breton and Cornish speaker (Not sure how authentic the Cornish would be because it's only speakers now are revived speakers.).

[@robertmcdonnell3117]

I volunteer for Irish

[@lissandrafreljord7913]

The sad part is that most of them speak English to speak to one another.

[@robertmcdonnell3117]

@@lissandrafreljord7913 We all speak English to each other. Not going to say whose fault that is *cough England Cough*

[@charlesk1089]

This was extremely interesting. It would be quite interesting to add a speaker of either Plattdeutsch or Yiddish to this group.

[@klicknack]

I second this. I would love to have Yiddish in this mix

[@Wasserkaktus]

Austrians speak Hochdeutsch the exact same way as Bavarians, so they could have just had either the German or Austrian combined and then added a Yiddish Speaker or a Low German speaker like you said.

[@Leo-uu8du]

@@Wasserkaktus It's not exactly the same. In Austria you normally learn Austrian German, which has a different pronounciation and grammar to Federal German. While the grammar might be the same used by Bavarians in speech, the pronounciation differs, as it is kind of based on Viennese, while in Bavaria people use either Federal German or Bavarian pronounciation. This is most obvious for the letters a and r, but overall there aren't many differences between the three Standard Germans (Austrian, Swiss, Federal) anyway.

[@Wasserkaktus]

@@Leo-uu8du They're the same language and the same ethnic people, no matter how much Austrians try to deny and distance themselves from these "inconvenient" facts. You can't build a multi-ethnic empire and define yourselves as one ethnic group, just to then deny it once some bad history emerges.

[@Leo-uu8du]

@@Wasserkaktus Austrians are an ethnic group on their own as per definition of an ethnicity, but that's an unrelated topic. Anyways, as I wrote, the three Standard Germans are pretty much the same everywhere, even more so than American English vs. British English, because in case of English at least the orthography differs as well.

[@austinmoore1405]

Luxembourgish should get more attention in linguistic communities, so thank you for this video! (Maybe you can do a Rumansch one?)

[@floridianwolf1029]

He already did a Rumansch one four months ago.

[@austinmoore1405]

@@floridianwolf1029 Oh!! I didn’t see!

[@gaborodriguez1346]

I don't understand why is Rumantsch called Rumantsch. If it can perfectly be "Grison".

[@HotelPapa100]

@@gaborodriguez1346 Because they call their own language Rumantsch, maybe? (There actually is a "Rumantch Grischun", which is the unified compromise over the various variations.) In Tyrol they call their variant "Ladinisch" (Latin), while the Friulians went with naming their language after the region.

[@RoderickVI]

@@gaborodriguez1346 Grischun is a dialect of Rumantsch

[@Sky14657]

As a Luxembourger it was interesting to see that a Swiss understood almost everything. Even better, reading Swiss German brought up lots of similarities with Luxembourgish. Of course, if I go to Switzerland and they throw their Schwyzerdütsch at full speed at me, I don't get a single word. But this was really fun. 👍

[@MischMagnifique]

Haha, I thought the same the other way round. When we would talk very slowly to each other in Schwiizerdütsch and Lëtzebuergesch (is that how it’s written?) we could probably understand quite a lot. That would be a fun challenge to see how good this would work. 😃

[@Sky14657]

@@MischMagnifique "Lëtzebuergesch" is perfect, but most people here don't care a lot about orthography and grammar. My generation was the first to learn our Mother tongue at school (became an official language decades later with German and French), elderly just write as they think it would be correct. Would be a funny challenge, I'm in.

[@MischMagnifique]

@@Sky14657 Oooh, interesting! So your elders handle it a bit like we do still in Switzerland? Because we don't have any orthography or rules for how to write, everybody just writes how they speak when writing in Swissgerman. Often times, elderly people don't write Swissgerman at all, but stick to Standard German. We are still considered "a German dialect", not a language in its own right, since Swissgerman consists of different Allemanic dialects. Therefore it would be hard to make up rules, because the various dialects differ greatly from each other, and I doubt that they would all give in to a "standard variant". 😅 Are there different dialects in Luxembourgish?

