Depicted as the 'youngest Germanic language', Luxembourgish has needed
to undergo some measure of standardization in order to warrant its
recently acquired status and national prestige. Owing to its high degree
of kinship with German, the issue of distantiation from that language
has been pervading that process of standardization. The linguistic
independence of Luxembourgish from German has been cultivated by
different means, as in particular the overemphasis on its Romance
heritage, or the valorisation of its archaic forms. In order to lend a
democratic dimension to the cultivation of that linguistic distinctness,
the imagery of a Luxembourgish 'folk standard', natural and regionally
inclusive, has provided the other main source of justification for the
puristic choises made throughout the process of feature selection. This
book attempts to shed light on the modalities of interaction between the
ideology of linguistic distantiation and Luxembourg's language reality.
Beside, the modalities of that interaction are placed within the wider
perspective offered by the case of standard West Frisian, a linguistic
entity likewise largely defined by contrast with a genetically related
neighbour and H-language, i.e. Dutch. From a comparison between the
practices of language codification observable in Luxembourg and West
Friesland and their ideological justification, an ideal model of further
standardization for Luxembourgish is tentatively sketched against the
background of the current language planning activities of the
Luxembourgish norm agencies.
