2022-2023 L'IMAGE comics
To cite this page: Taniguchi, Ai, and Haili Su. 2023. Tarkan's Story - Uzbek. In University of Toronto Language, Identity, Multiculturalism and Global Empowerment Project (L'IMAGE). Available online at https://linguistait.wixsite.com/limage1/tarkan-uzbek. Accessed on [date].
Tarkan's story - Uzbek
Content Note: Allusion to racial and/or cultural microaggression on p.9.
L’IMAGE comic series: Tarkan’s story
Alt-Text with long description
Content Note: Discussion of British India Partition in the infographic, and brief mention of lives lost as a result of Partition on p.2 of the infographic (no details are discussed).
COMIC
[Page 1, Title Page]
Upper left corner of page reads: UofT L’IMAGE Project: Language, Identity, Multiculturalism and Global Empowerment
Subtitle over light blue box: The lived experiences of real multilingual students at U of T
Title over bright red box: Tarkan’s story**
Under the title banners, the character Tarkan smiles at the readers. He has light-to-medium skintone, short, straight, chocolate brown hair with short bangs. He is wearing black, rectangular glasses. He is wearing a grey T-shirt.
Bottom left corner of page shows the University of Toronto logo.
Bottom right footnote: **Some stories in the L’IMAGE comic series employ pseudonyms at the request of the featured student.
[Long description of text and images in the comic strip:
The comic strips in the L’IMAGE comic series uses the font Ames, which is the standard font for comics. Ames is an all-caps font. However, Alt-Texts for this project are not written in all-caps so that they will be more accessible for screen readers.
The comic artist for the series is Dr. Ai Taniguchi. Her drawing style can be described as: Japanese manga inspired, cute, large eyes, intentionally sketchy and unpolished line art, simplified, expressive. The comic strips are all digital, but she uses a pen that mimics the line weight of a traditional fountain pen. Her line art is on average 0.5mm in width (relatively thin), but the line weight varies and looks hand-drawn.
The title page of each comic strip is in color. It has a University of Toronto color scheme: navy blue, light blue, and bright red. The background is white with a navy blue frame. The references and acknowledgements page and the “About the L’IMAGE project” page also have this University of Toronto color scheme.
The comic strips themselves are black and white, and employ digital screen tones for shading and backgrounds. Narrations are written inside rectangular boxes, unless otherwise noted.]
[Page 2]
Top panel 1: Tarkan is smiling brightly with his eyes squinted and mouth open.
Tarkan’s narration: Hey I’m Tarkan! I’m a 3rd year student at UTM.
Top panel 2: A map of Central Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East with Uzbekistan and Afghanistan highlighted. The average educated adult in Canada might recovnigize the shape of India on the map. There is a country (L’IMAGE followers might recognize it as Pakistan) directly to the northwest of India, and Afghanistan is to northwest of it. Uzbekistan is to the north of Afghanistan, although it only shares a small border on its southern tip with Afghanistan.
Tarkan’s narration: I was born in Canada, but my parents are from Afghanistan. We are Uzbek-Afghan.
Bottom panel 1: A panel with a simple background, just shaded with a screentone.
Tarkan’s narration: I speak English, Uzbek, and French! I currently use English the most in my life. French, I learned in French immersion school. Uzbek is my heritage language.
Bottom panel 2: We see Tarkan’s family smiling at us. There are 6 people. From left to right:
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A young-ish man with short dark hair, wearing a tie and a suit.
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An older woman wearing a light-colored hijab with no hair showing.
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A middle-aged woman wearing a light-colored hijab with no hair showing.
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A middle-aged man with prominent brows and a larger build.
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An older woman wearing a light-colored hijab more loosely than the other women.
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An older man with a mustache, wearing a collared shirt.
Tarkan’s narration: I mostly use Uzbek with my parents and grandpanrents.
[Page 3]
Top panel: Two light-skinned children are smiling. One of them has dark braided pigtails and is wearing a dress. She is holding a book. The other has dark shorter hair and is wearing a round skullcap.
Tarkan’s narration: Growing up, I went to an international language school on Saturdays. It was a program where minority language communities would meet at a local catholic school for cultural activities and language classes taught by volunteers (like my mom).
Bottom panel: The girl with braided pigtails is waving to people in a van. There is a woman wearing a hijab driving the van, and we can see 4 or 5 children in the back seats.
Tarkan’s narration: If there were not enough participants, there was a ris of the program getting cancelled. So I remember my mom working really hard to recruit Uzbek students, including driving our old van around town to pick up kids and taking them to the Saturday school!
