It’s Iimi! Caught Between the Now and the Not Yet!

Graduation is three months away. College is less than six. The girls are all 18. But, still in High School, they are expected to comply with their parents’ decisions while also facing expectations to make their own. How can they balance what leaves them feeling… Caught Between the Now and the Not Yet

Post-Comic Notes:

The scripture in Chinese comes from the Catholic SIH GAO Bible (1968). Written in Traditional Hanzi (Chinese characters). It is the most widely used Catholic Chinese translation, recognized by the Vatican and produced by the Studium Biblicum O.F.M. in 1968. It is a direct translation from the original Greek and Latin, not a translation of a translation.

“Traditional” doesn’t mean “traditionalist” or “archaic language.” It means Traditional characters used by Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora, as opposed to the simplified characters used in Mainland China since ~1950.

For example, take the sentence “This is a Chinese sentence” written in both scripts:

• (Simplified): 这是一个中文句子。
• (Traditional): 這是一個中文句子。

Only two characters differ (这/這 and 个/個) between the two sentences. But they would be pronounced the same and have the same grammar… assuming the speakers used the same version of Chinese.

Why? “Chinese” more accurately refers to a family of related languages. Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Min, Hakka, Xiang, and Gan are distinct tonal languages that are not mutually intelligible, even though they share a common writing system. So, if one speaker read the first sentence in Mandarin and a second speaker read the sentence in Cantonese, they would sound noticeably different.

In describing French as being spoken by West African Muslims members of the Tri-Cities, Anne was correct. But she was not aware that the elder members of several Indochinese communities (Kinh, Hmong, Khmer) also knows it  

Image Credits

Cover is © 2015 Dean Spencer, used with permission. All rights reserved

AI Disclaimer

I discontinued using AI for covers and background scenery after Issue 277. I still use it to create logos, doodles, and symbols, simply because there are no non-AI logo-creation programs (suggestions are welcome). Some previously used images have been kept for consistency (iconic buildings and “historic photographs”) with the intent of replacing them when possible. Any other appearance of AI means the stock art seller I purchased from misrepresented their product.