Improve your Listening skills & understand native speakers – Part 2

IN Level A2

How are your listening skills? Do you sometimes find it hard to follow native speakers in a conversation or colleagues at work or to understand the news on the radio?

In part 1 of Improve your Listening skills & understand native speakers we talked about the weak forms of personal pronouns, verbs and about how sounds change when the n-rule is applied. These are key reasons why spoken Luxembourgish can sound quite different from the clear version you might hear in learning materials.

If you haven’t listened to Part 1 yet, I highly recommend going back and starting there first, as it will help you understand today’s examples much better.

In today’s lesson, we’ll continue exploring why listening can be challenging and, more importantly, how you can train your ear to better understand native speakers.

So, let’s get started with the chunks.

A chunk is a piece of language – words that often go together – where you focus on the SOUND not on the words.

Try it first: read this chunk aloud:

Et deet mir leed – now listen and then tell me what do you hear? ‘deet mer leed. As you can hear we say ‘deed mer leed. The et disappears and we use the weak form of mir ☞ mer and the final t of deet sounds like d

Ech/Mir gi gär – we often use this chunk for example mir gi gär an de Restaurant, ech gi gär lafen, ech gi gärspadséieren – so get used to the sound of these 3 word

guer net gär – when we don’t like doing something at all we tend to always use these 3 words – listen and repeat: guer net gär

Many expression and phrases are chunks:

Dat ass an der Rei = ’t ass an der Rei der Rei = daRei

So as you can hear we not only drop vowels and consonants but we also link words: daRei together so that sound like one single word. And this is what you need to be listening for. Train your ears and pick out these sounds, chunks

Contrary to English, in Luxembourgish we don’t contract words. The only words we contract are some prepositions + definite article for neutral and masculine nouns in the dative case:

bei + dem ☞ beim mat + dem ☞ mam no + dem ☞ nom

Now you understand what I said in the sentence at the beginning of the lesson: ech hu lo keng Zäit, fro de Marc, ob en der nom Cours hëllefe kann.

I often hear students dropping systematically the final n of the verbs sinn & hunn thinking that this is a contraction. But that’s not the case, dropping the final n of a word is all about the n-rule. So,

Ech hu keng Zäit is correct but if you want to say that you have time ☞ Ech hunn Zäit. Ech hu Zäit is not correct.

Native speakers talk fast and connect words together. In some audio samples for Luxembourgish listening practice they pronounce each word slowly. But in real life we don’t do that. Instead we connect words so that two or more words can sound like one word. For example the sentence:

Let’s now break down the sentence you’ve heard at the beginning of the lesson

Ech hu lo keng Zäit fro de Marc, ob en der nom Cours hëllefe kann

fro de Marc – in English you say ask Marc but in Luxembourgish we need to add an definite article before names. So to say ask Anne, you will hear fro d’Anne – we connect d’ with Anne and you will hear the sound dann

ob en – sounds like “oppen” we connect ob & en, b sounds like p and en is the weak form of hien.

We also connect the pronouns for things after verbs which is quite confusing.

ech hunn en – what have you heard: hunnen and then you think at a verb that you don’t know. But in reality these are 2 words

Let’s now break down the sentence you’ve heard at the beginning of the lesson

Ech hu lo keng Zäit fro de Marc, ob en der nom Cours hëllefe kann

fro de Marc – in English you say ask Marc but in Luxembourgish we need to add an definite article before names. So to say ask Anne, you will hear fro d’Anne – we connect d’ with Anne and you will hear the sound dann

ob en – sounds like “oppen” we connect ob & en, b sounds like p and en is the weak form of hien.

We also connect the pronouns for things after verbs which is quite confusing.

ech hunn en – what have you heard: hunnen and then you think at a verb that you don’t know. But in reality these are 2 words

And if you want to improve your listening comprehension and speaking skills like this in a supportive group, with real role-plays and feedback, that’s exactly what we do in our Speaking Practice Group B1.

1 live online session/week
Max 6 participants for personal feedback
Focus on real workplace conversations

Step by step, you’ll feel yourself becoming more confident, more fluent, and more comfortable speaking Luxembourgish at work and also in everyday life. If that sounds like the kind of practice you need right now, come and join us in the Speaking Practice Group B1.

Join the priority waitlist:

Here’s the sentence from the episode, written out for you:

“So Marie, hues de mäi Brëll iergendwou gesinn? Ech hunn e virdrun op den Dësch geluecht mee elo ass en net méi do. Kanns de mer hëllefen en ze sichen, wgl?”