[Page 4]
Top panel: A group of children are playing with a playground parachute: a game where multiple people hold onto the edge of a circular sheet and lift it up to create a tent-like structure with abundant space underneath. Tarkan is seen running underneath the parachute with a big smile on his face.
Tarkan’s narration: I have really fond memories of speaking Uzbek with other Uzbek kids at this Saturday school.
Bottom panel 1: Tarkan with a simplified, comical expression is sticking his head out from the bottom of the panel. We cannot see his mouth.
Tarkan’s narration: One interesting thing about being an Uzbek-English multilingual has to do with how you address people.
Bottom panel 2: A panel with a simple background, just shaded with a screentone.
Tarkan’s narration: So in Uzbek, you can call people close to your age and social status “brother” (e.g., Aka) and “sister” (e.g., Opa) and stuff.
[Page 5]
Top panel 1: A panel with just a white background and a narration box.
Tarkan’s narration: People older than you or of higher social status than you, you can call “Aunt” and “Uncle”. For example, you say Xola and Tog’a for your aunt and uncle on your mom’s side, respectively.
Top panel 2: A young Tarkan is saying “Xola!” to an older woman wearing a head scarf.
Tarkan’s narration: But they don’t literally have to be your relatives. In fact in Uzbek, you can call your teacher “Aunt” as well.
Bottom panel 1: A young Tarkan is speaking to a light-skinned woman with voluminous wavy hair, wearing a collared shirt and a long skirt. Tarkan is seen saying to her, “Hey Auntie I don’t understand this worksheet”. The woman is sweating a little and a question mark above her head indicates that she is confused.
Tarkan’s narration: Because of this, I had a slightly embarrassing moment in (Canadian) elementary school where I called my teacher “Auntie” in English lol.
Bottom panel 2: We see a bunch of Afghan rugs with elaborate prints. Some are folded and stacked, some are rolled up, and there is one on the ground, and one hung on the wall.
Tarkan’s narration: This habit I had was also complicated by the fact that my dad worked at the flea market.
[Page 6]
Top panel: An Afghan rug hangs in the background. The older man with prominent brows from earlier, who we can infer now is Tarkan’s dad, is smiling and saying “Hey Boss!”. We see young Tarkan sticking his head out from the bottom of the panel, as if observing his father.
Tarkan’s narration: I sometimes tagged along when he was working. In this flea market community, my dad would call his customer “brother”, “sister”, and “boss” and stuff to be friendly to the.
Bottom panel 1: A young Tarkan with a simplified, comical expression of confidence is tapping another child with darker skin and short, afro hair, who is sweating a little and is forcing an awkward smile. Tarkan is saying to him, “Hey Boss”.
Tarkan’s narration: I brought this linguistic practice back to (Canadian) school. My classmates thought I was a weirdo for a little while lol.
Bottom panel 2: A realistically drawn forest with trees is seen.
Tarkan’s narration: I hope that I can continue to sustain my Uzbek heritage for generations to come.
[Page 7]
Top panel: From left to right: 1. A stack of books, and the top book says “Uzbek”, 2. The van from earlier, although there is no driver, 3. A group of four light-skinned people: An older man wearing a turban, a child with long dark hair, a woman wearing a traditional Uzbek robe and cap, a man wearing a traditional Uzbek robe and cap.
Tarkan’s narration:
For that, we need resources
We need access
And we need community.
Bottom panel 1: A present-day Tarkan is holding the straps of his backpack, and seems to be looking for something with a slight frown.
Tarkan’s narration: At UTM, it’s not really easy for me to find other Uzbek speakers.
Bottom panel 2: We see several food items. 2 apples, 2 cucumbers or zucchinis, a jar of peanut butter, and three cans of various sizes.
Tarkan’s narration: I want other Uzbek-speaking students thinking about going to university that people like me are here!! And at UTM, organizations lie the UTM Student Union provide lots of peer support. Did you know they run a food centre that provides access to food for students who may not be able to afford meals??
[Page 8]
Top panel 1: A young Tarkan is sitting at a desk with what looks like a lunchbox filled with rice and a whole head of garlic. There is a spoon and a fork next to his lunchbox. Readers familiar with Uzbek culture might recognize it as Uzbek plov, a kind of pilaf dish in Uzbekistan. There is a light-skinned girl next to him with a sandwich and an apple in front of her, furrowing her brows and saying “ew what is that”.
Tarkan’s narration: You know, I can’t say that people’s treatment of me has always been pleasant.
Top panel 2: A young Tarkan is staring down at his rice and garlic lunch. He has what could be interpreted either as a neutral or a sad expression: his mouth is depicted as a short horizontal line, with maybe an ever-so-slight downward tilt.
