COMIC: Like a Small, Hungry Child

It is two years ago, 2023. Matt and I were in one of the big English airports, Heathrow or Gatwick, I don't remember which anymore but those are the two we usually go through when we're visiting his family. This trip was an especially big, important one, because his sister was getting married- which meant the French side of the family would be in town. Despite nearly 20 years of hearing so many stories about them, I'd never actually met them yet.

At this point, I had not practiced my French in well over a decade, maybe over 15 years (...possibly more...). People say "You never fully forget" but after spending a week attempting to understand on the conversations firing fast and fancy in French, I realized, wow, yeah, actually you can fully forget everything you ever learned if you don't practice for almost two decades.

This was the trip that awakened my French Fever and prompted my next two years of diving headfirst into re-learning this beautiful, infuriating language.

While digging through some ancient notes, I found this transcript that I'd scribbled down while Matt and I were in the airport waiting for our flight back to Portland in 2023. I had completely forgotten about this moment! Even though it's two years later, it still totally captures my current feelings about French, so I've gone ahead and drawn it up, even though chronologically it doesn't match up to the comics I've posted about my language learning quest in 2025. But the vibe is timeless:

Here's the original layout I intended for the comic, but the previous one is more Patreon-scrolling friendly:

Originally I was going to write the French in, well, French, so I turned to the francophones of Bluesky to make sure I got it right. Ultimately, I decided the comic worked better if I kept everything in English, but here are some translations if that interests you!

Frency-French answers:

"Tu as faim ? Tu veux manger ? Tu veux une banane ? "
- Monsieur Dos

It's correct but if we speak more familiar, we can say "Tu veux une banane ?" or "Est ce que tu veux une banane ?" or "Est-ce que tu voudrais une banane" for the third part "voudrais-tu" is more a formal language
- Ngorzo

And Candian French:

Yes to everything, this is fine, but as a French-Canadian it would probably sound natural to ask the first question using present tense: “T’as faim? Tu veux manger quelque chose? (Or veux-tu manger quelque chose?) Veux-tu une banane?” ... Or “tu veux manger un truc?”
- ‪Boum‬