Answering the phone in Luxembourgish can be scary. I’ve avoided phone calls too! Answering the phone in English used to be hard for me.
That’s why today we’ll look at the expressions you need to not panic or just don’t answer the phone when someone calls you at work or in a formal context. For example, do you know how to greet someone when picking up the phone at work? Do you say Allo? Or Moien? Hmmm not very appropriate right?
Let’s start by learning
How to say in Luxembourgish “to pick up the phone”
To pick up the phone – den Telefon ophiewen. We have the verb ophiewen which is a separable verb.
Beispill: Ech hiewen den Telefon op.
And if you work in a shop or in an office someone may ask you: can you pick up the phone please which is:
- Kanns du den Telefon ophiewen, wgl? or shorter
- Kanns du ophiewen, wgl? or formal:
- Kënnt Dir ophiewen, wgl? or you might hear:
- Kanns du op den Telefon goen. – Here we have the phrase: op den Telefon goen.
What do you say first by picking up the phone?
Hello, right? In Luxembourgish this is Allo? (question) This is ok when answering a private call on your smartphone. But this is not very appropriate in a business context.
If the person who answers the phone represents a company and that person is the first responder to calls from outside the company then the greeting will sound something like this.
Firma Hurt, Nadia Hansen, wat kann ech fir Iech maachen?
Firma (Name) + Numm + wat kann ech fir Iech maachen
The company name + the full name of the person who is answering the phone and some
polite phrase, some sort of greeting.
Let’s imagine that you work at a hairdresser, then you could say:
Coiffersalon Schéin Hoer, Stéphanie Moien.
In any other case the person will either pick up the phone and state their last name accompanied by a short greeting like this: Hansen, gudde Moien?
What do you say after the greeting?
The other person on the phone might then ask to speak to a specific person. For example you might hear:
- Kéint ech mam Anne schwätzen, wgl? Can I speak to Anne please.
And if that’s you, then you can say: Selwer um Apparat literally Myself on the phone. Apparat usually means device but here we mean the phone.
- Kéint ech mam Anne schwätzen? Selwer um Apparat.
or you can just say: dat sinn ech. Personally I prefer to say Selwer um Apparat, it sounds more polite, just better.
Sometimes the person calling you doesn’t want to you but they want to speak to your colleague or manager:
- Kéint ech mam Michel schwätzen, wgl? And if that person didn’t introduce themselves you would like of course to know who’s calling. Then you would ask:
- Wien ass um Apparat? Who’s on the phone?
And once you know the other person’s name you can say:
Ee Moment, ech verbannen Iech.One moment please I will transfer you.
What do you say when the person the caller would like to speak is busy?
Maybe your colleague Michel is busy. Then you can say:
- Hien ass grad net a sengem Büro. He is currently not in her office.
Now if the person is speaking to somebody else on the phone at the moment:
- Hien ass grad um Telefon. He’s speaking (on another line)
These are a kind of generic response when someone can’t come to the phone.
And there are lots of different situations that you can explain, ask about a message and you’ll also need to end the call and this all you can learn in my self-study online course Formal and Business Luxembourgish Language Course A2-B1.
And if you would like to continue learning business vocabulary with me right now and you would like to expand your business vocabulary to be able to talk in meetings or with your colleagues, and, learn to talk on the phone, or give presentations in Luxembourgish then
