#Luxembourgish

[casualist-tendency]

[yvanspijk]

English (he/she) eats, Welsh ysa, Ancient Greek édei, Sanskrit átti and Polish je all stem from the same Indo-European verb. Over time, words change beyond recognition, undergoing regular sound changes and irregular alterations. Here's the family of eats.

[la-belle-histoire]

Grand Duchess Marie Adelaide of Luxembourg, 1910s.

[majestativa]

L’encre brûle […] et trouble les éléments en équilibre.

(Ink burns […] and disturbs the equilibrium of elements.)

— Nathalie Ronvaux, “Avant de rejoindre”

[postcard-from-the-past]

"Iris - You hurt me deeply"

Luxembourgish vintage postcard, illustrated by Boulanger, mailed in 1912 to Valencienne, France

[dadsinsuits]

Jean-Claude Juncker

[thistlelearns]

she will always be my number one study friend <3

[best-non-english-word-torunament]

Round one: Toktok vs Bettseechesch

Toktok (Bislama)

Unable to find IPA

Translation: Speak

Bislama is an English-based creole with around 14 200 speakers. It is spoken in Vanuatu, where it’s the national language and used as a lingua franca to facilitate communication between speakers of the 110 living languages. Bislama emerged in the late 1800s due to the practice of “blackbirding”, aka deceiving or kidnapping Pacific Islanders and taking them to work as indentured labourers on plantations, mainly in Australia and Fiji. Due to everyone speaking different languages, a pidgin emerged that later became a creole. This language was taken to Vanuatu when labourers returned and spread because it could be used as a lingua franca. Most of the vocabulary is English-based with some French, but the grammar is typical of local languages.

Motivation: I literally just think it’s cool. In Bislama there aren’t a lot of specific words because, of course, Vanuatu is the most language dense area in the world so there’s not much room for the native language to be that elaborate, but I thought I’d submit this cute little word anyways because <3

Bettseechesch (Luxembourgish)

[ˈbætˌzeːχeʃ]

Translation: Dandelion (literally it means "bed wetter" because dandelions have a diuretic effect, it's also called Pissblumm, which literally means piss flower)

Luxembourgish is an Indo-European language belonging to the Germanic branch, spoken by half a million people, most of them in Luxembourg. It is part of the Continental West Germanic dialect continuum, but also influenced by French.

Motivation: French, Dutch, German, Italian all have a similar name about pissing the bed for this plant and that's just the ones I'm aware of, I'm sure there's more. It's funny to me that apparently so many people wet their beds after eating dandelions that people decided that that's what this plant should be called lol Plus look at it, it's a bonkers word to look at!

[mable-stitchpunk]

Do you speak any other languages?

Alas, no. I've tried to learn Spanish numerous times, to no success. I also tried to learn Luxembourgish. I learned a few phrases, but it's not exactly a language I have a chance to use. XD

[yourdailyqueer]

Etienne Schneider

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Gay

DOB: 29 January 1971

Ethnicity: White - Luxembourgish

Occupation: Politician (LSAP), entrepreneur 

[casualist-tendency]

[yvanspijk]

The word clean has the same ancestor as German and Dutch klein (small; little). The meaning of this common Proto-Germanic ancestor is reconstructed as 'shining'. In the Germanic daughter languages, this meaning shifted following different paths. See the infographic for more.

[facesofcinema]

Feardotcom (2002)

[majestativa]

Nos chairs s’unissent à perpétuelle demeure et défient  les anges.

(In their perpetual sojourn, our flesh, in unison, defies the angels.)

— Nathalie Ronvaux, “Des créatures”

[postcard-from-the-past]

Franco-Luxembourgish physicist and inventor Gabriel Lippmann on the Sorbonne University of Paris

French vintage postcard

[theshatterednotes]

Luxembourgish writer Norbert Jacques, author of Dr. Mabuse