TIMED PRACTICE · Lëtzebuergesch
Luxembourgish typing speed test
Flow like a stream. Space commits a word, backspace fixes the last one. Tab or Esc restarts.
Testing your Luxembourgish typing speed
Luxembourgish uses the Latin alphabet you already have. The practice words here add 3 characters beyond a-z — ë, é, ä.
The awkward part of Luxembourgish is not the alphabet, it is the 3 characters these practice words put outside it: ë, é and ä. Whether your layout gives them a dedicated key or builds them from a modifier, the reach has to become a trained motion rather than a decision — they turn up in 18% of the practice words.
The speed test and the games draw on one bank of 93 common Luxembourgish words — 26 distinct characters in all, averaging 4.7 written units per word. A test can run for a fixed duration or a fixed number of words, with punctuation and numbers optional. Words are drawn at random each time, so no two runs are the same and there is nothing to memorise. The result reports net speed, accuracy, how steady you were across the run, and the five keys you got wrong most often.
The distribution is lopsided, which is the useful part. Across the 93 practice words, 26 distinct characters appear — and the single most common accounts for about 13% of every letter typed, with the top ten covering roughly 68%. Drilling the frequent ones first is where almost all of the benefit is.
The temptation in Luxembourgish is to skip the accents while drilling and add them later. It does not work — the accent is part of the motion, and a hand that has practised the word without it has practised a different word. Drill them from the start, awkward as the first week is.
- Writing system
- Latin
- Keyboard layout
- Latin QWERTY family
- Direction
- left to right
- Practice words
- 93
- Distinct characters
- 26
- Average word
- 4.7 units
Characters beyond a-z in the Luxembourgish practice words
- ë8
- é5
- ä4
Counted across the 93 practice words. 18% of them need at least one.
an den ass vun mat fir net esou vill gutt grouss klengA national language standardised in 1984
Luxembourgish became an official language of Luxembourg only in 1984, alongside French and German, and its spelling was standardised around the same time. Before that it was largely a spoken language written ad hoc.
It uses ä, ë and é, and the keyboard question is genuinely awkward: Luxembourg uses the Swiss French layout, which is designed for French and German rather than Luxembourgish, so the letters the language actually needs are not especially well placed.
Most Luxembourgers write in three languages daily — Luxembourgish informally, French administratively, German in the press — which is a keyboard problem as much as a linguistic one.
Questions about typing in Luxembourgish
Do I need a Luxembourgish keyboard?
No. The characters beyond a-z in these practice words — ë, é and ä — are reachable on the keyboard you already own once the right layout is selected in your operating system's settings. Some layouts give them their own keys, others build them from a modifier; either way the hardware is unchanged.
Why does my score change so much between attempts?
Partly the draw and partly you. No two runs of the Luxembourgish typing test use the same words — they are sampled fresh from the bank each time, so one attempt can hand you a friendlier set than the next — and concentration varies more than most people credit. Take three and look at the middle one rather than the best.
How is typing speed measured here?
In words per minute, where a "word" is a fixed five characters rather than an actual word. That convention is what makes a WPM figure comparable between languages whose real words are very different lengths. The number reported is net WPM: uncorrected mistakes are subtracted, so it reflects text you actually produced correctly.
Why is my Luxembourgish speed lower than my English speed?
Because you are doing two things at once: finding the key and recalling what it writes. Speed in a script you have typed for years is one motion; speed in a new one is a lookup followed by a motion. The lookup is what disappears with practice, and when it does the gap closes faster than most people expect.
Which Luxembourgish keyboard layout do these tests use?
Latin QWERTY family, plus the 3 characters beyond a-z that these practice words use. The 93 practice words between them use 26 of those 29, so 3 characters never come up in the practice text — these are the commonest words rather than an even sweep of the layout. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the keys you actually press, which for an input method are the Latin ones already printed on them.
What will I actually be typing in Luxembourgish?
93 of the most common words in Luxembourgish, drawn at random. They use 26 distinct characters between them and average 4.7 written units each, with the longest running to about 9. Short, frequent words are used on purpose: they are the ones your hands will meet most often outside a lesson, so the practice transfers.
Is Luxembourgish hard to type?
Only slightly, if you already touch type. 18% of the practice words need a character outside a-z, 3 such characters appear in total, and the rest is a keyboard you already know. The difficulty is concentrated in a handful of positions rather than spread across the layout.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
No, and it is free either way. Every lesson, drill, test and game works signed out, with your progress kept in this browser. An account adds three things only: your progress and settings follow you to another device, your streak survives clearing your browser data, and you can appear on the leaderboards under a name you choose.
Also in Luxembourgish: lessons and typing games.
Other languages written in Latin: Malay, Maltese, Māori, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- Why your typing speed stopped improvingNearly everyone stalls somewhere in the middle. What causes a typing plateau, why more of the same practice does not clear it, and what does.
- Does your keyboard matter?Mechanical against membrane, laptop against desktop, split against straight. What genuinely changes your typing, what only changes how it feels.
- How long a typing test should beFifteen seconds, one minute and five minutes measure three different things. Which length to use, and why comparing results across them is meaningless.