Christopher Morse, a linguist at Luxembourg’s ZLS, is part of a team harnessing AI to give a “low-resource” language digital life — building tools that let Luxembourgish be learned, spoken, and heard worldwide.
“I’m American by birth and Luxembourgish by choice,” says Christopher Morse, computational linguist at the Zenter fir d’Lëtzebuerger Sprooch (ZLS). His mission: use technology to make Luxembourgish more accessible than ever.
With around 292,000 native speakers in Luxembourg, Luxembourgish is still considered a “low-resource language” — one with little standardised digital data compared to giants like English or French. But thanks to AI models, digital dictionaries, and voice tools, that gap is closing fast.
In recent years, ZLS has launched free tools that are quietly transforming how people learn and use the language:
The latter was trained on 80 hours of Luxembourgish audio — from parliamentary debates to RTL clips and Radio 100,7 broadcasts. For text-to-speech, it also draws on OpenAI’s Whisper model, originally trained on 600,000 hours of multilingual audio. “When you introduce the 80 hours of Luxembourgish, it identifies the new language and recognises patterns,” Morse explains. “And this is actually really nice also for Luxembourgish, specifically, because a lot of words in Luxembourgish come from German and French.”
The public is already finding creative uses. “I know for a lot of learners, they like to use it if there’s audio in Luxembourgish, they can transcribe it so they can actually see what’s being said,” he says. “And then we have a lot of people using it who are working in the media, for example conducting interviews in Luxembourgish.”
Others are exploring accessibility. “We’re at the very beginning in that sense. But it’s, there’s a lot of potential options out there,” says Morse, pointing to screen readers and tools for people unable to speak.
Challenges of Small Languages
Luxembourgish poses unique challenges in the digital world. For many years, it was written phonetically, until orthography reforms standardised spelling. Today, ZLS is careful not to impose rigid rules. “We’re more documenting. We’re not prescriptive, in a sense,” Morse explains.
Unlike many small languages, Luxembourgish benefits from strong state backing. That makes it a model for others. Still, visibility matters. Luxembourgish will only thrive digitally if it’s embedded in global platforms. The ZLS is already in talks with Apple and Microsoft. If successful, users could one day activate spellcheckers or dictate notes in Luxembourgish on their smartphones. “I think soon it will be a lot easier to do this, but we’re at a point where, although ChatGPT and Claude speak some Luxembourgish, it’s still not good enough to guide learners or natives in writing their language correctly.”
The AI Future of Learning Luxembourgish
The next step? AI voices and conversational bots. “At this point, we have an AI voice for Luxembourgish. It’s still in the early phases, but it’s quite performant. An LLM that can speak good Luxembourgish would be a really great start to then being able to have conversations back and forth,” Morse says.
For Morse, the future lies in personalised tools that reframe grammar in ways learners find intuitive. “That would be so tremendously helpful, and I also think it would have relevance for people here, because one of the biggest challenges that the Luxembourgish school system faces is that, especially in the Romance language community, a lot of students are known to have trouble learning Luxembourgish and German because of the fundamental differences in the grammar system.”
Why It Matters
Technology is not just a convenience — it’s a lifeline for small languages. “I don’t necessarily think that Luxembourgish specifically would disappear, at least not overnight, but I do think that it would marginalise the language, and it would also affect morale if you couldn’t access it in any way.”
Morse is optimistic. “Cultural heritage and language are part of my DNA, and so I’m a bit biased in the sense that I have intrinsic motivation behind this, and I really love the Luxembourgish language in particular. So I’m very, very optimistic about it. … I think it’s going in a good direction.”
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