As Contacto and RTL report based on a parliamentary response by the minister, the new orthography rules are not meant to completely reform the language, rather to adapt to evolutions and obtain a “more pronounced degree of standardisation”, the minister was quoted as saying.  

Although Meisch encourages the onboarding of the rules as soon as possible, he also wants to avoid an abrupt change and, as such, the current rules will still be valid until the 2020 school year begins. 

Coordinated by the Luxembourg’s first language commissioner, Marc Barthelemy, the anticipated changes are set to include a bit more flexibility in the “n rule”, linked more to pronunciation; the loss of the long h in words like “Ausnahm” (exception); and more defined rules concerning “e” versus “ee”. 

Words with French and German origins are also being reevaluated--in some cases, such words will be treated as equivalents to their Luxembourgish counterparts, but in other cases the Luxembourgish variant will still apply.