Talk About Your Life in Luxembourgish: Birth, School and more – Part 3

Let’s start by learning how to say my partner in Luxembourgish. If your partner is a man, then you say mäi Partner – and she is a woman : meng Partnerin. So when you are not married this is the way you would talk about your partner: mäi Partner / meng Partnerin

Now, some people who plan to get married get engaged first
In Luxembourgish, we use the verb sech verloben.

But to be honest, that tradition isn’t very common in Luxembourg anymore.
Maybe it still is where you come from? That’s why I will talk about it:

To say We got engaged in autumn is Mir hunn eis am Hierscht verloobt. Because sech verloben is a reflexive verb, we need to use a reflexive pronoun — a little word that shows the action goes back to the person: 

• • Mir hunn eis verloobt – We got engaged

• Mir hunn eis am September verloobt. – We got engaged in September.

So here, we used the present perfect tense because we’re talking about something that happened in the past.
To build this tense, we first use the verb hunn, and at the end, we add the past participle of verloben, which is verloobt.

Now once you are verloobt, you usually get married, right? Do you know the word for marriage?

This is Hochzäit, eng Hochzäit. Listen and repeat after me for the correct pronunciation: Hochzäit, it’s a feminine noun: eng Hochzäit

Now let’s look at the verb – so to get married is: sech bestueden, it’s also a reflexive verb like sech verloben. And because sech bestueden is a reflexive verb, we need to use a reflexive pronoun: 

• So with mir, we say “mir bestueden eis” — we marry each other.
• And with ech, we say “ech bestuede mech” — I get married.

So, ech bestuede mech oder mir bestueden eis means that you are not married yet but that you will get married. You talk in the future and to make it more clear in conversation you can be more precise by adding the date

• Mir bestueden eis de 25. Juni. – We’ll get married on June 25th
• Mir bestuden eis am Fréijoer 2026. – We’ll get married in Spring 2026

But if you want to say you got married  – for example in a conversation someone might ask you: When did you get married? Then use again sech bestueden with the verb hunn:

• Ech hu mech 2018 bestuet – I got married in 2018. 

• Mir hunn eis 2022 zu Lëtzebuerg bestuet. – We got married in Luxembourg in 2022.

So we are talking about when we got married, this has to do with the actual wedding: when did you or when will you marry. But when we use sinn bestuet we’re talking about the status of someone: Are you married? Sidd Dir bestuet?

• • Jo, ech si bestuet – Yes, I am married. 
  • Nee, ech sinn net bestuet. – No, I’m not married.

• Meng Schwëster ass bestuet. – My sister is married.

This means that we’re talking about the current status of life. And Ech si bestuet is the literal translation and as you note we also use the verb sinn, but because of our n-rule you’ll say: ech si bestuet. 

If are not familiar with the n-rule then I invite you to read the lesson on my blog: The N-Rule Explained: https://luxembourgishwithanne.lu/2017/06/25/know-luxembourgish-n-rule/

May be you’ll hear: Ech war bestuet. – I was married. This can have different meanings depending on the context: mayybe that person is divorced – gescheet or is a widow Wittfra / Wittmann. 

And to say that for example: I have a happy marriage we say in Luxembourgish: Ech sinn glécklech bestuet. So this literally means: I am happily married.