Comparing Luxembourgish and Hochdeutsch (Standard German)

Since it developed from a central German dialect that's also spoken in Germany, is Luxembourgish very similar to standard German? Let's find out. Here are a handful of basic words and phrases in Luxembourgish alongside standard German equivalents. Hello. In Luxembourgish, you could say it any of these ways. Hallo. Salut. Moien. This is the word for morning. And in German? Hallo. Goodbye. In Luxembourgish? Äddi. And in German? Tschüss. Note that the Luxembourgish word comes from the French word adieu. Yes, no. In Luxembourgish? Jo. Nee. And in German? Ja. Nein. Thank you. Merci. Danke. You probably noticed that this is another loan word from French. Excuse me. To get someone's attention. Entschëllegt. Entschuldigung. Luxembourgish also has the word Pardon. from French, which is used like excuse me, but more in the sense of saying sorry. The word Entschëllegt. — can also be used for apologies. Sorry, I'm late. Entschëllegt Verspéidung. Or using the French word Entschëllegt mäi And in German? Entschuldigung für meine Verspätung. But in Luxembourgish, both of these ways of saying it would be quite formal. A more casual way of saying it would be to use the English word sorry. Sorry fir d'Verspéidung. Where's the train station? In Luxembourgish? Wou ass d'Gare? And in German? Wo ist der Bahnhof? Again, the word Gare in the Luxembourgish sentence comes from the French word for train station. So, after just a few basic examples, you can see that French has had a significant influence on Luxembourgish vocabulary. Also notice that cognate verbs have slightly different forms in either language. Pronunciation and orthography. Luxembourgish has some features of phonology that differ from those of standard German, and some of the differences are reflected in Luxembourgish orthography. One important feature is the i-mutation rule. Words that end in N normally drop the N if the next word begins with a consonant other than N, D, T, Z, or H. We saw this before in the word "May" in the sentence This is a feature of the spoken language that arose naturally, not only in Moselle Franconian dialects, but to varying degrees in all of the western group of High German dialects, including West Central German, High Franconian, and Alemannic dialects. In Luxembourgish, the Iffla rule also affects the written language because the spelling reflects pronunciation, but it doesn't affect all words. In fact, it doesn't affect most nouns and adjectives. Luxembourgish has both stressed personal pronouns and unstressed personal pronouns in which some sounds are dropped or reduced. In lots of languages, unstressed vowels are reduced, but in Luxembourgish, the reduced pronunciation is reflected in the standard spelling. For example, the first singular dative pronoun, meaning "to me".