Tarkan’s narration: And I get it that it might be intimidating at firs to mingle with people outside of your culture.
Bottom panel 1: Tarkan is still siting with his lunch in front of him. A light-skinned boy with light-colored hair has suddenly showed up next to him, and is eating Tarkan’s rice with Tarkan’s spoon. His left cheek is chipmunk-like, suggesting he is chewing the rice while talking. He is saying, “Yo this rice slaps”.
Tarkan’s narration: But there are good people.
Bottom panel 2: A more detailed illustration and close up of Tarkan and his classmate who ate his rice. They are laughing and talking to each other.
Tarkan’s narration: It’s not that hard relating with other after a while.
[Page 9]
The two top panels form a single picture, and is divided by a gutter that creates borders in the comics. The first panel mostly shows a realistic illustration of a bush. The second panel reveals that behind this bush is a covered bridge over a body of water.
Tarkan’s narration (panel 1): Sometimes, I think you suffer more from thinking about what could happen than actually doing it.
Tarkan’s narration (panel 2): If you take the first step, it might lead to a friendship that crosses cultures.
Bottom panel: Tarkan is smiling gently at the readers. Sparkly hexagon screentone background invites feelings of inspiration.
Tarkan’s narration: My name is Tarkan. Although it can be a challenge sometimes, growing the seeds of Uzbek culture here in Canada has allowed me to appreciate my family’s way of life and see the world around us in Canada in a new way.
[Page 10]
Page title: About the L’IMAGE project
Project PI and comic artist: Ai Taniguchi, Assistant Professor, UTM Department of Language Studies
Research Assistant: Haili Su, MA Student, UTSG Department of Linguistics
Special thanks to: Gilbert Lin, Assistant Director, Intercultural & Global Initiatives, UTM International Education Centre
With the generous support of: UofT International Student Experience Fund, UTM Department of Language Studies, UTM International Education Centre
Learn more: http://www.lingcomics.com
Bottom right of page shows the University of Toronto Mississauga logo and the University of Toronto logo.
[Page 1]
Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!
Main title, over red banner: Uzbek
Uzbek, like Turkish, is a Turkic language. It is the official and national language of the country of Uzbekistan, and it is one of the most widely spoken languages in Central Asia. According to the Consulate General of Uzbekistan in 2022, there are reportedly more than 60 million Uzbek speakers globally, and the Uzbek language is taught in more than 50 higher education institutions around the world. According to the 2021 Census, about 2300 people speak Uzbek at home in Canada, with about 1400 of those people living in Ontario.
We see a colorful map of Central Asia. We see the following countries highlighted, starting from the northern/top-most country and going roughly counterclockwise: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan.
Text at bottom: Image credit: grebeshkhovmaxim/Shutterstock.com
Long description of map: For readers not familiar with Central Asia geography, the most recognizable countries in proximity to this area are Russia and China. Russia is a large country seen to the north of Kazakhstan. China is seen to the east of the Central Asia region. To the west of the Central Asia region (bordering Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan), we see the Caspian Sea. To the south of Central Asia, we see from west to east, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the norther tip of India. Of these countries, Iran and Afghanistan share borders with at least one Central Asia country.
On the Central Asia map, Kazakhstan is the largest country, mostly in a flat, rectangular-ish shape. It is about six times the size of Caspian Sea. Uzbekistan is about the size of Caspian sea, maybe slightly larger, and is also a flat, rectangular-ish shape. The western side of this rectangle and the northern side of the rectangle touch Kazakhstan. The southern side of the Uzbeistan rectangle touches Turkmenistan, which is also about the size of Caspian Sea, perhaps a little bigger, and is a flat, rectangular-ish shape. The eastern side of the Uzbekistan rectangle touches Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Krgyzstan and Tajikistan are each about half the size of Caspian Sea. Kyrgyzstan is on top of (i.e., is to the north of) Tajikistan, and both of these countries’ western border is shared with Uzbekistan. Kyrgyzstan’s northern border is shared with Kazakhstan.
L'IMAGE Aji is seen smiling in the bottom right corner.
[Long description of infographic pages:]
Each page of the infographic is in color. It has a University of Toronto color scheme: navy blue, light blue, and bright red. In this particular infographic, many of the illustrations have a color scheme based on the U of T visual identity guide (although most readers would not know this). In addition to the main U of T colors navy blue, light blue, and bright red, secondary colors include: A steel blue, orange-ish red, bluish green, light blue, yellow green, dark magenta, medium yellow, and light blue. The lay person should just know that these colors go very well together, look cohesive together, and complement the main navy blue and red colors very well. The U of T visual identity guide can be accessed here: https://brand.utoronto.ca/guidelines/
L’IMAGE Aji is a fish character drawn in a style reminiscent of Sanrio characters like Hello Kitty. It is generally round in its silhouette and features. It has a pastel blue body with a yellow stripe, white belly, and yellow fins. It has two round eyes and round, pink blush on the cheeks, with a cat-like smiling mouth. There are bubbles coming out above it.
