L’IMAGE comic series: Sofiia’s story

Alt-Text with long description

 

COMIC

[Page 1, Title Page]

Content Note: This story briefly mentions the war in Ukraine.

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: Sofiia’s story**

Under the title banners, the character Sofiia smiles at the readers. She has long wavy blonde hair, light skin tone. She is wearing a red sweater.

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.]

 

[Page 2]

Top panel: Sofiia, smiling and looking at the left half of the panel, introduces herself:

“My name is Sofiia!

 I am a third year visiting student at U of T.”

Bottom panel: an aerial photo of Kyiv, Ukraine with the landmark Kyiv Monastery of the Caves in the forefront. This is a historical Eastern Orthodox Christian monastery with a tall, golden-domed tower. Sofiia’s narration continues:

“I'm from Kyiv, Ukraine, and I speak Ukrainian and English! (and some French, too)”

 

[Page 3]

The full panel: An eye-closed, standing Sofiia stands at the center of the panel with two strips of diamond-shaped shades on the two sides. Sofiia continues:

“Speaking Ukrainian feels like home. It's a lovely language! English has a special place in my heart too: I used to teach kids English back home. I think multilingualism is so important for expanding your world and mind.”

 

[Page 4]

Top panel: Sofiia’s narration continues: “With the war going on right now back home in Ukraine, things are not always easy.” In the background, a building destructed in the war in Ukraine, with debris in the ground.

Bottom panel: Sofiia’s narration continues: “My family in Kyiv only have electricity for four hours each day. Communicating with them can be difficult.” In the background, two of Sofiia’s family members sit at a table lit by candles, contacting Sofiia through texting on their phone.

[Page 5]

The full panel: a sitting Sofiia in the center of the panel looking determined at her laptop, with newspaper in Ukrainian flying around in the background. Sofiia’s narration continues: “When the invasion began, I worked as a volunteer to translate Ukrainian news into English. This helped international journalists learn about developments in the war more quickly.”

[Page 6]

The full panel: With a sunflower-filled background, Sofiia’s narration continues: “Here at U of T, I helped organize Ukrainian week to celebrate Ukrainian culture and to raise awareness about the war. during Ukrainian week, we helped raise $15,000 cad to help Ukrainian students who were forced to pause their education in order to defend their country on the frontline.”

Sofiia stands at the mid-bottom of the panel, smiling and waving a Ukrainian flag. She looks at a fellow Ukrainian student standing at the left of the panel, who has short hair, fair complexion, holding a glass of wine and smiling back at Sofiia. Both wearing the traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirts Vyshyvanka. Sofiia’s costume features floral pattern sleeves and flat collar. The other student’s costume features geometric collar and sleeve openings.

 

[Page 7]

The full panel: Sofiia’s narration continues: “People in Canada have been so kind to me. everyone's solidarity with Ukraine means so much to me.” In the middle of the panel, a moved, tearing Sofiia is hugging a Canadian friend of hers, who can only be seen from the back. The friend is wearing a white shirt and her hair is tied to be a bun.

 

[Page 8]

The full panel composes of text boxes as Sofiia introduces a Ukrainian word and what the language means for her. In her own voice: “сміливість, pronounced smi'livistj. This word means ‘Bravery’ in Ukrainian. Ukrainian is home. Ukrainian is courage. Ukrainian is resilience.”

 

[Page 9]

The full panel: Sofiia, standing in front of blossoming sunflowers, looking at the direction of readers with a slight smile, says: “My name is Sofiia. Ukrainian is my pride.”

 

[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: Ukrainian

Ukrainian is Ukraine's sole official language. Many Ukrainian people are multilingual in their everyday lives (also speaking languages like English, Polish, German, French, and Russian).

With the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian language has seen an increase in use and promotion by Ukrainian citizens.

Cartoon image of “L’IMAGE Aji,” the project mascot, is seen smiling in bottom right of the page.

Speech bubble (Aji): About 32 million people speak Ukrainian worldwide!

[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.

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: Ukrainian

Ukrainian uses the Ukrainian alphabet for writing. It's a variant of the Cyrillic script, which is used by many Slavic languages. Contrary to popular belief, writing systems that use the Cyrillic script are not necessarily al the same. For example, some symbols exist in Ukrainian, but not in Russian or Bulgarian! And even when different languages have the same Cyrillic symbols, they may not be pronounced the same way.

1 box near the bottom of page, listing the Ukrainian alphabet and their common Latin transliteration.

L’IMAGE Aji is seen smiling at the bottom right corner under the box.

Speech bubble (Aji): “e.g., Ukrainian has the symbols [Alt-Text note: these are Ukrainian Cyrillic letters]  € є and Ґ ґ , but Russian doesn't!”

