L’IMAGE comic series: Mariela’s story

Alt-Text with long description

 

COMIC

 

 

[Page 1, Title Page]

Upper left corner of page reads: UofT L’IMAGE Project: Language, Identity, Multiculturalism and Global Empowerment

 

Subtitle over light blue box: The lived experiences of real multilingual students at U of T

 

Title over bright red box: Mariela’s story**

Under the title banners, the character Mariela smiles at the readers. She has light skin tone, and straight, medium length dark brown hair that almost touches her shoulders. Her hair is pulled back into a half-up style with some hair covering the top of her ears. She is wearing delicate gold-ish earrings that consist of three vertically dangling spheres, with the middle sphere being larger than the other two. She is wearing an olive green top, probably a T-shirt, with a grey and red tartan plaid scarf hanging (but not wrapped) around her neck.

 

Bottom left corner of page shows the University of Toronto logo.

 

Bottom right footnote: **Some stories in the L’IMAGE comic series employ pseudonyms at the request of the featured student.

 

[Long description of text and images in the comic strip:

The comic strips in the L’IMAGE comic series uses the font Ames, which is the standard font for comics. Ames is an all-caps font. However, Alt-Texts for this project are not written in all-caps so that they will be more accessible for screen readers.

The comic artist for the series is Dr. Ai Taniguchi. Her drawing style can be described as: Japanese manga inspired, cute, large eyes, intentionally sketchy and unpolished line art, simplified, expressive. The comic strips are all digital, but she uses a pen that mimics the line weight of a traditional fountain pen. Her line art is on average 0.5mm in width (relatively thin), but the line weight varies and looks hand-drawn.

The title page of each comic strip is in color. It has a University of Toronto color scheme: navy blue, light blue, and bright red. The background is white with a navy blue frame. The references and acknowledgements page and the “About the L’IMAGE project” page also have this University of Toronto color scheme.

The comic strips themselves are black and white, and employ digital screen tones for shading and backgrounds. Narrations are written inside rectangular boxes, unless otherwise noted.]

 

[Page 2]

 

Top panel: Mariela is smiling at the readers and is waving with her left hand. Her mouth is open as if she’s saying something happily. She is drawn in detail in this panel and is wearing her plaid scarf in this panel, but generally in this comic she is depicted more simply and without her scarf, unless otherwise indicated.

 

Mariela’s narration: Hi! My name is Mariela. I’m an international student at UTM. I speak Brazilian Portuguese, Argentine (Rioplatense) Spanish, and English!

 

Bottom panel 1: A background of some houses along a street with a bench. Based on the context, it’s probably somewhere in Argentina.

 

Mariela’s narration: My dad is Argentine, and my mom is Brazilian. I was born in Argentina, so there was a lot of Spanish around me when I was a toddler.

 

Bottom panel 2: A map of South America with Argentina (towards the southern tip of the continent) and Brazil (to the northeast of Argentina, at least twice as large as Argentina) highlighted and labeled. There is a curved arrow going from Argentina to Brazil.

 

Mariela’s narration: But when I was 4, we moved to Brazil. So Portuguese became the primary language in my life.

 

[Page 3]

 

Top panel: A spotlight is on a simplified depiction of Mariela. She is happily reading an Algebra book.

 

Mariela’s narration: I went to international school in Brazil, where classes were mostly in English. So I also started learning English at a really young age, too.

 

Bottom panel: We see a desktop computer with a computer case (CPU), a monitor, a full sized keyboard, and a wired mouse.

 

Mariela’s narration: At the same time, throughout middle school, I participated in Argentina’s Servicio de Educación a Distancia (Distance Education Service). I didn’t finish the entire program because I eventually had to priotise my dual-diploma high school studies, but I still learned a lot about Argentinian history and culture this way, and it helped me remain fluent in Spanish.

 

[Page 4]

 

Top panel 1: Mariela is seen saying “Hey!” happily to another character, who has darker skintone, dark hair pulled into a low bun, and is wearing cat-eye shaped glasses. L’IMAGE followers may recognize her as Hafza from the series.

