ToonDoo and Portuguese
I have always wanted to find a program to make cartoons, and now I found a great one – ToonDoo. ToonDoo really makes it easy to import objects, characters and text into your cartoon. It’s done with the latest in Web 2.0 technologies enabling ToonDoo to run in any browser.
The story below actually happened to me. Move your mouse over the cartoon to see the rest.
I met this guy in Brazil (name withheld for privacy reasons) and his Portuguese was poor. The problem was that he thought his Portuguese was better than every one else’s. It was beyond annoying the strange situations because his perceptions were so different than reality. He was constantly correcting my Portuguese, which was no problem. But he was always wrong. I guess I was being pacifist, but I never said anything. Just let it slide. But then one day in a taxi with a bunch of friends, he corrected my Portuguese one too many times (wrongly again), and I just exploded. I have not spoken to him since.
For whatever reason, I made this the subject of my first cartoon at ToonDoo. I hope to make many more cartoons in the future on a wide variety of subjects.
Hey Rob, good one! But knowing the character involved in this story, I’d change your line in the third panel to “Vocês acham que ele é burro?” Sem dúvida!
Ele é burro mesmo. When I tell the story, people think that I am making it up. He was so adamant when the girls said No the first time. The reality is that I had to ask several more times, and each time they said No. Of course, if he speaks so damn well, why doesn’t he just say something himself?
Here are some other gems.
I remember getting into a protracted argument because a receptionist was filling out a form for me. And she asked my last name. I said (in portuguese), CHENG. And then this guy says No No. CHANG. We are with a lot of guys, and he will not relent. Every time I say, CHENG, he says No, and repeats CHANG. The reality is that he did not know how to say the difference between E and A.
After I blew up at him in the taxi, I told the taxi driver to stop on the right side (lado direito), and unbelievable as it sounds. he corrects me again. No (lado direita). I asked the taxi driver who said it correct, and he confirmed me, but I still to this day think that he believes he was right.
But it is all so strange. Speaking a foreign is humbling because you know you will never speak as well as a native speaker. Who cares whether you can speak better than some other American, when there is a whole country that can speak better than you.