[@psibiza]

at full speed? You may want to try Bern if you're struggling with speed :) But I agree, this was quite interesting. I think the same was true for the Austrian lady. And the reason could be that Austrian, Swiss German and Luxembourgish are all Upper German dialects (east, west and central). However, Standard German (very often falsely called "Hochdeutsch") is acutally a lower German (Niederdeutsch) dialect. So the German guy should have had the hardest time. Not only did he not practice his mother tongue as much living in the USA most of his life, he also was the closest to speak Standard German.

[@RoderickVI]

@@psibiza Is Luxemburguish really high german though? I thought Franks spoke middle german.

[@Ralesk]

This was way more fun than I thought it would be :D Kinda wish Nobbi would have kept bringing Saarland translations too.

[@seorsamaclately4294]

Das hann isch aa vermissd.

[@nosc132]

@@seorsamaclately4294 Isch aach

[@schaerfentiefe1967]

"Es Anita gebbt Mutter..."😂

[@maxinatorborderls]

I am Dutch and really supprised by how recognisable the sentences were. Loved the second one. It's also a Dutch proverdb: "Wat de boer niet kent, dat vreet 'ie niet". Funny that it exists in all these languages, it must be a very old saying.

[@ZombiePigman642]

ok

[@FredericaFazbear]

Insanely wholesome. What a lovely group of awesome speakers :)

[@yannschonfeld5847]

Oh my goodness, and how!

[@NobbiMD]

Thank you!

[@FredericaFazbear]

@@NobbiMD thank YOU!

[@NinaFelwitch]

I grew up in Saarland, which is right next to Luxembourg, near the french border, and I was able to understand roughly 90%. It is very similar to the german dialect I grew up with.

[@jonathanemslander6896]

Ok this was worth the 2 month wait Ecolinguist. You are the best!!

[@stefansoder6903]

Very interesting. As a Swedish and English speaker I understood a little more than 50%.

[@cedriclothritz7281]

I understood every single sentence! But seeing that I'm from Luxembourg myself, that might not be all that surprising...

[@user-gs3fl6mu3j]

😂

[@melle4390]

The second sentence really hit home for me as a Dutch person. We use the expression: 'wat de boer niet kent, dat vreet hij niet''. It's so similiar to Luxembourgish!

[@davidmacro1987]

Exactly! Sounded really similar to the Dutch expression.

[@gaborodriguez1346]

You might have spotted a connection: Franconian languages.

[@meritond2339]

The same in German 👍

[@revylokesh1783]

One thing Luxembourgish and Dutch have in common -apart from the historico-political connection- are emphatic vowels, especially the many different "e-sounds".

[@hannofranz7973]

And there we are in Plattgerman as well. Almost the same everywhere.

[@Xeniula]

As a Pole living in Berlin I undertood more Luxembourgish than Swiss German. It was very funny😄

[@kimberleyfung-loy9772]

Great host! Explained everything so well and spoke so calmly!

[@gabrieru1983]

This was absolutely wonderful! Congratulations to all involved...

[@user-ic4ce8xb5v]

Very cool language combo, thanks so much this was fun to watch

[@christianru5382]

I like how much passion he has in languages, he studies Luxembourgish language as doctorate and his passion is visible, I m very happy about that

[@friedasorber1653]

Fun. Thank you for doing this. I am a Dutch speaker and always listen to Letzeburg radio on drives to Switzerland. I feel it prepares me for the Schwytzer Deutsch near Basel, and there are connections to flemish dialects. Thank you for keeping my listening skills honed.

[@lolalilly155]

That second sentence made me giggle a lot. It sounds so much like the Dutch: “Wat de boer niet kent, dat vreet hij niet.” I never knew other languages also know this expression!

[@DavidPaulMorgan]

I wonder if this one would translate to English as "What the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve over".

[@leonamay8776]

@@DavidPaulMorgan you mean aus dem Auge, aus dem Sinn (out of sight, out of mind)?

[@Alias_Anybody]

I'm confident it exists in every continental Germanic language.

[@phantomendgamer]

I’m an English guy and my knowledge of all the languages is currently not that great, but I’ve been trying really hard and learnt a lot from this video! Thank you for making this ^^

[@Mindartcreativity]

Ech si vu Lëtzebuerg! I loved this video! I LOVE languages and the different connections between them and this was very cool to hear the similarities between the different German languages. Would be cool to see a Dutch speaker as well. Dutch and Luxembourgish are also very close. You guys did very well! Looking forward to part 2. Subbed!

