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	Swiss German	English
#6	Swiss German by Sascha Baer
	Und sô, wia erwartet, het êr sich selber gfrogt, öb d'Menschhait anderst sigi. Abr d'Welt het mê Chaôs. Wegem Dan hani, ôbwôl's Azaicha het, d'Sacha anderst vrknüpft und usagfunda, dass si nit lebt. Vilicht bin jo ii öppis völlig andersts. Ii bin mr sicher, dassi si übrzüga kann, dassi immr no dr Dan bin. Ii bin nit a Sêla.	And so, as expected, he asked himself whether humanity was different. But the worldᵢ has more chaos. Because of Dan, I have, even though there is evidence, connected the things differently and have discovered that itᵢ doesn't live. Maybe I am something completely different. I am sure that I can convince itᵢ that I'm still Dan. I'm not a soul. (in the Swiss German text, due to gendered nouns the usage of pronouns is less ambiguous; I've used a subscript i to indicate that the "it"s unambiguously refer back to the earth)

LEXICON

Note that some words are not found here, but in tables in the grammar section instead. If you are certain something is missing, PM me.

a	det.	indefinite feminine nominative/accusative article
as	pro.	it (nom/acc) (becomes 's if not sentence-initially)
abr	conj.	but
anderst	adj.	different
Azaicha	n-neut.	indicator, evidence
Dan	n-masc.	Dan (personal name)
dass	subj.	that
Chaôs	n-neut.	chaos
êr	pro.	he (nom)
erwarta	v.	to expect
froga	v.	to ask
ha	v-irr.	to have
ii	pro.	I (reduces to -i if unstressed)
immr no	adv.	after all this time (from immr "always" + no "still")
jo	modal	"obviously; certainly; of course; really; just; as you know; as is generally known (indicates and emphasises that one is expressing a known fact)" -wiktionary
kann		3s indicative of könna "to be able to"
leba	v.	to live
mê	det.	more
Menschhait	n-fem.	humanity
mr	pro.	me (dative)
nit	adv.	not
öb	subj.	whether
öppis	n-neut.	something
ôbwôl	subj.	even though
Sach	n-fem.	thing, matter
Sêla	n-fem.	soul
selber	adv.	self
si	pro.	she, her (nom/acc)
sii	v-irr.	to be
sich	pro.	3rd person reflexive
sicher	adj.	save, secure, certain
sigi		3s subjunctive of sii "to be"
sô	adv.	thus, such, like that
übrzüga	v.	to convince
und	conj.	and
usagfunda		participle of usafinda "to find out"
vilicht	adv.	maybe
völlig	adv.	completely
vrknüpfa	v.	to connect
Welt	n-fem.	world
wega	conj.	because
wegem		wega + am
wia	adv.	as, like
	pro.	how

GRAMMAR

Swiss German employs two different rules for word order, depending on the type of clause:

In a subordinated clause the verb comes at the end. The other parts of the sentence come before it, with a neutral word order of SOV, but parts may be moved around a bit for emphasis.
In a main clause, the word order is identical to that of subordinated clauses, but the conjugated part of the verb is moved forward to the second position. It must be preceded by exactly one other element, which may be a noun phrase ("I", "the beautiful dog"), an adverb ("yesterday") or a subordinated clause ("That I've seen him, ").

When connecting clauses, conjunctions connect two clauses on the same level while a subjunction subordinates its sentence to the other.

Thus, the English sentence "I know that I've seen" would have the order "I know, that I him seen have" (main clause first) or "That I him seen have, know I" (subordinated clause first). Notice how in Swiss German, commas are placed between main and subordinate clauses, unlike in English. This should make parsing a bit easier. If the subject pronoun does not precede the verb, it usually follows it immediately.

Apart from this complexity, Swiss German syntax is quite similar to English: in noun phrases the order is Preposition - Article - Adjectives - Noun

With one exception, all verbs in the text are in the indicative. The subjunctive is mainly used for reported speech and second-hand information one assumes to be true.

Noun occur in one of three genders, masculine, feminine or neuter. Adjectives modifying nouns directly, as well as pronouns referring to them agree in gender. Only one agreement affix occurs in the text:

-s neuter singular nominative

The past tense of all relevant verbs is formed by putting the verb in the participle and inflecting the auxiliary ha. The participle is formed by circumfixing g- -t, though the g- is omitted before certain derivational prefixes, such as vr-

Irregular verbs of which only one form appears in the text have been listed with that form in the lexicon. The following table shows the regular inflection on the verb verba "to verb", as well as the two irregular verbs:

Inf	verb-a	sii	ha
1s	verb-a	bin	han
2s	verb-sch	bisch	hesch
3s	verb-t	isch	het
pl	verb-en	sin	hen

Definite articles:

	Masc	Neut	Fem	Plur
Nom/Acc	dr	ds	d'	d'
Dat	am	am	dr	da

Nouns do not inflect for case, only articles and adjectives show them. Nouns do however inflect for number, unpredictably. The two plural markers found in the text are -a and unmarked.