Luxembourgish phonology

This article aims to describe the phonology and phonetics of central Luxembourgish, which is regarded as the emerging standard.

Consonants
The consonant inventory of Luxembourgish is quite similar to that of Standard German.

According to, are velar. For this reason, they transcribe them as.

Fortis are aspirated in most positions, and lenis  are often voiceless. Luxembourgish features final-obstruent devoicing; voiced stops are devoiced in coda position, unless resyllabified. In addition, resyllabified fortis stops are subject to voicing if followed by a vowel, e.g. eng interessant Iddi "an interesting idea".

The affricate is non-native to Luxembourgish and occurs only in words of German origin. Just as among many native German-speakers, it tends to be simplified to word-initially. For example, Pflicht ("obligation") is pronounced, or in careful speech.

may be for some speakers. It is vocalised to or  word-finally. It is before short vowels and voiced consonants, and [χ] before voiceless consonants.

and are allophones of  and, respectively;  occur before back vowels, and the allophones in all other positions. Speakers increasingly do not distinguish between postalveolar and alveolo-palatal fricatives.

is an allophone of after, e.g. zwee  "two". may replace in some instances, e.g. Juni  or  "June".

In external sandhi, syllable-final is deleted unless followed by, with few exceptions. Furthermore, some unusual consonant clusters may arise post-lexically after cliticisation of the definite article d' (for feminine, neuter and plural forms), e.g. d'Land "the country" or d'Kräiz  "the cross".

Pronunciation of the letter g
In Luxembourgish, the letter g has no fewer than nine possible pronunciations, depending both on the origin of a word and the phonetic environment of g. By the now very common mergers of and, as well as  and , this number may be reduced to seven, however. The pronunciation is also (generally) not obligatory but a common allophone of  in the environment indicated below.


 * {| class="wikitable"

! IPA || Applies in || Phonetic environment || Example || IPA || Meaning ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
 * align="left"| native and German words
 * align="left"| stem-initially
 * align="left"| géi
 * align="left"|
 * align="left"| go
 * align="left"| few German words
 * align="left"| stem-internally
 * align="left"| Drogen
 * align="left"|
 * align="left"| drugs
 * align="left"| French words
 * align="left"| stem-initially and internally before written a, o, u, or consonant
 * align="left"| Negatioun
 * align="left"|
 * align="left"| negation
 * align="left"| French and few German words
 * align="left"| word-finally
 * align="left"| Drog
 * align="left"|
 * align="left"| drug
 * align="left"| French words
 * align="left"| stem-initially and internally before written e or i
 * align="left"| originell
 * align="left"|
 * align="left"| original
 * align="left"| French words
 * align="left"| word-finally before mute e
 * align="left"| Plage
 * align="left"|
 * align="left"| beach
 * align="left"| native and most German words
 * align="left"| stem-internally after consonants and front or central vowels except
 * align="left"| Verfügung
 * align="left"|
 * align="left"| disposal
 * align="left"| native and most German words
 * align="left"| word-finally after consonants and front or central vowels except
 * align="left"| bëlleg
 * align="left"|
 * align="left"| cheap
 * align="left"| native and most German words
 * align="left"| stem-internally after back vowels and
 * align="left"| Lager
 * align="left"|
 * align="left"| store
 * align="left"| native and most German words
 * align="left"| word-finally after back vowels and
 * align="left"| Dag
 * align="left"|
 * align="left"| day
 * align="left"| native and most German words
 * align="left"| in the unstressed sequences and
 * align="left"| bëllegen
 * align="left"|
 * align="left"| cheap [inflected]
 * }

Monophthongs
Luxembourgish has eleven vowel monophthong phonemes:.

is the long variant of. doesn't have a long variant.


 * Notes


 * Native monophthong phonemes
 * are close front unrounded.
 * are close back rounded.
 * has two allophones:
 * Before velars: close-mid front unrounded, which some speakers it may be open-mid . This is especially frequent before.
 * All other positions: mid central rounded vowel . More rarely, it can be realized as unrounded.
 * has been variously described as near-close front unrounded and close-mid front unrounded . The near-close realization may overlap with.
 * Before it is realized as open-mid front unrounded.
 * is close-mid back rounded, but for some speakers it may be open-mid . This is especially frequent before.
 * has been variously described as near-close back rounded and close-mid back rounded . The near-close realization may overlap with.
 * has been variously described as slightly lowered near-open front unrounded and near-open front unrounded.
 * has been variously described as slightly retracted open front unrounded and open front unrounded . Sometimes it may have the same quality as the short.
 * has been variously described as near-open back unrounded and open near-back unrounded.


 * The sequence is realized as a low unrounded vowel, the quality of which has been variously described as near-open near-back vowel  and near-open central vowel.

Diphthongs
Luxembourgish has eight diphthong phonemes:. Long vowels in diphthongs may be pronounced short in fast speech and in unstressed position. Additional diphthongs arise after vocalisation of.


 * Native diphthong phonemes
 * begins in the close front unrounded area, ends in the mid central unrounded area.
 * begins in the close back rounded area, ends in the mid central unrounded area.
 * begins in the mid near-front unrounded area, ends in the close front unrounded area . The starting point has also been described as close-mid front.
 * begins in the mid central unrounded area, ends in the close back rounded area.
 * begins open front unrounded area, ends in the close front unrounded area . The starting point has also been described as somewhat higher, i.e. near-open.
 * begins in the open front unrounded area, ends in the close back rounded area . The starting point has also been described as somewhat higher, i.e. near-open.
 * begins in the near-open back unrounded area, ends in the close front unrounded area . The starting point has also been described as somewhat lower, i.e. open.
 * begins in the near-open back unrounded area, ends in the close back rounded area . The starting point has also been described as somewhat lower, i.e. open.

transcribe as.

Non-native vowel phonemes
Eight additional vowel phonemes occur: in loanwords from German and French. Although they are absent in the originally Luxembourgish vocabulary and therefore relatively infrequent, nearly all speakers distinguish these phonemes.

Note that the letter é is today pronounced like ë before -ch. The ostensibly inconsistent spelling é is based on the traditional, now widely obsolete pronunciation of -ch as a palatal. As this is a relatively backward consonant, it triggered the use of allophone as before velar consonants. Since the more forward alveo-palatal has replaced  in almost all speakers, the allophone  is used as before any non-velar consonant. So the word mécht ("[he] makes"), which is now pronounced, used to be pronounced , and this is the reason for its spelling. (One might now change the orthography to mëcht, but this is non-standard as yet.)