 

Mariela’s narration: Today, I use English at school…

 

Top panel 2: Mariela is seen saying “Te ligo depois, tá, Mãe? To someone on the phone. There are three young people in the background smiling and saying something (inaudibly) at her. They all have light skin tone and dark hair. One of them has short, side part hair and is wearing a jacket with a hood, another has short combed hair and facial hair and glasses, and another has long voluminous curly hair.

 

Mariela’s narration (continued): Portuguese with my mom and Brazilian friends at school…

 

Top panel 3: Mariela is seen talking happily to an older man with light/white hair. She is saying “Que partidos de fútbol viste vos hoy, Papi?”

 

Mariela’s narration (continued): Spanish with my dad, and a few Spanish-speaking friends…

 

Bottom panel: A close-up of a smartphone that shows a computer mediated conversation (e.g., Messenger) of some sort. Two speech bubbles coming out of the phone shows the face of Mariela and another person who looks a lot like Mariela (including glasses), but with short, wavy side-part hair that is longer on the top and shorter on the sides. The speech bubble with Mariela’s face is magnifying a profile icon at the bottom right of the chat screen, indicating that this is Mariela’s phone and that the person who sent the last message is Mariela. The other person’s speech bubble is coming out of a profile icon at the top left of the chat screen, indicating that Mariela is having a conversation with this person.

 

Mariela’s narration (continued): …and “Span-Port-Lish” with my brother lol.  

 

 

[Page 5]

 

This page is split diagonally into the top panel and bottom panel, and unusually for Ai’s comics, the narration box is laid on top of the diagonal line that separates the panels, rather than being contained within either of the panels as usual. The narration box reads: “It’s definitely an interesting experience having a multilingual family like mine!”

 

Top panel: We see three people.

 

An older woman with light/white hair pulled into a low bun, wearing rectangular glasses. She’s probably Mariela’s mom. She looks distressed and is saying “I said tirar (emphasis on tirar, which translates into ‘move’) the shoes!! Why did you throw them away?!

 

The older man (Mariela’s father) from earlier is scratching his head with his right hand, and is sweating a little, making a “yikes” face. He’s saying “Ay…”, and an arrow pointing at him says “Tirar = “throw away” in Spanish”.

 

A comically concered looking Mariela is sweating a little and is seen saying, “ay dios mío”.

 

Bottom panel: A conversation between Mariela and her mom. Mariela looks serious but excited. Her mom has her mouth slightly agape, and a small question mark by her head indicates light confusion.

 

Mariela: Mãe I saw an esquilo (light emphasis on esquilo) at school

 

Mariela’s mom: A squirrel?

 

Mariela: Não é menorzinho, como se diz chipmunk (emphasis on chipmunk) em português??

 

 

[Page 6]

 

Top panel: A person with short-ish, light-colored wavy hair is holding a pen and a small spiral memo pad, and is seen asking “Any tips?” with a comical, serious expression to Mariela. Mariela is smiling awkwardly with her mouth slightly agape, sweating slightly.

 

Mariela’s narration: Sometimes people ask me, “How can I be super multilingual like you?!”, but this puts me in an awkward position. I don’t really have an answer. I was lucky to have had access to a community for each of my languages from a very young age, and I naturally learned all three languages that I was exposed to in those communities.

 

Bottom panel: A tartan plaid background (same pattern as Marela’s scarf).

 

Mariela’s narration: And while I say “lucky” and think that multilingualism is generally a positive aspect of my life, my identity hasn’t always been the easiest thing to navigate.

 

[Page 7]

 

Top panel 1: A slightly older woman with light hair and light skin looks surprised and is seen saying “You’re from Brazil?! But your English is so good!”. Mariela is giving a comically confused and/or annoyed expression and staring at this woman, her mouth slightly agape. Mariela’s right brow is flat, and her left brow is raised and in an S shape, but on its side.

 

Mariela’s narration: Canadian people often assume I am Canadian.

