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English has one "the" and one "a". Luxembourgish chooses the article by the gender of the noun (masculine, feminine or neuter), and the n-rule can shorten it further.

Examples: de Mann - the man, d'Fra - the woman, d'Kand - the child, d'Kanner - the children; e Mann - a man, eng Fra - a woman, e Kand - a child.

den or de, en or e?

The masculine den and the masculine and neuter en follow the n-rule: they keep their -n before a vowel and before n, d, t, z, h, and drop it before other consonants.

• den Apel - the apple, den Hond - the dog, den Dësch - the table
• de Bus - the bus, de Mann - the man
• en Auto - a car, e Kaffi - a coffee

d' and dat

D' is written with an apostrophe and glued to the noun: d'Schoul - the school, d'Stad - the city (and, for Luxembourgers, the capital). It covers feminine, neuter and plural, so the article alone does not tell you the gender. When you want to point at something, the neuter has a stressed form dat: dat Haus do - that house there.

Mistakes English speakers make

• Expecting one right way to say "I like coffee": Ech drénke gär Kaffi and Ech drénken de Kaffi gär are both heard. Learn nouns with their article either way.
• Learning nouns without their article. Learn de Kaffi, d'Taass (the cup), not just Kaffi, Taass.
• Writing den everywhere. *Den Bus is wrong: before b the article is de.