Not the Cat

Normally these comics come out on Sunday, but . . . it's New Year's Eve today! So this week's comic is coming early.

See you next year!

Slow Going

Stranger than Fiction

I'm not making this up.

Speaking Terms, Part 1

Here's Part 2 of this comic - how it is in Asia.

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If you want practice speaking, especially with French people, try iTalki. They won't walk away, promise.

Conspicuous Concealment

Vocab Hole

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If you want to patch that vocab hole, you've gotta keep speaking. iTalki pairs you with language teachers for Skype lessons. That oughta take care of it.

Viral Ignorance

Uniquely Incapable

Central Diet

Healing Words

Safety and Comfort

Vanilla Arabic

Foreign Food

Suspiciously Easy

Responsibilities Shirked

Of course, the crossroads will surely be back...but for now, the open road!

A Penny Saved

Limited Creativity, Pt. 2

To be fair, I'm sure most Germans would find it equally funny translating certain English words literally. Heh . . . "Lichtkloß." Continued from part one.

Rookie Mistake

This one's another verbatim true story. I even stood all confident and proud of my German like in the second panel there.

Vegetable Meat

ProTip: order the "diavola."

Adventure's Limit

To be fair, I'm pretty sure squat toilets are less wasteful, more hygienic, and better for you than the western kind. Still, some old habits die very hard...

Inspiration

Slight Exaggeration

Did and Done

Odd Bird Out

In Icelandic it's "gaggala gaggala goo." Now THAT'S funny.

Splitting Hairs

I know Columbus didn't really discover America. George Q. Ameriquá did!

Phocine Vulgarity

National Distaste

Culture Shock

Common Denominators

(Update: per thoughtful input from the comments, added Portuguese as a widely-spoken language to fill in most of the other gaps, though now I'm feeling even less poly-linguistic. Decided against doing multiple shades for countries like Morocco [French, English] to keep the map simple. Anyone know if Mandarin Chinese is widely spoken anywhere outside China?)

Hand Language

Varied Welcome

Edible Deep Clean

Just Married!

For this week's comic I'm cheating a bit because, well ... I got married yesterday! I proposed over a year ago, and we finally sealed the deal yesterday evening in Venice, her home town.

As a wedding gift, my dad and a friend of mine conspired for the past few months to give us what they called our "first children", and I think you'll find them pretty great (click to enlarge):

Aren't they amazing?! 3D-printed figurines based on the Itchy Feet guy and another surly character from this comic, I believe. As a kid I used to collect action figures, so this was like a gift from my childhood. He's even got the little backpack on! We used them as the figures on the wedding cake, and everyone was quite amused.

Varied Concern

Wide Open Spaces

Blissful Ignorance

Entertaining Utensil

Refined Vocabulary

Luggage Inclination

Rinse and Repeat

Diminishing Returns

"Yeah, right. He forgot the word 'food' but not 'refresher class?' Whoever made this has never lost a native language." -You

Real Monopoly Money

Fluency Confusion

From Bestwurst to Worstwurst

Proper Pronunciation

Mistaken Identity

Cargo Reduction

Literal Translation

No, I did not make these up!