 

Top panel 2: Another conversation between the woman from the previous panel and Mariela. The woman is smiling and gesturing towards Mariela, saying “I head you speaking Spanish (emphasis on Spanish) with your mom!”. Mariela, giving an awkward smile and seemingly holding in frustration, is seen saying “That was Portuguese”. Mariela’s hair seems to be floating slightly in the air, reminiscent of snakes that are ready to attack.

 

Mariela’s narration (continued): And sometimes people conflate Portuguese with Spanish.

 

The bottom panel is one image, but is split into three smaller panels. The image is a stop motion depiction of someone taking a pencil out of a mesh pencil stand. There are two identical mesh pencil stands sitting next to each other. A light-colored hand is seen taking a wooden pencil out of the first (left) mesh stand, and it continues to move the pencil over the next (right) mesh stand. It doesn’t put the pencil in this right mesh stand. Instead, an off-screen hand seems to pull the pencil away from the mesh stands.

 

Mariela’s narration: Sometimes I’m seen as “not Brazilian enough” --- and other times, I’m told I’m “not Argentinian enough”.

 

 

[Page 8]

 

The top panel is once again a single image, this time split into two panels. We see in the first panel that the pointed tip of the pencil from the previous page has been left lying horizontally on a flat surface, in a dimly lit area. As the reader’s eyes move to the second top panel, we see the rest of the pencil, and a light-colored hand reaching for it. The illustration indicates that the light source is in this panel, with the shadow that was cast in the previous panel fading into a brighter background in this panel.

 

The first narration box sits over the two panels, but is mostly over the first panel with the pencil in the dark. Mariela’s narration: My life feels like a constant battle against having my identity boxed in a single category.

 

A small narration box at the blunt end of the pencil in the second panel. Mariala’s narration (continued): But

 

 

Bottom panel 1: Mariela is seen sitting at a desk or a table, writing something in a notebook with the pencil we saw earlier. It is inferred that the hand in the previous panel belongs to her. She looks focused and has a slight smile.

 

Mariela’s narration box: I am here.

 

Bottom panel 2: We see the cover of a book. The cover shows the silhouette of Argentina and Brazil, colored in watercolor-like texture. If you look closely, the title of the book is “My ABC’s: Argentina, Brazil, Canada: Stories, Letters, and Poems about Identity and Belonging”. At the bottom, it shows “Mariela” (in all caps) as the author. Small sparkly circles evoke feelings of sparks of inspiration.

 

Mariela’s narration: All parts of me exist on the same heartbeat.

 

 

[Page 9]

 

Mariela is seen smiling proudly, with her mouth open and her head tilted slightly. She is depicted in detail in this panel, with her plaid scarf and everything. Larger sparkly circles evoke feelings of inspiration.

 

Mariela’s narration: Esta es mi história. Meu nome é Mariela. I am me.

 

 

[Page 10]

 

 

Page title: About the L’IMAGE project 

Project PI and comic artist: Ai Taniguchi, Assistant Professor, UTM Department of Language Studies 

Research Assistant: Haili Su, MA Student, UTSG Department of Linguistics 

Special thanks to: Gilbert Lin, Assistant Director, Intercultural & Global Initiatives, UTM International Education Centre 

With the generous support of: UofT International Student Experience Fund, UTM Department of Language Studies, UTM International Education Centre 

Learn more: http://www.lingcomics.com 

Bottom right of page shows the University of Toronto Mississauga logo and the University of Toronto logo. 

 

 

INFOGRAPHIC:

 

[Page 1]

 

Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!

Main title, over red banner: Spanish vs. Portuguese

 

Spanish and Portuguese are both Romance languages that originate in the Iberian Peninsula in southwestern Europe. Both are widely spoken languages, with approximately 580 million Spanish speakers and more than 250 million Portuguese speakers worldwide.

 

Spanish and Portuguese are the main languages in South America due to colonization by Spain and Portugal which began  in the 15th/ and 16th centuries[SO1] . Prior to colonization, there were approximately 2000 [SO2] Indigenous languages in the Americas. Of these, there Today, there are about 420 South American Indigenous languages from 108 languages families still being spoken --- there used to be more before the time of first European contact in South America n today (See Campbell 2012 for details). Despite the majoritization of the colonial languages, many Indigenous communities are working to revitalize and sustain their languages.  