[@doktorhans3349]

Oh finally! Super-glad to see the video that I'm waiting for almost a year :D and also happy that you've remembered for this whole time about making the video with Germanic speakers. I appreaciate it! Thank you, Norbert, LOTS of blesses you!

[@MartijnFrazer]

Wow, this is cool! As a Dutch speaker with only very basic knowledge of French and German I could decypher most of this pretty well! Sometimes the spoken sentence already made some sense, but more often it was the written sentence which made it quite clear to me what was being said.

[@JaneFokster]

Yep, same.

[@ConlangKrishna]

Merci Cédric, gutt gemaach! 👍 Servus, Guude, Grüezi, a Moien! Luxembourger here, who happens to live in Germany, has some family in Switzerland, and travels to Austria quite often, this was a delight in many ways. And yes, Luxembourgish is more than just a dialect 😉 Thank you all for this entertaining video! ❤

[@cedrickrummes3876]

Merci Krishna! Cool, dass de Conlange gären hues. Hit me up, seems like you're a brother from another mother. Äddi!

[@FrankDiron]

Of course is Luxembourgish still a german dialekt and a part of the the Moselle Franconian language. Only difference is som french words the people of luxembourgh integratet in their local dialect! A german from the other side of the border nearly talk the same and even I can understand most of that, what they speak in your beautiful small country ;-)

[@EusebiusAT]

This is such a nice group of people. Great dynamic!

[@mejlaification]

Great stuff as always. All of you were so nice. Tiptop job everyone.

[@JesseKuiper]

In Dutch we have the saying nr. 2 as well. "Wat de boer niet kent, dat vreet hij niet" or "dat eet hij niet". Both versions exist, and the difference between eten and vreten is the same as the difference between essen and fressen.

[@3g2i63]

That was awesome and very fun! I'm a french speaking swiss but I was surprised by how much I could grasp (not as much as the 3 guests, tho). Being used to (try to) decypher swiss german probably helped 😊

[@renatobabka263]

I don't speak any of these languages, but the video got my attention till the end! Tnx Norbert, waiting for more 😊

[@elizabethwilson153]

So good, let's get these guys on again!

[@alexmcfadden3150]

This video was awesome! I've been studying German for a long time now, and can speak it pretty well, so it was really interesting to see how much I could get as a non-native German speaker. Just audio is barely comprehensible, but audio plus text is actually quite comprehensible -- especially after seeing a couple of sentences and being taught about ginn/gëtt. As far as I'm aware, Luxembourgish is the closest language to German -- and even was technically considered a dialect of German until only a few decades ago, so it was really cool to see the contrast between these two really close languages. I'm glad there were German speakers from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (if only someone from Lichtenstein had been involved too lol), because it was so cool to see what was comprehensible to whom. Another cool video idea would be try German, Dutch, Luxembourgish, and Yiddish!

[@judith8161]

Sätze 1,2,3,5 und 6 habe ich ohne schriftliche Unterstützung problemlos verstanden. Bei Nummer 4 habe ich akustisch nur Bahnhof verstanden, schriftlich war dann alles klar. Was mir auffällt: Als Schweizerin habe ich den Vorteil, dass wir eigentlich ständig ein bisschen "flexibel zuhören" üben, wenn wir uns mit Leuten aus anderen Kantonen unterhalten. Ich bin es deshalb gewohnt, in anderen Varietäten des Deutschen nach vertrauten Elementen zu suchen und den Rest quasi sinngemäss zu ergänzen. Das klappt, wie auch bei den Beispielen hier, mal besser, mal weniger gut. Für mich ist Luxemburgisch etwa auf dem selben Level wie Walliserdeutsch: Manches verstehe ich problemlos, anderes ist einfach nur eine Fremdsprache, und da hilft dann auch langsam sprechen nicht. Was mir bei Marlene auffällt ist die betrübliche Realität, dass man in Österreich den Dialekt sehr geringschätzt. Schon die Neffen meines Mannes korrigieren mich hin und wieder, wenn ich zu stark (österreichischen) Dialekt spreche. Für mich ist das unverständlich: Dialekt ist für mich selbstverständlich die Alltagssprache. Die Standardvarietät des Deutschen verwende ich immer dann, wenn ich sicher sein will, dass mich alle Mitglieder einer größeren, sprachlich eher durchmischten Gruppe verstehen, sowie im Bildungskontext, weil dann der Wechsel zwischen geschriebener und geprochener Sprache reibungslos klappt. Danke für das sehr interessante Video. Ich gehe jetzt Wikipediaartikel auf Luxemburgisch lesen :D.

