著者

高橋 秀彰

出版者

関西大学外国語学部

雑誌

関西大学外国語学部紀要 = Journal of foreign language studies (ISSN:18839355)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.6, pp.59-72, 2012-03

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Luxembourg has unique characteristics in terms of language policy where three languagesare officially used, viz. Luxembourgish, French and German. All of them are compulsorysubjects at schools and the last two are the languages of instruction. Luxembourgish is theonly national language of Luxembourg standing for its national identity and is a mothertongue for most Luxembourgers. As French and German are also the official languagesrespectively in France and Germany, it is important for Luxembourg to keep the balancebetween these languages in order to keep an adequate distance from its big neighbors. Thisis the reason that mastering all of the three languages is important for Luxembourgers.Although learning two languages besides one’s mother tongue is a spirit of the EU language education policy, it is by no means easy to acquire three languages. For Luxembourgers whose mother tongue is Luxembourgish, a Germanic language, it requires much effort to be proficient in French which belongs to the Romanic language family. As Luxembourgish is linguistically very close to German, this is used as a major language of instruction at the first stage of the elementary school education, which is arduous for children of the immigrants because most of them are from Romanic countries such as Portugal and Italy. We may recall here that more than 40% of the pupils at schools are with a Romance language background and they are not familiar with Germanics. This is one of the reasons for their high repetition rate at schools. In this study, after observing some historical and legal background of trilingualismin Luxembourg, I shall be examining some ideal characteristics of the trilingualismbrought about by political decisions and increasing problems of language education atschools.