 

A map of the Iberian peninsula is seen in the bottom right. Portugal is highlighted in light orange, and Spain is highlighted in teal green. Bodies of water are depicte din blue, but the rest of the map is colorless. It is square-ish peninsula with the Mediterranean Sea to its east. Portugal is essentially a small rectangle, short side bottom, at the south west corner of this square shape. The rest of the peninsula is Spain. Spain is four or five times bigger than Portugal. Above this peninsula to its northeast is France and the small country of Andorra. To the southeast of this peninsula across the Mediterranean Sea is Morocco and Algeria.

 

[Long description of infographic pages:]  

 

Each page of the infographic is in color. It has a University of Toronto color scheme: navy blue, light blue, and bright red. In this particular infographic, many of the illustrations have a color scheme based on the U of T visual identity guide (although most readers would not know this). In addition to the main U of T colors navy blue, light blue, and bright red, secondary colors include: A steel blue, orange-ish red, bluish green, light blue, yellow green, dark magenta, medium yellow, and light blue. The lay person should just know that these colors go very well together, look cohesive together, and complement the main navy blue and red colors very well. The U of T visual identity guide can be accessed here: https://brand.utoronto.ca/guidelines/  

 

L’IMAGE Aji is a fish character drawn in a style reminiscent of Sanrio characters like Hello Kitty. It is generally round in its silhouette and features. It has a pastel blue body with a yellow stripe, white belly, and yellow fins. It has two round eyes and round, pink blush on the cheeks, with a cat-like smiling mouth. There are bubbles coming out above it.  

 

 

[Page 2]

 

Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!

Main title, over red banner: Spanish vs. Portuguese

 

A map of Romance/Latin America to the left of the page, and mostly text to the right of the page.

 

Although the region we see in the map to the left is usually grouped together as “Latin America”, Brazil and Spanish-speaking America have unique and distinct cultural identities.

 

The map highlights Central America, Caribbean islands to the east of Central America, and the west coast of South America in green. Brazil is orange on the map. We see a small blue spot to the north of Brazil, and another lighter blue spot in the Caribbean islands.

 

Next to Brazil, we see a silhouette of a samba dancer, drawn in U of T secondary colors. The samba outfit depicted here is a bikini decorated in jewels, wrist bangles, heeled sandals, and most prominently, large feathered accessory on the head gear and on the hips of the dancer, on her back side.

 

Nex to Argentina, we see a silhouette of tango dancers, drawn in U of T secondary colors. It seems to be a woman in a frilly sleeveless dress and heels, with her hair tied into a low bun, dancing in the arms of a man wearing maybe a suit.

 

Caption for the map. Romance/Latin America: Green for Spanish, Orange for Portuguese, Blue for French. Haiti is shown in light blue since French is one of the official languages. Haiti Creole, another Haitian official language, is French-based. Belize is shown in light green because a significant portion of the population speaks Spanish though the only official language is English.

 

Image Credit (map only): Map-Romance_Latin_America.png: Fossumderivative work: DavoO, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

[Page 3]

 

Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!

Main title, over red banner: Spanish vs. Portuguese

 

Portuguese is the official and national language of Brazil, but the country also has many minority languages, including Indigenous languages like Nheengatu, immigrant languages like Japanese and German, and Brazilian Sign Language used by the Deaf community.

 

Brazilian Portuguese (spoken in Brazil) and European Portuguese (e.g., spoken in Portugal) have many similarities, but sound distinct: for example, /s/ at the end of a syllable like mãos ‘hands’ is pronounced as [s] in Brazil, but [ʃ] (like the last sound in cash) in Portugal.

 

Regions around the world where Portuguese is spoken include Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea Bissau, Macau, Mozambique, Portugal, & São Tomé and Príncipe, and more.