[@Rolando95]

Cedric is amazing!

[@fergrim]

That was a really interesting conversation, thank you!

[@viniciusfrattafritz4547]

Es ist sicherlich zwischen den beste Videos schon gemacht in dem Kanal. Vielen Dank für die Inhalte !

[@Weissenschenkel]

Love this! As an enthusiast of Hochdeutsch, it's nice to listen and try my luck guessing other Germanic cousins. Vielen Dank! 💖

[@InsistentlyInterdisciplinary]

I love Luxembourgish! This video was wonderful! When I was in Luxembourg, travelling from the Netherlands, I mainly used French and German (as I was spoken to in these languages), but when I was near a castle, far outside 'the city,' a little boy riding his bicycle started talking to my friend and me. I was delighted because he was speaking in Luxembourgish and I could understand what he was saying, to some extent.

[@blanco7726]

Haha I am from Luxembourg, I played football once with some dutch kids in Den Haag when I was little, I kept talking Luxembourgish and they talked Dutch, neither of us really understood what the other was saying exactly but we both got the point xD

[@bettinazauner4290]

I so love this!! These videos are highly addictive!! 😊

[@mgmc4538]

Very nice Cédric, thank you for this insight. Your moderation was very pleasant as well. :)

[@Quarton]

Awesome video, everyone! I am not fluent in German, but this has taught me so much, and the best part is that we can experience the dialects / regional variations of German as spoken in some of the different parts of Europe. I especially love the sound of Swiss German! (I'd say it reminds me of how Scotts English sounds to me, in my native language - American English! I really enjoyed the fact that you each took the time to explain what you heard, and why you chose your translations. Thanks to Cedric, and each one for your participation! (It's interesting that you're in Scotland, Cedric. It's a great country!)

[@cedrickrummes3876]

Merci Roger! Schottland ass e schéint Land.

[@fartreta]

True, I find Swiss German really adorable sounding, it has a nice lilt to it. Especially when a cute guy like Rikard speaks it lol. Or my lovely Swiss/Swedish cousin who has a very pleasant Swiss accent when she speaks Swedish too, since she's lived all her life in Switzerland.

[@Manticorrr]

Absolutely. And the voice! :)

[@aaronsakulich4889]

Regarding the first sentence- I speak zero German but I understood it, because the unofficial motto of the Pennsylvania Germans is "please dear God let us Germans remain what we are" (not sure how to spell it all in German or luxembourgish) :)

[@tatjanam.8328]

Wow, that was really interesting and educating 👍

[@zamisa6578]

Wow, das war ja spannend! Lacht mich nicht aus, aber ich glaube ich habe wirklich noch nie Luxemburgisch gehört. Wahnsinnig interessant diese Ähnlichkeiten und dann doch diese Unterschiede. Toll. 👍

[@rs27362]

The Luxembourgish sounds a lot like the local dialects of southern Limburg ( Netherlands). But we do not have as many French influences in the idioms.

[@cyrildewaha]

But careful it is not one

[@ricardodeooij4961]

@@cyrildewaha but he has a point. kerkraads is an ripuarian variety and close with luxembourgish

[@DrWhom]

yes, there are a lot of isoglosses that group Limburg dialect sounds and luxemburg sounds together.

[@cyrildewaha]

@@ricardodeooij4961 Yes sure maybe, I don't know about that

[@cyrildewaha]

@@DrWhom Luxembourg*

[@helilebon614]

Sehr interessant. Sehr gut gemacht.

[@schpiedie]

Brilliant! Enjoyed it very much!

[@StatusQuonald]

Loving these video's! Hoping to see some more Dutch-related video's coming year :)

[@shallowgal462]

In Pennsylvaanisch Deitsch, they say "wasfer" or "wasfur" instead of "warum." In English, we often question, when told to do something, "what for?"

[@cedrickrummes3876]

Same in the UK: "What you doing that for?!"

[@collieclone]

@@cedrickrummes3876 In my southern Scots dialect (a variety of lalans) we can say "What for no?" meaning "Why not?". My dad's answer was always "Because for weel", which doesn't really mean anything.