[Page 2]
Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!
Main title, over red banner: Uzbek
Uzbek is a language that belongs to the western branch of the Karluk language family. The variety of language in the eastern branch is called Uyghur. Uzbek and Uyghur are mutually intelligible. Uzbek itself can largely be divided into three dialect groups: the Karluk dialect, the Kipchak dialect, and the Oghuz dialect.
We see a map titled” Map of Uzbek Dialects”. Text at the bottom reads: Image credit: Agostini et al. 2021. It is a map of Uzbekistan divided into three areas: Karluk dialect (in green), Oguz dialect (in yellow), and Kipchak dialect (in a salmon color).
Long description of map: The biggest dialect areas are Oguz and Karluk. Kipchak is considerably smaller, with only one region, Surkhandarya, included. The Oguz dialect region includes three regions: Karakalpakstan (which is very large), Khorezm, and Bukhara. The Karluk dialect region includes several regions: Navoiy (which is large), Samarqand, Qashqardarya, Jizzakh, Sirdaryo, Tashent, Namangan, Andijan, and Ferghana. The Oguz region is roughly the western portion of Uzbekistan, and Karluk is mostly the eastern half. The Kipchak dialect region is the southern most region of the country, with Tukmenistan to its west, Afghanistan to its south, and Tajikistan to its east.
L'IMAGE Aji is seen smiling in the bottom right corner.
[Page 3]
Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!
Main title, over red banner: Uzbek
Although Turkish and Uzbek are both Turkic languages, it should be emphasized that they are two distinct languages. One major difference between Turkish and Uzbek is the fact that (standardized) Uzbek generally does not have vowel harmony --- this is unusual for a Turkic language! Please see our L’IMAGE 5-Minute Linguistics lesson on Turkish to learn more about vowel harmony.
A character wearing a purple hijab and a striped green shirt is smiling and saying, “Please see our L’IMAGE 5-Minute Linguistics lesson on Turkish to learn more about vowel harmony! https://www.lingcomics.com/meryem-turkish#turkish”. L’IMAGE followers would recognize her as Meryem, the Turkish speakings student in the series. L’IMAGE Aji is smiling next to her.
[Page 4]
Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!
Main title, over red banner: Uzbek
You might remember from our Turkish lesson that Turkish has a nominalization suffix that turns adjectives into nouns, kind of like -ness in English. We saw that in Turkish, due to vowel harmony, the form of this suffix can be -lik, -lük, -lık, or -luk. Uzbek has a similar suffix!
We see a page from the Turkish infographic in the L’IMAGE series, the one where vowel harmony with the -lik suffix is exemplified. L’IMAGE Aji is smiling next to it.
[Page 5]
Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!
Main title, over red banner: Uzbek
Let’s compare the Turkish data in (1) with the Uzbek data in (2) below.
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Turkish: kuru /kuru/ ‘dry’ kuruluk [kuruluk] ‘dryness’
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Uzbek: quruq /quruq/ ‘dry’ quruqlik [quruqlik] ‘dryness’
Kuru ‘dry’ in Turkish, which contains the back rounded vowel /u/, takes -luk as the suffix, which also contains the back rounded /u/. That’s an example of vowel harmony, which we learned about before!
Quruq ‘dry’ in Uzbek also has the back rounded vowel /u/. However in Uzbek, the nominalizing suffix is always -lik, regardless of what vowel the root word contains! No vowel harmony here.
We see a navy blue silhouette of a skyline from Tashkent, Uzbekistan at the bottom. L’IMAGE Aji is smiling next to it.
[Page 6]
Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!
Main title, over red banner: Uzbek
Uzbek has had different kinds of writing systems throughout history, including an Arabic-based alphabet, a Latin-based alphabet, and the Cyrillic script. Since 1992, the Uzbek government has been pushing towards a transition from the Cyrillic script to a Latin-based alphabet.
L’IMAGE Aji speech bubble: here’s how you write “Uzbek” (the name of the language) in three different scripts!
We see the name of the language Uzbek written in three different ways:
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Perso-Arabic script
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Latin script
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Cyrilic script.
