# Du bisch ja voll s'ekligschte wonni niä gseh han (Swiss German dialect)



## dy24

Hi everyone! I don't speak any German at all, I would be grateful if anyone could translate this into English for me:

Du bisch ja voll s'ekligschte wonni niä gseh han... Wänn ich dich wär, würd i d'Schnurä hebä; s'isch besser für dich! Alles liebi

Thank you in advance!


----------



## Kuestenwache

honestly this is kind of offensive. If you have to know it means 
"you are the most disgusting thing I've ever seen, if I were you I would just shut up, it's better for you. kindest regards"
I can't really tell but I suppose the dialect is some form of Swabian


----------



## Robocop

It is Swiss German dialect language.


----------



## dy24

ok, thanks a lot for your help!


----------



## madsh33p

It does look pretty close to Swabian, too.


----------



## berndf

madsh33p said:


> It does look pretty close to Swabian, too.


Alemannic (Swiss German belongs to the Alemannic group) and Swabian are closely related dialects. The Shibboleth here is the past participle of "sein". In Alemannic it is "g'sie" and in Swabian "g'wä".

The reason why Robocop said it was Swiss was because of the expression "d'Schnurä hebä". This apparently isn't used anywhere else.


----------



## Dan2

dy24 said:


> ... wonni niä gseh han...


= was ich je gesehen habe?
Kann man "wonni niä" anhand des Wortschatzes der Standardsprache erklären?


----------



## dy24

What does that mean, Dan?


----------



## Dan2

dy24 said:


> What does that mean, Dan?


Sorry...
Your original sentence was written in a pretty extreme dialectal form of German.  I was asking those with knowledge of the dialect how some of the words relate to standard German.


----------



## Robocop

dy24 said:


> Du bisch ja voll s'ekligschte wonni niä wo ni je gseh han... Wänn ich dich wär,  würd i d'Schnurä hebä; s'isch besser für dich!


Literally translated: ... das Ekligste, *wo ich je* gesehen habe ...  The word "wo", which in standard German can be a relative *adverb* (which would be incorrect usage here, of course), is also used as a relative *pronoun *in dialect language.


----------



## Robocop

The word "Schnure" or "Schnorre" for "Mund", "Maul", "Fresse" or "Schnauze" is a typical Swiss word.
A "Schnurri" (or "Laferi") is a person who keeps talking and talking and talking ... (usually without saying a lot). In Switzerland, the TV presenter "Beni Thurnherr", for example, is commonly known as "Schnurri vo dr Nation" (the nation's magpie)

By the way, the verb "schnorren" as a standard German word has a different meaning from the dialectal "schnorren": to bum, to scrounge ...


----------



## Dan2

Robocop said:


> Du bisch ja voll s'ekligschte wonni niä wo ni je gseh han...





Robocop said:


> Literally translated:...* wo ich je* gesehen habe ...


Thanks.
So "ich" -> "i" here (as in other dialects)?
And where does the /n/ in "ni" come from?


----------



## Demiurg

Dan2 said:


> And where does the /n/ in "ni" come from?


I think it's rather _won i je_ and the "won" is somehow related to "den" or the "n" was inserted for easier pronunciation.


----------



## birder

I think the "N" is just a connecting sound in dialect (Mundart) to avoid the almost glottal stop that is needed as a separator between the vowels in the standard "wo" and "ich".

I used to live in Visp (Oberwallis) many years ago and noticed such connectors frequently in Visperdeutsch and Saaserdeutsch.


----------



## berndf

birder said:


> I think the "N" is just a connecting sound in dialect (Mundart) to avoid the almost glottal stop that is needed as a separator between the vowels in the standard "wo" and "ich".


I think so, too.


----------



## Robocop

Demiurg said:


> I think it's rather _won i je_ and the "won" is somehow related to "den" or the "n" was inserted for easier pronunciation.


Writing (spelling) dialect language is no easy matter ...


----------



## Demiurg

If I recall correctly this phenomenon is called "external sandhi" in linguistics.


----------



## Kuestenwache

Isn't it rather a hiat (konsonant to sperate vowels of its restricting syllables)


----------



## berndf

Kuestenwache said:


> Isn't it rather a hiat (konsonant to sperate vowels of its restricting syllables)


No, the opposite. A _Hiatus_ is a separation of adjacent vowels without an interleaving consonant. The word _Hiatus_ itself contains one.


----------



## birder

Robocop, I remember learning my little bit of Schwyzrdüüts from a humour magazine in Switzerland called "Der Nebelspalter" -- if it still exists.

Kuestenwache, yes, that's correct. Hiatus (not hiat) is any break in continuity, not just in linguistics. In politics an "interregnum" is also a hiatus.


----------



## Kuestenwache

berndf said:


> No, the opposite. A _Hiatus_ is a separation of adjacent vowels without an interleaving consonant. The word _Hiatus_ itself contains one.


yes of course you are right, what I meant was indeed the opposite, in German for example it is very common to avoid a hiatus (in German also just "Hiat" hence my mistake) by placing (here by the way we also have an example of hiatus avoiding: place + ing = placing) an consonant like "n" or "s" between the vowels, for example:
Mexiko, Mexika-n-er
Puerto Rico, Puerto Rica-n-er
Jamaika, Jamaika-n-isch
This is the phenomenon I ment to describe


----------



## birder

I stand corrected. Berdf stated it precisely. In our sample the intervening N was to AVOID the hiatus.


----------



## Dan2

How widespread is this linking -n- in these dialects?  Can someone give some examples of other syntactic environments where it occurs?

The -n- as hiatus-avoider would be similar to the -r- in standard German "woran", "worüber", "daran", darüber", etc (as opposed to "wo", "womit", etc., where no -r- is needed).
Altho... note that English ("where", "there") and Scandinavian ("hvor", "der") suggest that these words started out with an -r in Germanic, so maybe German _preserved_ the -r in "woran", etc. and dropped it elsewhere.



Kuestenwache said:


> ... we also have an example of hiatus by placing ... an consonant like "n" or "s" between the vowels, for example:
> Mexiko, Mexika-n-er
> Puerto Rico, Puerto Rica-n-er
> Jamaika, Jamaika-n-isch


The first two at least directly reflect the Spanish forms (México, mexicano, etc.) and in fact may go back to Latin (Roma, Romanus?) (I don't know Latin but that looks like Latin...).  But I think you are correct that this -n- serves a hiatus-avoiding function in German, even if the -n- was borrowed from Romance.


----------



## berndf

Dan2 said:


> Altho... note that English ("where", "there") and Scandinavian ("hvor", "der") suggest that these words started out with an -r in Germanic, so maybe German _preserved_ the -r in "woran", etc. and dropped it elsewhere.


That is correct.


----------



## Schmizzkazz

I think this sentence could also be from the very South of Baden.


----------

