This is probably the first question being asked by all those who have just secured their first job in Luxembourg. Actually the language situation, given the small size of the country, is unique. People speak three languages every day and sometimes more.

Out of 459,000 inhabitants, Luxembourg has 180,000 foreigners plus nearly 130,000 French or German speaking international commuters who come every day from Germany, Belgium and France. So the proportion of foreigners can reach 50%.

In Luxembourg, multilingualism is established in law since 1984. Luxembourgish (“Lëtzebuergesch”) is the national language, French is the language of legislation, and French, German and Luxembourgish are the administrative and judicial languages.

To this trilingualism that only natives can command, are added the mother tongues of the foreigners.

Is Luxembourgish useful at the workplace?

Luxembourgish is obviously spoken by the natives in their family and social life. But what happens in the companies?

Luxembourgish remains the first language used by all employees, with 48% who use it. French follows closely. In fact, we must distinguish between the employees of the private and the public sector. In the public sector, 81% of the employees use Luxembourgish as their main language, followed by French and German. On the other hand, in the private sector Luxembourgish and French have almost the same share with 40%.

Consequently, we must take into account the nationality of the employees. 70% of the Luxembourgers communicate in Luxembourgish at the workplace, while the foreigners prefer French (54%) followed by Luxembourgish, English, Portuguese (about one employee out of 10) and finally German and Italian (6% and 2%, respectively).

And the second language?

Only 15% of the foreign employees use Luxembourgish as their first language at the workplace and among those who use at least two languages at work, the share of Luxembourgish as the second language is only 22%.

Finally there is another trend. English has become the language of business and finance and, more often than not, it governs the meetings between people of different nationalities.

In 2002, Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker had proposed to improve the integration of workers in Luxembourg and promote studying the Luxembourgish language. But this proposal was quickly abandoned due to the limited motivation of the foreign employees to learn a language which would have been in most cases only of very little usefulness to them.

The origin of the employees, their business sector or the origin of the company are therefore the criteria that determine the language used in the company and it goes without saying that you have a command of at least two languages to work in Luxembourg.
Source: Survey published by CEPS/INSTEAD in 2006.
Sophie Sellier
English version: Robert Mouris