The Perso-Arabic script is similar to the Arabic script we saw in the Arabic L’IMAGE 5-Minute Linguistics lesson. Here’s how we described the appearance of the Arabic script:
Long description of Arabic script: To a non-Arabic speaker’s eyes, the Arabic script looks like a cursive text where a lot of the letters are joined together. Imagine a long horizontal brush pen stroke, with vertical lines of various lengths coming out perpendicularly on top of the the horizontal line. Sometimes, especially at edges, vertical or diagonal lines extend below the horizontal line. Sometimes, there are small dots below or over the lines, either in isolation or usually in series of two or three dots. Diacritics are often indicated with small circular strokes and lines.
The Latin script is like how English is written. It’s a non-cursive style script with a mixture of curved and straight strokes.
The Cyrillic script looks similar to Ukrainian writing from the L’IMAGE 5-Minute Linguistics lesson, although, as discussed in that lesson, not all Cyrillic scripts have all the same characters. Here’s how we described Cyrillic characters in the Ukrainian lesson:
Impressionistically, Cyrillic symbols consist of anywhere from one to three strokes, with a mixture of straight and curved lines. Some letters such as B (one vertical straight line, with two “humps” on the right side of the line) are reminiscent of the Latin alphabet. Impressionistically, in the Ukrainian Cyrillic script, there are many shapes with lines that form 90 degree angles: for example, the symbol for the “h” sound is a combination of a longer vertical line and a shorter horizontal line: the left point of the shorter line is placed over the top point of the vertical line, forming a 90-degree angle.]
[Page 7]
Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!
Main title, over red banner: Uzbek
Word order in Uzbek is subject-object-verb, which is typical for a Turkic language. It is also an agglutinative language, which means that Uzbek has a lot of affixes that you can “stack on” words, and each affix tends to have a single, identifiable meaning. This is the opposite of fusional languages, where a single affix may contain two or more pieces of semantic information. An example of a fusional language is French, where the suffix -ons, for example, means both ‘1st person plural’ and ‘present tense’ (as in nous trouvons le chat ‘we find the cat’).
There is a drawing of an orange-tabby sand cat. Above it, hand-written text reads “nous trouvons le chat”. The -ons suffix is underlined, and two arrows coming from it say “1 PL” and “PRES”. Hand-written text reads, “Fusional might “fuse” these two” (i.e., 1PL and PRES), and “Agglutinative would separate them”.
[Page 8]
Subtitle: Five-minute linguistics with L’IMAGE Aji!
Main title, over red banner: Uzbek
Here is an example of how you can form a sentence in Uzbek!
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Top-
English translation: ‘find (root verb)’
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Biz top -di -k
We find -PAST -1PL
English translation: ‘We found’
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Biz top -ma -di -k
We find -NEG -PAST -1PL
English translation: ‘We did not find’
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Biz mushuk-ni top -ma -di -k
We cat-ACC find -NEG -PAST -1PL
English translation: ‘We did not find the cat’
In (4), labels indicate that “biz” is the subject, “mushuk-ni” is the object, and “topmadik” is the verb. Thus, Uzbek is subject object verb word order.
In (4), labels in the English translation indicate that in English, “we’ is the subject, “find” is the verb, and “cat” is the object. Thus, English is subject verb object word order.
L’IMAGE Aji’s speech bubble:
PAST = Past tense
NEG = Negation (i.e., “not”)
1PL = First person plural
ACC = Accusative case
(recall case marking from our Ukrainian lesson!)
[Page 9]
References
Ahmedjanova, Z. (n.d.). Uzbek Language. Duke Slavic Centers.
Boeschoten, H. (2021). Uzbek. In The Turkic Languages (pp. 388-408). Routledge.
Number of Uzbek speakers in the world surpasses 60 million. (2022, October 18). The Tashkent Times.
Türker, L. (2019). Noun phrases in article-less languages: Uzbek and beyond (Vol. 253). John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Learn more
Uzbek resources compiled by the University of Chicago: https://ceeres.uchicago.edu/taxonomy/term/103?page=1
Acknowledgement
Many thanks to our Uzbek expert consultant for reviewing this infographic!**
**Errors, if any, are the PI’s oversight.
[Page 10]
Page title: About the L’IMAGE project
Project PI and comic artist: Ai Taniguchi, Assistant Professor, UTM Department of Language Studies
Research Assistant: Haili Su, MA Student, UTSG Department of Linguistics
Special thanks to: Gilbert Lin, Assistant Director, Intercultural & Global Initiatives, UTM International Education Centre
With the generous support of: UofT International Student Experience Fund, UTM Department of Language Studies, UTM International Education Centre
Learn more: http://www.lingcomics.com
Bottom right of page shows the University of Toronto Mississauga logo and the University of Toronto logo.