Buy the By

 

The comedy of words that sound the same. Some call them homonyms. Those people are nerds :)

Explanation: "By" and "buy" sound the same and mean very different things which change the meaning of that sentence. 

Text:
L: Is that a tub of duckies in that shop's window?
M: Yes, we should go by that shop.
L: Seems extreme, but sure - let's go buy that shop.
O: Quack!

Forearms

 

Oh, the English language. 

Text:
L: You have syrup on your forearms.
R: I don't have four arms. 

Speaking My Language

 

So there was an article I read that I will probably never find again but it mentioned that families have a dialect and when someone is angry then they use standard language and not the dialect and that's how you know. This means that your family isn't weird, you just have a really strong dialect! That's my own conclusion. I think my family's dialect involves using forced loan words from a number of European languages. 

Explanation: The translation with the (language) : I need (Spanish) cheese (French). No (German). The insider knowledge is that my husband likes cheese but I am lactose intolerant. 

Text:
M: ¡Necesito fromage!
L: Nein.

Driving with Duo

 

Happy St. Patrick's Day! The Duolingo owl is green so this counts as a holiday post, right? 
At a previous job, we had the text on the website available in several languages and to check that it was all translating like it should, we would change the language on the browser and move around the site to ensure it was all in whatever language. It was tricky the first few times, to remember where exactly the option was to change it back to English because I was not fluent in any of the languages we were testing. 

Explanation: Duolingo is a language learning app. If you change the settings on your phone to a new language, e v e r y t h i n g will be in the new language not just your driving directions. Tis a bit extreme.

Text:
L: They should make a driving mode for Duolingo - understand the language enough to follow directions!
M: Phone settings → change language.
L: *Gasp!*

Flipside

 

Happy Birthday to my brother-in-law! I forget where I heard this phrase but the response immediately came to mind. There was a devotional I was doing in the YouVersion app where the man said something about "Side B" and that's another phrase from back in the day. I remember a kid at my church finding a floppy disc (3.5) and not having a clue what it was. How do you even get info off a floppy? You'd have to find a drive that can take it. Kind of like getting info off a VHS. We were trying to transfer info between my computer and my husband's computer and we realized the easiest way was to use a thumb drive, but then we had to search around to find one. Oh technology, you just keep changing. Also, are visors (like the orange one the cool man is wearing) coming back into style? I feel like they could. So much of fashion is in cycles and if you hold onto stuff it'll come back (hopefully not all fashions do that, let's just leave massive shoulder pads in the past but wait they could be used for drone landing platforms). 

Text:
A: Catch you on the flipside!
B: What does that even mean?!?
C: It means he thinks the 90's were cool. 

How To Win

 DuoLingo is an app that helps you learn languages! I've learned basic Latin, a little German, and I'm working on Spanish. They are still adding new levels and languages so when you think you've conquered an area, you go back and realize they added special tenses or extra categories. So you can't win. You can just learn! 

Text:
A: How do I win this game?
B: That's DuoLingo??
A: ¿Yes?
B: ... you're doing great.

Misusing Slang

 

This one is along the same lines as a previous comic, but language has evolved so there's more slang to misuse! You have to know how to use the terms properly to get the maximum cringe, stringing together as many terms as you can! A quote from Luke Skywalker comes to mind - "Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong." Maybe I'll make a future comic with him in it, responding to the person misusing slang. But this comic here came to mind when I was visiting my parents and I think it was my dad who asked what TikTok was. I don't have (and don't desire to have) the app, but I showed him a clip from Pinterest of someone crocheting a bubble bee as an example of what a TikTok is. 

Text:
M: Yes, go TikTok those hashtags.
C: *cringe*

Duo for JS

As with my last post, I still don't think this would work. Javascript is a language which is not related to Java, which is a totally different language. It's confusingly named.
I'm sure there'd be an exec who would green light it. It's teaching coding like a natural language! But these programming languages aren't natural languages. But it'll be STEM educational! But it won't work. Ship it!

Text:
Duo for Javascript!
*Duo owl holding phone with text 'Hello World"*
Today you'll learn:
console.log('Hello World!');

Duo for Binary

Duo could branch out into computer languages! For the uninformed, this is the Duo owl from DuoLingo, which is an app for language learning. But they just do human languages currently. I don't think the medium would work well with computer languages.

Text:
Duo for Binary!
*Duo owl holding phone with ones and zeros on it*

How the Kids Speak

This will make you hip with the kids. Actually they might recoil in horror, but that could be what you're going for so who knows. I kinda want to try it out on the kids in the ministry I work in on Fridays. Results may vary.

Text:
A: How should I respond when a kid says their wig has been snatched?
B: That's totes fleek and hip, now fidget-spin away, you silly band.

Fowl Language