[@MedusaMrigesh]

As an Austrian I found this very interesting. I've met a few people from Luxembourg but they all speak German (and English, and French, perhaps Portuguese haha) so I've rarely heard Luxembourgish. It's not too hard to understand. Some sentences reminded me of how Yiddish sounds to me.

[@MedusaMrigesh]

also, the British English pronunciation

[@jahanas22]

Another a instructive video. I enjoyed learning more about Luxembourgish.

[@user-oo8xg9gx3m]

Большое спасибо за видео, Норберт! ☺

[@mikemathias1562]

Saarlandian here. I understood everything!😝🙌

[@PeterPan-dz7mu]

I'm from North-West Germany and I find Cèdric a lot easier to understand than Rikard XD.

[@NobbiMD]

Interessant. Ich konnte Rikards schweizerdeutsch sehr gut verstehen. Und ich fand es sehr romantisch. 🤪

[@nutzungsbedingungen1980]

Ich komme aus Magdeburg und mir geht's genauso

[@tonipennanen1470]

Good work again! If you ever do one of these episodes with Finnish and estonian, id be happy to participate ;D

[@Vintersemestre00]

This host and the three contestants are all so cool. I really really liked this one!

[@666rsrs]

That was great! i have a harder time understanding the swiss guy than i have with the luxembourgish guy though, because i come from the pfalz and what he said sounded pretty similar to the saarländisch or moselfränkisch dialects of our neighbours

[@reichsadlergermania2889]

Das war absolut genial!

[@mxMik]

I can translate this one!

[@XTSonic]

Very interesting, my Flemish Limburgic dialect definitely helped a lot with understanding Letzebuergisch 1. Vie wèlle blieve, wa vie zin. 2. Wa dem boer nèj kint, da vreet er nèj. 3. Mien klinne bruur git murrege mit zinne mäöt up skivakaanse no Zjwitserläön 4. Anita jäönt èjn Septemmer má, ma z'hed't sellefs nug nèj tege urre bäös gezeid. 5. Tit vandaag wit ich nog altee nie, veurwa m'n biologieleiräör zu streng war in't Lyceum. Flemish Dutch in general also used "voorwa(t)" instead of "waarom"

[@notyourbusiness1352]

Very interesting. I do not speak any of the languages in these videos except English, and I always end up watching them fully. Excited for part 2.

[@BobbyBermuda1986]

I may be biased here, but I always appreciate whenever there's at least one trained linguist in the mix.

[@DavidPaulMorgan]

Love Rikard's accent when speaking his Swiss-German. On my last visit to Switzerland I was able to get by on my German and (very poor) French. Fascinating stuff. I had not heard any Luxemburgish until today.

[@MarynaRGurzuf]

Hi! I'm glad you're come back! 😊 This is the first time I hear Luxembourgish. Thanks for this experience! It's also curious how much the accents of German speakers from different countries differ.

[@ZarzenLetsPlay]

Finally haha! This is what I waited for but never thought that it would come xD

[@mrpetebojangles21]

Today I learned, me, as an American who lived abroad in Germany for a while, can understand a lot of luxembourgisch! Not so much when spoken, but the written form was fairly easy (these examples) to intuit the meaning.

[@jean-claudewallard9309]

I enjoyed this exercise a lot. It reminds me of a conversation we had with engineers from the Arbed company, my boss and I. We both could speak German but we were lost when they started to speak dialect. Now I see that it's easy when sentences are written. I know some dialect from Lorraine close to the German border and this helps.

[@stephanobarbosa5805]

Danke für diese video, herr Eco !

[@argamnex]

awesome video! can't wait for the next episode! maybe frisian next?

[@OnMyWaytotheFLA]

This was extremely informative. I've always wondered what Luxembourgish sounds like!

[@jslice6137]

I was wondering why you flipped over to a “here is 5 sentences, guess what it means/transcribe it back to your native language/English”, rather than something like “let’s try to guess words, each person speaking their respective language, like you did for Slavic/Romance languages. I can understand for something like Old English, or Old Norse, that system might be the best, but for Luxembourgish and (Standard) German, since they are closer to each other, wouldn’t it be more interesting to just have the Luxembourgish speaker speak only Luxembourgish and the other German speakers only speaking in Standard German or other varieties of German? I guess I found the way you structured the experiment for Romance/Slavic languages to be more interesting, and for Luxembourgish/German, I think that could have worked out.

