Luxembourgish on computer and Internet

The menu of Windows 10

Computers and the Internet have the power to keep languages alive, especially in written form. The example of Luxembourgish shows where a language of a few hundred thousand speakers can be found in the world wide web and in operation systems.

Despite most of its written documents are in French or German - Luxembourgish itself was a more spoken language. But there was a change over the last years and the Moselle Franconian language showed more presence in written form - especially on the Internet. 

A big online source of the language is surely Wikipedia which has included lots of articles in tons of tongues. In terms of total articles Luxembourgish is currently listed on position 78 with 45,000 entries ahead of tongues like Afrikaans, Islandic or Irish.

Even Microsoft started with downloadable language packs for their Office versions. And since Windows 8 a switch to another language has become much easier, it also counts for Luxembourgish to change the whole operation system to that language like any other.

Available, but not everywhere yet...

Not on Google yet

On the smartphone it didn't go that fast: The iOS 9 version has Luxembourgish now included with a few other minority languages and dialects. On Android there's only a CyanogenMod version with the Luxemburgish language - no official inclusion yet.

Same goes with Google: No possibility for Google Translate or even for changing your Google account to Luxembourgish.

Another big topic and a big wish is the addition to Facebook: Even a petition was started on Change.org  to include Lëtzebuergesch on the most popular social network. Unfortunately it hasn't accomplished anything by now - only 2700 of 5000 supporters yet.

Adding minority languages or even dialects to these big platforms is a step which is needed to be done in the future in order to keep these languages alive for the further development and the next generations. 

In my view it's only a matter of time when these tongues are going to be added to Google and Facebook - and not just because Microsoft has already done it.