 

We see a silhouette of the country of Brazil, with the Brazilian flag filling the geographical area of the country. The Brazilian map is mostly green with a yellow rhombus (diamond) shape in the middle. In the center of the yellow rhombus, there is a blue sphere with a white ring around it, and specks of tiny white start in the bottom half of the sphere.

 

Image credit: Pumbaa80, Kelson, OAlexander, Marcos Elias de Oliveira Júnior and Giro720., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

L’IMAGE Aji is seen smiling in the bottom right.

 

[Page 4]

 

Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!

Main title, over red banner: Spanish vs. Portuguese

 

There are many regional varieties of Spanish worldwide, and they can be quite different from one another. The pronunciation and the vocabulary can be especially different. Regions that speak Spanish include Spain, Andorra, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Panama, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, and more.

 

Discussing all varieties of Spanish is beyond the scope of this 5-minute lesson, but one interesting variation between some of the varieties concern second person pronouns. In Spain, the informal singular ‘you’ is tú. In some countries in Latin America, for example Argentina, the informal singular ‘you’ is primarily vos.

 

The term that refers to the use of vos instead of tú is called voseo --- try searching this term online to learn more about it! Check out some of our references and resources at the end of this lesson as well.

 

We see a silhouette of the country of Argentina in the background, with the flag of Argentina filling the geographical area of the country. The Argentina flag is mostly a light blue with a white stripe in the middle. In the middle of the white stripe, there is a yellow sun.

 

Image Credit: Stasyan117, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

L’IMAGE Aji speech bubble (he is wearing a frilly red skirt): Here’s another contrast: pollera is the term for ‘skirt’ in Argentina, while falda is often used in Spain and other regions!

 

[Page 5]

 

Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!

Main title, over red banner: Spanish vs. Portuguese

 

Note: This page uses characters from the International Phonetic Alphabet. Note that Portuguese and Spanish use the Latin alphabet like English.

 

Spanish and Portuguese are related languages, and there is some degree of mutual intelligibility between the two, especially in writing. However, they are distinct languages!

 

One major difference between the two languages is in their vowels. Spanish has five phonemic vowels (English examples are Canadian English pronunciation unless otherwise noted): /i/ (as in heat), /u/ (as in hoot), /e/ (as in hate), /o/ (as in hose), and /a/ (as in father).

 

Portuguese also has these vowels plus /ɛ/ (as in hen), /ɔ/ (as in ahoy), /ɐ/ (as in hut in British RP English), and five nasal vowels: /ĩ/, /ũ/, /ẽ/, /õ/ and /ɐ̃/. Nasal vowels are produced by the air flow escaping through both your mouth and your nose: so /ũ/ is like /u/, except some of the air from your lungs come through your nose. If you speak French, say croissant: that final vowel is a nasal vowel /ɑ̃/.

 

L’IMAGE Aji is red with light yellow fins on this page. There is a stem with a leaf coming out of the top of his head. He is Apple Aji.

 

Apple Aji speech bubble: Maça [masɐ̃] means ‘apple’ in Brazilian Portuguese!

 

[Page 6]

 

Here are some expressions that are pretty similar in Spanish and Portuguese!

 

A table with 3 columns and 6 rows.

 

Row 1:

 

First column title: Spanish (Argentine).

 

Second column title: Portuguese (Brazilian).

 

Third column title: English.

 

Row 2: el agua. a água. the water.

Row 3: una naranja. uma laranja. an orange

Row 4: mañana. amanhã. Tomorrow.

Row 5: hoy. hoje. today

Row 6: allí. ali. over there.

 

 

The  tables in this infographic are about Argentine Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese in particular --- but note that a lot of the comparisons and contrasts we’ve highlighted also applies to many other varieties of Spanish and Portuguese.

 

L’IMAGE Aji (normal) is seen smiling in the bottom right.

 

 

[Page 7]

 

Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!

Main title, over red banner: Spanish vs. Portuguese

 

 

Here are more comparisons. These words look similar in Argetine Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, but have different meanings!

 

A table with two columns and ten rows.

 

Row 1:

 

Column 1 title: Spanish (Argentine)

 

Column 2 title: Portuguese (Brazilian)

 

Row 2: exquisito (exquisite). esquisito (rare).