[@Ecolinguist]

That's coming in part 2. :)

[@jslice6137]

@@Ecolinguist ah cool!

[@basaka00]

I thought the same!

[@fartreta]

I think Norbert can be allowed to experiment a little with the form 😉 I don't find it to be a big deal, and this way it might get a little more accessible for people who find it a bit challenging to read subtitles when the subject is a complex matter like e.g. grammar, like the Lux guy does in the video. Just my thoughts.

[@GustavSvard]

As a native speaker of Swedish who also speaks English quite proficiently, and took a couple of years of German in school (and was oh so close to failing that class): 1st sentence was impossible when first heard. With the written form and hearing it again it turned easy. 2nd sentence again couldn't understand just the spoken form. Written I missed the main words! All the other words made sense and it was clear that it was an established idiom. 3rd sentence I got half upon first hearing it! No I did not :D I got it wrong. First three words were right. But once the participants said there attempts made much more sense, and upon final explanation it had things I still didn't expect. Including a word I would never have guessed had that meaning! [room to edit once I have time to listen more]

[@grafinvonhohenembs]

Das war super! Vielen Dank!!

[@HD-ty8ng]

As a native German speaker, growing up with Plattdeutsch (different varieties) and school taught Dutch, most of the time it was easy to translate the sentences, even if I only heard it being said. But I wouldn't pick up the differences in pronouns that Cedric pointed out. Very interesting video. (Ps.: Came here via two passports)

[@therealzilch]

Absolut faszinierend, wie üblich. Ich hab' fast alles verstanden. Grüße aus bewölktem Wien, Scott

[@claudedondelinger9336]

Top Video, hunn ech ganz interessant fonnt.

[@catwoman_7]

That was so intetesting!! 🤯🤓😃👏👏👏

[@CouchPolyglot]

I was also confused about the "Schivakanz" and then was like "aaaaaaaaaaah" 🤣🤣🤣

[@theoderich1168]

Same for me - but when I read the written sentence aloud to myself...suddenly it dawned on me (it definitely helps to have learned some French many years ago...)

As a German learner who also has some background in French, I loved this so so much.

[@laguardiawolfgang6736]

C’était très difficile pour moi à comprendre ! 😂

[@flutterwind7686]

One of my favourite episodes!

[@joostwinter]

Native speaker of Dutch here, from Amsterdam. I have had 5 years of German in high school. And I'm a language geek who studied Gothic in my free time. This was a fun one to play along with, and here are the translations I came up with into Dutch. Things between parentheses I only could made up when the text was shown. 1. Wij willen blijven wat we zijn. This one was easy. The usual word for 'we' in Dutch is 'we' or 'wij', but 'me' exists in some southwestern dialects. 2. Wat de boer niet kent, dat vreet 'ie niet. This one was easy as well. Actually this is a famous saying in Dutch as well. Dutch also has the same contrast between 'eten' and 'vreten' as in German (actually, this difference already exists in Gothic as 'itan' (to eat) vs. 'fritan' (to devour)). In Dutch, the saying is not so much about conservatism of the Dutch in general, but rather about the conservatism in more rural areas. ;) 3. Mijn kleine broer gaat (morgen met een collega) op een skivakantie naar Zwitserland. In Dutch 'collega' refers specifically to a colleague at work, and never to personal friends, let alone boyfriends or girlfriends. (I am in fact only familiar with this use from Polish, where 'kolega' can mean 'friend'...) A regular friend would be 'vriend' or 'vriendin', and a boyfriend would also be 'vriend' or 'vriendin'. 'Mijn vriend' or 'mijn vriendin' is generally considered to be about a boyfriend or girlfriend. For a boyfriend or girlfriend, you can also use the word 'partner', which leaves the gender in the middle. So of what I wrote down, 'met een collega' should have been 'met een vriend'. 4. (Anita wordt in) september (moeder, maar heeft nog niet haar werkgever geïnformeerd.) This one confused me, because in Dutch the regular word for 'mother' is 'moeder'. In my experience of the language, 'mam' and 'pap' are, in Dutch, kind of strange words that can be only used in a vocative context (similar to what is called the 'neo-vocative' in Russian). E.g. you could say 'Mam, kun je even komen?' to your mother, but to say 'Mam kon morgen niet komen' is weirder... In Dutch, there is no saying comparable to 'bescheid gesagt'. My translation shown above was a bit awkward, more natural would be '..., maar heeft het haar werkgever nog niet verteld' (...'aber hat es ihrem Arbeitgeber noch nicht erzählt'), or '..., maar heeft het haar werkgever nog niet laten witen' (...'aber hat es ihrem Arbeitgeber noch nicht wissen lassen', which is probably totally unnatural in German). For 'wordt in moeder', people often say say 'is uitgerekend in' ('ist ausgerechnet in'), referring to the calculations made to predict the moment of birth. Dutch never uses definite articles before names. Nobody does it, including children. This habit is for me strongly associated with German. 5. Tot vandaag (weet ik nog steeds niet, waarom mijn biologieleraar zo streng was op de middelbare school). 'Middelbare school' is the generic word for 'high school'. Many schools are actually 'lyceum', but you would not really use 'op het lyceum'. Some schools are also called 'gymnasium', those are specifically high schools where taking Latin or Ancient Greek as a subject is compulsory. I didn't get that the teacher would be female, and got very much confused by the 's' in 'Biosproff'. ('De bios' in Dutch is a shortening of 'de bioscoop', i.e. the cinema.) 'Biologie' is often shortened to 'bio'. Instead of 'biologieleraar' one can say 'leraar bio' which is pretty much informal (it would never be used in a formal or official text), but also completely natural. One would never use 'prof' or 'professor' to refer to a high school teacher in Dutch -- except perhaps when, by accident, a high school teacher also has a professorate at a university, rare but possible, but even then 'professor' would just refer to the professorate. 5. Luxemburgs wordt in Luxemburg gesproken, maar ook in de grensregio's van zijn buurlanden. This one was easy again.

