LUXEMBOURG CITY, Luxembourg -- Last month, Jhemp Hoscheit published another wildly popular children's book -- in Luxembourgish, the little-known national language of this tiny Western European country of hilltop castle ruins and glass-and-chrome banks.
Just a decade ago, such a feat would have been unthinkable: Luxembourgish was largely reserved for casual conversation, while French and German were the languages of literature and business.
Now, however, Hoscheit is at the forefront of the movement to promote a language many fear will die at the hands of massive migration in a Europe that is rushing to erase borders.
Largely fueled by the success of Hoscheit and other authors, local publishing houses are for the first time producing scores of books in Luxembourgish. There is a burgeoning, albeit small, Luxembourgish-language film industry. Luxembourgish, rather than French, is the preferred language in parliament, and the shortage of Luxembourgish-language teachers has created a six-month waiting list for seats at the state-funded language school.
Like many Luxembourgish books, Hoscheit's Zodi Am Schatofor ("Trouble in the Castle") is set in medieval times. It is a lushly illustrated 22-page tale of a boy who accidentally spoils his chances for knighthood, then wins the honor.
For many people, the popularity of Hoscheit's work represents a sharp challenge to the cultural changes brought to this country in the last decade by an influx of Portuguese, Italians and East Europeans to remedy a national labor shortage. Today, more than one-third of Luxembourg's 448,000 residents are foreign-born -- the highest proportion of any country in Europe -- and the vast majority of those are not fluent in Luxembourgish.
In a country where natives have long moved seamlessly between French and German -- 70 percent speak more than one language at work -- most natives are also fluent in Luxembourgish, a language close to German. But many of them lack the confidence to write in it. French and German are the primary languages of instruction in schools, and there are no textbooks spelling out the rules of Luxembourgish grammar.
A few of the newcomers make the effort to learn the local tongue. "I need Luxembourgish to live," said Anna Samarska, a 32-year-old Ukrainian who moved here eight months ago with her Luxembourger husband. "I respect the people who live here, and if you speak the language, you're respected, too."
But most converse in French or German. Today, along Luxembourg City's cobblestone streets, lined with outposts of American, German and British banks, French is increasingly viewed as the language of migrants, an instant indicator of otherness.
Partly in response to fears that French will take over, the government has declared Luxembourgish to be the official national language and requires migrants who want citizenship to study it. An increasing number of workplaces, whether government offices or grocery stores, require employees to speak and write in Luxembourgish, rather than French or German.
Claudine Moline, a professor of German linguistics and Luxembourgish at the Centre Universitaire de Luxembourg, said the issue has not been overly politicized. "You can't always see the difference between foreigners and natives, and the only thing that keeps the nation -- or the idea of a nation -- together is the language."
Moline, 40, is developing a Luxembourgish studies program at the university. But her more ambitious effort is to generate public support for greater government funding for a revision of the Luxembourgish dictionary -- the first such undertaking in five decades. A revised dictionary would allow the "standardization" of Luxembourgish, in much the way Afrikaans, the South African language, was standardized some years ago, Moline said. "We have to define and record our culture and our language for ourselves."
Some would argue that Luxembourgish's resurgence was six decades in the making. When Germany seized Luxembourg during World War II, it deemed Luxembourgish merely a dialect of German, rather than a fully functional language, and banned its written use.
Young writers of the postwar generation proudly used Luxembourgish, rather than French or German, to pen poetry promoting the strengthened national identity. By the 1960s, the first Luxembourgish-language novel in more than a century had been published. Yet Luxembourgish remained linguistically unsophisticated until the early 1980s, when an emerging author named Guy Renewig published a novel in it, to wide acclaim.
Hoscheit, the children's book author, continues the trend. "Previously, people assumed we didn't have enough vocabulary to write about our feelings," he said, seated at a table in the office of his publisher, Editions Guy Binsfeld, where posters for many of the new Luxembourgish offerings adorn the walls. "But the truth was, no one had ever tried to write a 200-page novel." Renewig's work, said Hoscheit, 51, "showed it's possible to write in Luxembourgish, and that it could be as good as French, German or even English."
Hoscheit's books have sold at least 3,000 copies each -- the equivalent of a bestseller in the tiny market -- and received the Prix Servais, the top prize for literature by a Luxembourgish author. The author is passionate and understated, seeing himself as a cultural servant working to preserve the language, but certainly not xenophobic.
"I'm not against foreigners," he said, pausing to choose his words, "but it's my language. Luxembourger people see the importance of writers writing in Luxembourgish. If there is no writing, in 20 years, there might not be a language, or culture.
"The culture is in the writing."
