Language question

%26quot;Ich weisse ist nicht%26quot; is Schwabische. It is a

%26quot;frozen phrase%26quot; dating from the 1600%26#39;s. ... in

Stuttgart, where it is used regularly. It is definitely not High German.

Is the above statement correct?

I am having an argument about this usage.

Best regards,

Don Dool

dool@comcast.net

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My Swabian wife who has lived in or close to Stuttgart for 20 years has never heard that expression, and she says if it was Swabian there would be a lot of things wrong with it, such as weisse being woiss, but then, Swabian isn%26#39;t really a written language. Neither is the phrase High German.

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The phrase does not make any sense and is not Swabian, neither 1600 nor any other time.

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This phrase makes no sense. 2 verbs and no object.

With a literal translation into English

Ich weiss ist nicht = I know is not

Only sense would make something like this

Ich weiss es nicht = I know it not

This would be however in Swabian

I woiss des nedde

The words are with the exception of %26quot;weisse%26quot; high German. I%26#39;m not aware of any German dialect were weisse (for weiss) would be possible as a verb. I know this %26quot;e%26quot; as an inappropriate ending only from foreigners speaking some kind of broken German, e.g. Turkish-German.

weisse exists only as a

adjective: e.g. weisse Wand (= white wall)

noun: e.g. Berliner Weisse (a type of beer)