 

[Long description of Ukrainian alphabet: The Ukrainian alphabet consists of 20 letters that represent consonants and ten letter that represents vowels. The consonant symbols in lower case are: [alt-text note: these are Ukrainian Cyrillic letters] б, в, г, ґ, д, ж, з, к, л, м, н, п, р, с, т, ф, х, ц, ч, ш, щ.  The lower-case vowel symbols are: [alt-text note: these are Ukrainian Cyrillic letters]  а, е, є, и, і, ї, о, у, ю, я . There is also one letter that represents a semivowel: [alt-text note: this is a Ukrainian Cyrillic letter] й (transliterated as y). With the exception of a and e, the uppercase version of the letters are just like the lowercase, but larger. The symbol [alt-text note: this is a Ukrainian Cyrillic letter] ь indicates that the preceding consonant is palatalized.Impressionistically, Cyrillic symbols consist of anywhere from one to three strokes, with a mixture of straight and curved lines. Some letters such as B (one vertical straight line, with two “humps” on the right side of the line) are reminiscent of the Latin alphabet. Impressionistically, in the Ukrainian Cyrillic script, there are many shapes with lines that form 90 degree angles: for example, the symbol for the “h” sound is a combination of a longer vertical line and a shorter horizontal line: the left point of the shorter line is placed over the top point of the vertical line, forming a 90-degree angle.]

 

[Page 3]

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

Main title, over red banner: Ukrainian

Ukrainian has a rich system of case-marking for nouns! Case in a language is something that indicates what relationship a word has with another word in a sentence. Let's compare a Ukrainian sentence with an English sentence.

1 box in the middle of the page, demonstrating the case marking in a Ukrainian sentence.

The sentence in English means “Students bought a map of the city.” The Ukrainian word for students, “studenty”, has a plural nominative suffix -y. “Students” in the subject position takes a nominative case suffix.

The Ukrainian word for bought, “kupyly” is a verb and does not have any case marking.

The Ukrainian for “a map”, “kartu”, is in the object position and takes an accusative case suffix -u.

The Ukrainian expression for “of the city”, “mista”, is related to “map” and takes a genitive case suffix -a.

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

Speech bubble (Aji): “Notice where we get the preposition "of" in English, Ukrainian has a case-marking suffix!”

 

[Page 4]

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

Main title, over red banner: Ukrainian

In English, she, he, and they are nominative case pronouns, while her, him, and them are accusative case pronouns.

Nominative case often indicates the subject of a tensed clause (i.e., a sentence or sentence-like structure whose verb carries tense, like present, past, or future tense).

Accusative case often indicates the direct object of a verb.

In English, nouns generally have the same form regardless of case. In Ukrainian, though, nouns have different endings depending on where they appear in the sentence!

Two boxes in the bottom.

Box 1: English examples. In the sentences “They met them”, the word they is a nominative pronoun and them is a accusative pronoun. And in the sentence “This person met that person”, the two words “person” are in the same form despite the different sentence positions.

Box 2: A Ukrainian example: the sentence for “this person met that person”, “tsya lyudyna zustrila tsyu lyudynu.” The two Ukrainian words for “person” in the sentence have different case marking suffixes because of the different cases. The subject position word lyudyna has the nominative suffix -a, while the direct object word lyudynu has the suffix -u.

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

 

[Page 5]

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

Main title, over red banner: Ukrainian

Ukrainian has SEVEN cases! nI Ukrainian, each case is indicated with a special ending on a noun. The form of the ending also depends on the gender of the noun, and whether it's singular or plural, too!

Two boxes in the bottom of the page.

Box 1 on the left: The seven case types.

Nominative often indicates subject. Accusative often indicates direct object. Genitive often means 'of' or 'from'. Dative often indicates indirect object. Instrumental often means 'with'. Locative often indicates location. Vocative often used when addressing someone.

Box 2 on the right: an example of case markings on a noun Ukraina, which is feminine in Ukrainian. The nominative form, Ukraina, has an -a suffix. The accusative form, Ukrainu, has an -u suffix. The genitive form, Ukrainy, has a -y suffix. The dative form, Ukraini, has a -I suffix. The instrumental form, Ukrainoyu, has an -oyu suffix. The locative form, Ukraini, has an -I suffix. The vocative form, Ukraino, has an -o suffix.

 

[Page 6]

Section title: References

Butt, M. (2006). Theories of Case (Cambridge Textbooks ni Linguistics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Shevchuk, .Y I.(2022). Beginner's Ukrainian with Interactive Online Workbook, 3rd Integrated Edition. United States: Hippocrene Books, Incorporated.

Ukrainian- Worldwide distribution. (n.d.). Worlddata.info. http://www.worlddata.info/ languages/ukrainian.php

What language is spoken in Ukraine? (n.d.). http://ukraine.ua/faq/what-language-is-spoken-in-ukraine

Section title: Learn more

https://www.ukrainianweek.org

https://torontoukranine.wixsite.com/ukrainiantoronto

Section title: Acknowledgement

Expert consultant**, Julia Petrosov, MA Student, Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto

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

 

[Page 7]

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.