Comments on: Now, For Some Reason, a Snow Leopard

By: Synesthesia

Synesthesia — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 03:27:55 +0000

I LOVE SNOW LEOPARDS!

By: nismo

nismo — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 01:34:17 +0000

Ooooh, cute, tiny, AND ferocious.

By: fluffybutt

fluffybutt — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 23:04:14 +0000

wuyizidi Thank you so much for both those links.. any big cats are my favourite animals..love them all they are such precious creatures!

By: Catalina

Catalina — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:02:30 +0000

Sadly I cannot see the vid cause Im at work but the second picture is WOW FIERCE!! lo

By: Ramon

Ramon — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 20:35:01 +0000

@Leslie Wow, didn’t know that little comment might have such an impact

If you’re ever near Switzerland, you owe it to yourself to check out Swiss-German. I don’t know how we survived without a genitive for so long, but it seems to work. We just say “am Hans sin leopard” (= “dem Hans sein Leopard” in German i.e. “of the Hans his leopard”) Also, there are many other non-German special features in our language. So not understanding a word of it if you’re coming from High-German is just fine, they’re different language families, nothing to worry about.

The guy in the video says “huusbusle”, for example. What a creepy word! Basically means “house kitty-cat” in several Swiss-German dialects, but my own home dialect doesn’t have that word (it doesn’t even have “busle”, we just say “katz”). I know what a “busle” is (it’s the same as a “büsi”), but I’d never use that word myself.

One of the problems we have in Switzerland is that they’re ashamed of their own language, so the “official” version of the language is High-German. Therefore we don’t have any official written Swiss-German and there’s no way to really learn it unless you’re in Switzerland That’s why you wouldn’t find “huusbusle” in a dictionary.

Oh well!

By: Sharon Wilson

Sharon Wilson — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 18:23:39 +0000

I was thinking the other day that they’d never posted a snow leopard on this site! That’s uncanny!

By: Leslie (NTA)

Leslie (NTA) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 17:53:14 +0000

@ Ramon:
Very interesting to me esp as I am an avowed language Geek; I majored in French (& have rec’d compliments on my French still recently both from folks from France & folks from Haiti or French-speaking areas in Africa) ….& completed college minors also in both German & Russian (altho’ I found both of those less innate for me) ……However, while I knew about the ideas of High & Low German, I had never heard the term Alemannic German. Allemand is the French word FOR Germany & Switzerland & France are neighbors; so that all makes sense.
Also, in the “Dumb Human” category — It felt GREAT to hear, that there are specific, particular reasons WHY I couldn’t figure out much of the (leopard kitten) handler’s commentary, even though I supposedly know some basic German vocab & sentence structure. I had felt SO inadequate as a student of several languages in colleges !! Thanks for the info & also thanks for providing me some reassurance that I’m not necessarily the dullest pencil in my German classes !

(for the monolinguistic CO’ers here ….aka those who only know the Engrish langwige… “Genitive” is one of several “cases”/ similar to “tenses” into which ya gotta put certain endings on nouns/ verbs, under the grammar rules of each language)

By: doxnsox

doxnsox — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 17:52:06 +0000

And it’s only 30 bucks!

By: Ramon

Ramon — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 17:29:25 +0000

@Jenna (from Germany) An accent? Geez! It’s not an accent, the Alemannic language family (of which Swiss-German is the most widely used) is its own.. well.. language family.

Grammar etc. is very different to (High-)German. Saying it’s just an accent is almost like saying Dutch is German with an accent Swiss-German doesn’t even have a genitive.

Have a look at Alemannic German sometime

By: cbm

cbm — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 16:59:11 +0000

By the way, the book The Snow Leopard is a wonderful read. I don’t like to see someone holding what should be a wild beast.