Calling it a mixed blessing, officials have confirmed that a Luxembourg City drug dealer has used Luxembourgish to offer drugs to a passerby.
The utterance occurred on Monday afternoon on Rue de Hollerich when the dealer said “wat sichs du?” to a man on his way to a bus stop.
Officials say that while the passerby himself doesn’t speak Luxembourgish, is a pensioner, and certainly wouldn’t have bought drugs anyway, the linguistic performance is significant.
“Ninety-nine percent of the time when you’re offered drugs, the dealer speaks to you in English or French, which can be very aggravating to those who would like to see Luxembourgish play a larger role in public life, especially in the capital where there are so many foreigners,” said one official.
“Obviously, this is not the sort of way we’d like to see our language take root in non-native populations, but it’s a start,” he added. “If this continues, we expect to see Luxembourgish as the de facto language in the capital in only a few decades.”
