Luxembourgish personal pronouns: ech, du, hien, hatt, si, mir, dir — with audio

Ech, du, hien, hatt, si, mir, dir — the Luxembourgish personal pronouns in one place: who does it, who it happens to, the short forms you hear in speech, the polite Dir, and why Luxembourgish has two words for “she”.

Updated November 1, 2026 · 5 min read

Pronouns are the first grammar you use in Luxembourgish: Moien, wéi geet et? already hides one. The system looks like German at first glance, but it has its own habits — short forms that swallow vowels, a polite Dir written with a capital, and two words for “she”. Every form below is listed in the Lëtzebuerger Online Dictionnaire (LOD), the official dictionary, and every example sentence is an LOD example read by a native speaker.

Subject pronouns: who does it

The verb changes with the person, exactly as in the tables for sinn, hunn (to have) and goen (to go). If the endings are new to you, read how to conjugate Luxembourgish verbs in the present tense next — pronouns and endings are learnt together.

Du, dir and Dir: three ways to say “you”

Du is one person you know well — a friend, a child, a colleague who has offered it. dir is several of them. Dir, with a capital in writing, is the polite form for one person or several: a customer, a stranger, someone older, the person behind the desk at the commune. The verb takes the plural form for both dir and Dir: du gees, dir gitt, Dir gitt (goen); du kënns, Dir kommt (kommen).

Hatt and si: two words for “she”

LOD lists both hatt and si as “she” — and gives the very same example with each: *Wat ass hatt eng schéi Fra!* and *Wat ass si eng schéi Fra!* (What a beautiful woman she is!). Hatt is grammatically neuter, like the noun *d'Meedchen* (the girl): its short form is et and its “to her” form is him. In everyday speech hatt is typically used for girls and for women people call by their first name, si for a woman you would address more formally — but the choice varies from speaker to speaker and region to region, so listen to how people around you use it.

Object pronouns: me, you, him, her, us, them

After a verb or a preposition the pronoun changes. Luxembourgish keeps two object cases, as German does: the accusative (the person something is done to) and the dative (the person something is given or said to). In the plural the two cases share their forms except for “them”.

The short forms you hear in speech

When a pronoun is not stressed, Luxembourgish shortens it: mir → mer, dir → der, si → se, hien → en, hatt → et, and du → de after the verb in a question. They are written as they are said, and they are not slang — LOD records them as words of their own. Learners who only know the long forms often fail to recognise them when listening, which matters in the Sproochentest listening part.

Reflexive pronouns: myself, yourself…

Many verbs can take a reflexive pronoun: mech, dech, sech, eis, iech, sech. The LOD conjugation tables print it in brackets beside the verb — see verstoen, erënneren or entschëllegen, whose reflexive *sech entschëllegen* means to apologise (see excuse me and sorry).

Practise them

• Say the present tense of schwätzen, wunnen and schaffen with every pronoun — speak, live, work: the three verbs of every first conversation.
• Turn each subject into an object: *ech gesinn hien* → *hie gesäit mech*. Check the forms on the gesinn page.
• Ask three questions with de: *Wou wunns de? Wat méchs de? Wéini kënns de?* — the questions guide explains the order.
• Greet someone with Dir and someone with du: hello, good morning, nice to meet you.

Keep learning

• The present tense: verb endings for every pronoun
• Irregular verbs: sinn, hunn, goen, kommen and the modals
• Word order: where the verb and the pronoun go
• The n-rule: why hunn becomes hu
• How to ask questions
• Negation with net and keen
• 100 common Luxembourgish verbs
• Greetings and everyday phrases
• All Luxembourgish verb tables
• How to learn Luxembourgish online