Row 3: rato (while, time). rato (rat).

Row 4: escoba (broom). escova (brush).

Row 5: apellido (family name). apelido (nickname).

Row 6: sobrenombre (nickname). sobrenome (family name).

Row 7: cadera (hip). cadeira (chair).

Row 8: traer (to bring). trair (to betray).

Row 9: embarazada (pregnant). embaraçada (embarrassed).

Row 10: rojo (red). roxo (purple).

 

Purple Aji (with a purple body and yellow fins) speech bubble: ‘purple’ in Spanish is morado/morada!

 

Red Aji (with a red body and yellow fins): In Portuguese, ‘red’ is vermelho/vermelha!

 

 

 

[Page 8]

 

Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!

Main title, over red banner: Spanish vs. Portuguese

 

 

Some words are completely different in Spanish vs. Portuguese. For example, here is how you say the days of the week in each language!

 

A table with three columns and eight rows.

 

Row 1:

 

Column 1 title: Spanish (Argentine)

 

Column 2 title: Portuguese (Brazilian)

 

Column 3 title: English

 

Row 2: lunes. segunda-feira. Monday.

Row 3: martes. terça-feira. Tuesday

Row 4: miércoles. quarta-feira. Wednesday.

Row 5: jueves. quinta-feira. Thursday.

Row 6: viernes. sexta-feira. Friday.

Row 7: sábado. sábado. Saturday.

Row 8: domingo. domingo. Sunday.

 

Watermelon Aji (with striped green body and light green fins, and red cheeks) speech bubble: Here’s another one: ‘Watermelon’ is Spanish is sandía,

But it’s melancia in Portuguese!  Check out some of our resources on the next page to learn more about Spanish and Portuguese!

 

 

 

 

 

[Page 9]

 

Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!

Main title, over red banner: Spanish vs. Portuguese

 

 

Reference:

 

Bethell, L. (2010). Brazil and ‘Latin America’. Journal of Latin American Studies, 42(3), 457-485.

 

Campbell, L. (2012). Classification of the Indigenous languages of South America. The Indigenous Languages of South America: A Comprehensive Guide, 2, 59-166.

 

Escobar, A. M. (2012). Bilingualism in Latin America. The Handbook of Bilingualism and Multilingualism, 725-744.

 

Johnson, M. (2016). Epistemicity in voseo and tuteo negative commands in Argentinian Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics, 97, 37-54.

 

Ulsh, J. L. (1971). From Spanish to Portuguese. Dept. of State, Foreign Service Institute.

 

Learn more:

 

1. About Portuguese

 

Wetzels, W. L., Menuzzi, S., & Costa, J. (Eds.). (2020). The handbook of Portuguese linguistics. John Wiley & Sons.

 

2. About Indigenous Languages spoken in Brazil (this website is available in Portuguese, English and Spanish):[SOdL10]  https://pib.socioambiental.org/pt/Página_principal

 

3. Google Arts and Culture pages:

 

https://artsandculture.google.com/project/lusophony

 

https://artsandculture.google.com/story/YgWxSop6lsW4Qw

 

https://artsandculture.google.com/story/cAUh8HL9lCL4Jg

 

​

Acknowledgement

​

Expert Consultant**

Suzi Lima

Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics

University of Toronto

 

**Errors, if any, are the PI’s oversight.

 

 

[Page 10]

 

Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!

Main title, over red banner: Spanish vs. Portuguese

 

 

Page title: About the L’IMAGE project 

Project PI and comic artist: Ai Taniguchi, Assistant Professor, UTM Department of Language Studies 

Research Assistant: Haili Su, MA Student, UTSG Department of Linguistics 

Special thanks to: Gilbert Lin, Assistant Director, Intercultural & Global Initiatives, UTM International Education Centre 

With the generous support of: UofT International Student Experience Fund, UTM Department of Language Studies, UTM International Education Centre 

Learn more: http://www.lingcomics.com 

Bottom right of page shows the University of Toronto Mississauga logo and the University of Toronto logo.