Sunday, February 7, 2021

Grammar Soup

Trilingual kids often the grammar mixing up doing



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Hi again.

The folks at Tinyview and I have gone back and forth on it, and in the end I decided, and pitched to them, that I return to doing new Itchy Feet comics exclusively on Tinyview starting this week.

Why? Because I want it to succeed! Tinyview is like a print newspaper taking Itchy Feet on as a regular on the comics page (which I read every morning without fail as a kid - early research, I guess). If exclusively publishing on the newspaper means the newspaper does better, then I get to keep getting paid to do it, which is honestly a dream come true.

I know this may drive many of you to rage-unsubscribe and stop reading Itchy Feet altogether. I get it; I heard all your reasons a few months back and I understand. To you, I say: thanks for reading all this time! I hope to see you again soon. No hard feelings? 💖

To everyone else, I will still be posting these weekly links every Sunday (plus another one for each remastered comic), so it'll just be one more click to get your Itchy Feet fix. And since Tinyview doesn't have a comments section, I'm going to up my engagement in the comments right here as well. 

Also, I know "pls subscribe" is probably the least-liked phrase of our times, but if you do get yourself a paid Tinyview subscription (for $0.99!) you'll be supporting me as an artist, AND you get bonus content. Not so bad right?

Love ya

Mal



21 comments:

  1. Hmmm, grammar soup! Yum...

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  2. I won't stop reading Itchy Feet just because you decided to host it on TinyView. I just wish they wouldn't horribly overmagnify the images, especially on desktop, but even on mobile. I just need them to be large enough to be readable, not so large that I have to look at my device from a distance.

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    1. Fair point, I might toy with the text size next week. Thanks for the input!

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    2. I think the text size (with respect to the panel size) is fine. It's just that tinyview displays the panel so large that it takes up the entire screen. The human eye is only really able to process new details within a viewing angle of about 5°, so the most optimal size to display a panel is that it is large enough for the text to be legible, but not so large that the eyes have to go criss cross across the panel to take in the whole thing.

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    3. Yeah totally, I also think the desktop experience leaves a lot to be desired. I'm going to talk to them about it

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  3. This is a discussions we've been having a lot with my wife lately, now that we're expecting a kid this year: do we teach them both our native languages or not? I was raised with two languages, rumour has it I started speaking quite late.

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    1. Well, all I'll say is that we know lots of international families here in Berlin that don't stick religiously to the one-person-one-language thing, and their kids just don't bother with any language other than German or whatever is the dominant one. So if you're going to do it, go all in!

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    2. My understanding is that it's common for kids raised in bi-lingual families, regardless of one-person-one-language, to fall behind at the start. But then they catch up, and then they're ahead. :)

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    3. I'm a big fan of bringing up children bilingually (having had that advantage myself).

      I've heard that in general, children growing up with two languages reach speech milestones a little later at first but that things even out by the time they start school.

      That was my experience with my daughter as well; most children have two-word sentences at age two but my daughter was closer to three when she reached that milestone – but by the time she started school, she was fluent in both English and German.

      As Malachi says, though, not all children “accept” bilingualism and many just stick with speaking just one language. They may or may not understand the second language. This happened with my youngest sister and also with the sons of my middle sister: they spoke only German but understood English.

      I’d still recommend to give it a try!

      (Also, I’m a fan of one-person-one-language as I think that’s the most consistent and least confusing for the child. But go with what works for you.)

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    4. Wish I'd heard of one person one language about 2 years ago. Our 3 year old granddaughter is being raised with a mix of Thai, English and Thaiglish. Feels like she's behind where the other kids are at pre-school with speaking. Hopefully she catches up like others have mentioned

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  4. If you still plan on doing physical-print anthologies in the future, is there any chance you would include the bonus panels? If I have to pay to read the bonus content, I'd rather do it this way.

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    1. I like that idea! Yeah Tinyview has rights to digital exclusivity but I'm going to retain them for print. I'm just not sure when I'm going to do another print anthology, they take a long time to make and Amazon takes most of the money :(

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  5. Good luck in the future. It looks horrible on desktop so I'll be unsubscribing and removing the RSS feed from my reader after years of reading and buying multiple copies of your books as gifts.

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  6. Can you please communicate to tinyview to ADD DESKTOP READER MODE; like seriously; there still exists sole reason I hate tinyview: everything is in mobile only format which cause comic to be superlarge on desktop

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    1. Yeah I've definitely brought this up with them. I even mocked up a better version of how it could look on desktop. And I'll continue to bug them about it!

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  7. Hmm, am I the only who doesn't think Tinyview looks too large on Desktop? (Does that say something about my eyesight? I hope it doesn't...)

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    1. I think it depends on the size of your desktop. I got the big imac recently and each panel is as big as a sheet of A4 paper 😅

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  8. Also, may I ask what three languages the little one speaks?

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    1. I speak English to him, my wife Italian, and we live in Berlin so he speaks German at kindergarten and with most of his friends.

      Although his best friend's dad is also Italian, and they speak Italian together - unless they're playing! It's so weird. Just normal conversation, they speak Italian. But once they enter "play mode," where they're pretending to be Batman or whatever, they suddenly speak German. It made me think that the imagination really is an entirely separate part of the brain...!

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    2. Reminds me of being very young in the UK. Thanks to the influence of US children's television we would change to American accents when having pretend adventures :)

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