Letzeburgeschn.

1921 R. J. Casey Land of Haunted Castles 152 I asked a young woman of Gosseldange..who..the ‘Letzeburgers’ were. She replied, proud of her ability to tell me in English: ‘They are people who live in the Stadt Luxemburg... They speak a language that is very difficile to understand. It is not French. It is not German. It is not Luxemburg. It is Letzeburg.’

1944 Luxembourg (Geogr. Handbk. Ser. B.R. 528, Admiralty, Naval Intelligence Div.) 43 The native dialect, Letzeburgesch, is a Moselle Franconian dialect belonging to the West Middle German group.

1956 B. Miles Attic in Luxembourg xxviii. 215 Letzeburgesch, the Luxembourg dialect..although based upon old Teutonic origins,..borrowed extensively from Celtic, Roman and French.

1961 R. E. Keller German Dial. 10 Letzeburgisch might be considered with some hesitation as a Halbsprache but Schwyzertütsch is for Kloss beyond the pale and he merely concedes that certain circumstances make it difficult to decide whether it might not after all qualify for the status of a Halbsprache.

1964 S. H. Muller World's Living Lang. i. 16 The speech of 300,000 citizens of Luxemburg has diverged from standard German so much that it must be considered a distinct language, Luxemburgian (self-designation lezebuurjesh).

1965 W. B. Lockwood Informal Hist. German Lang. 146 Some 300,000 persons..speak as their native idiom a now fairly uniform German dialect Luxemburgisch or, as they call it themselves, Letzebursch.

1972 Guardian 19 Sept. 14/3 The vast majority of Luxembourgers speak Letzeburgesch at home.

1973 Times 26 May (Benelux Suppl.) p. v/4 Luxembourg..is a case apart. Its 320,000 inhabitants speak a regional language called Letzeburgisch on which the official language, French, is superimposed.