Language Learning and Comics
My first successful second-language was Esperanto. I had enjoyed studying Japanese as a tween, and had tried a few languages here and there. When I was homeschooled, my mom tried to get us to learn Spanish via 90's computer software. I took a Mandarin Chinese course via the Confucius Institute at KU Edwards, which I enjoyed a lot, and right now I'm studying Hindi with a class of beginners at the Hindu Temple and Cultural Center.
As I've picked up tons of books on various languages - Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, etc. - I've always found the early reading material somewhat difficult to get into. Even childrens' books sometimes have more sophisticated language than what I, as a baby beginner, would have. Another problem is that easy readers and childrens' books tend to be in third person. As a beginner, I rarely talk like, "The hen had two chicks. One chick ate a hot pepper and began crying!"
How do beginner's talk? They talk about "Me", "You", and "They". They don't narrate the way lots of easy readers do.
So lately, I've been working on a series of comics. Each comic has a certain idea it's emphasizing. For example:
- What, that, this, everything, anything, nothing
- Where, there, here, everywhere, anywhere, nowhere
- When, then, now, forever, any time, never
And so on.
My first comic, "What is that?" is free and available in English, Esperanto, Finnish, French, Hindi, Spanish, Portuguese, and Ido. I've self-published it via itch.io. It is about an alien who comes down to Earth and is learning about what it finds there.
(I'm also looking to translate it into more languages as well!)
I am currently working on my second comic, "Where are we going?", which will be for sale.
Because I'm self-publishing on itch.io, I can make a comic free or suggest a minimum price, and if somebody wants to, they can pay more than the minimum.
Additionally, once they've bought a book, they can download as many versions as many times as they'd like. The idea is that, if your native language is English and you're learning Spanish, you'll download the English version and the Spanish version and use each of them together to help you learn simple phrases in Spanish.
The dialog in the comics are meant to be pretty simple, so that learners can pick up on the basic sentence structure:
"What is this?" -- "¿Qué es esto?",
"This is a ball!" -- "¡Esto es una pelota!"
"WHAT IS THAT?!" -- "¡¿QUÉ ES ESO?!"
"That is a dog!" -- "¡Eso es un perro!"
And so on.
Anyway, I'll be working on new books in this series every-other-month. February is Book 2, April is Book 3, and so on, so please keep an eye out!
Rachel's Reader Book 1 is here:
And the Moosader itch.io store page is here: https://moosader.itch.io/
Thanks!