Das Perfekt mit hunn und sinn

To talk about the past, Luxembourgish uses a compound tense like English "I have eaten": a form of hunn or sinn plus a past participle at the end of the clause. The big difference from English is that this is the ordinary past. Ech hunn eng Bouneschlupp giess means both "I have eaten a bean soup" and "I ate a bean soup". Apart from a handful of very common verbs (war - was, hat - had, the modals), Luxembourgish has no everyday simple past to choose instead.

hunn or sinn?

Most verbs take hunn. Sinn goes with verbs of movement from one place to another (goen, kommen, fueren, fléien), with verbs of change of state (ginn - become) and with bleiwen (stay) and sinn itself. English uses "have" here, so the mistake to avoid is *Ech hu gaangen; it must be Ech si gaangen.

Forming the participle

• Regular verbs: ge- + stem + -t: maachen → gemaach, schaffen → geschafft, spillen → gespillt.
• Irregular verbs must be learned: iessen → giess, drénken → gedronk, goen → gaangen, gesinn → gesinn, schwätzen → geschwat.
• Some have no ge- at all: kommen → komm, bleiwen → bliwwen.

Word order

The helper verb is in second position, the participle at the end: Mir sinn den 23. Juni op den Nationalfeierdag an d'Stad gefuer. - On 23 June we drove into town for the National Day.