[@cedrickrummes3876]

Some French varieties, especially if spoken, uses the definite articles with names. Le Joseph et la Marie. The French comedy film "La soupe au choux" (De koolzoep) uses for example Le Glaude and La Francine.

[@break1146]

As a Dutch person this explains a lot of my thoughts perfectly with less German insight (because I don't really speak German). I'd say using 'mam' like you did in 'Mam kon morgen niet komen' sounds completely natural to me, but only if it was said to a child or within your family (gezin). To a child I'd rather change it to 'Mamma kon morgen niet komen'. You could also say 'ma' and 'pa'. On Urk they prefer 'moe' and 'va' and actually say moeder and vader in places in sentences the rest of the country wouldn't really expect. I somehow never got the link with lycheé and lyceum, but that makes a lot of sense. I also got stuck at 'nope' in the last one and my brain just said nope to me and any comprehension was immediately out the window lol.

[@m.-9615]

I just realized I never heard Swiss German before and I really liked it.

[@chilltalkswellbeing]

thanks hehe

[@diegochipres1681]

As a native Spanish speaker, who has been learning German for a couple of years, this video is very interesting. I'm actually surprised that I was able to get some of the sentences in Luxembourgish

[@alo5301]

It is a German dialect

[@anxofernandez3344]

I studied English philology in university and I'm fascinated by the evolution of the Germanic languages. Watching these videos has made me see even more clearly how gradual the dialects are. Belgian Flemish, Dutch, Frisian, North Frisian, all the German dialects, all Scandinavian variants... they are all very similar. And then there's English and Scots, which are the different ones. I guess Old English is kinda close to the others and even Middle English and the early examples of Scots to an extent, but still very different. I think it's really interesting and it tells a lot about the history of the Germanic peoples.

[@Verbalaesthet]

I like this format. I saw a couple of videos doing that. I always enjoyed it. As a German from midwest Germany I understood about 90% of it. I didnt know Lycée and Schivarkanz and some of the more subtle differences like the female "my".

[@Uniquena]

My family comes from Cologne and Aachen and it sounds really familiar for me 😁 I understand all of it! Personally I talk in high german with slight swabian accent, because I was born and raised near Stuttgart. Really interesting video!

[@justme1553]

This was so much fun! I couldn't stop laughing. Greetings from Mannheim.

[@edwardevans2577]

Gruß auch von Mannheim!

[@sanskritishrestha999]

Wow this is an amazing! I'm not a native German speaker, but I was able to get most of them correct :D And really fun and interesting onversations, by the way!

[@thatotau7478]

This was great!