Counting to ten in Spanish
“How exactly do these cards work,” a man asks Jessica Brouwer, national event co-ordinator of the language game New Amigos.
Last Tuesday evening, about forty visitors had assembled in the Clinique pub, sitting in small groups around tables ready to learn a board game that has been popular in Norway and Germany for some years. A group of Colombian girls need to wait until the organisers have returned with more copies of the game.
Since recently, New Amigos has been available in the Netherlands in four versions (Dutch-English, Dutch-French, Dutch-Spanish and Dutch-Italian). It can be played at three levels: beginners, advanced and experts. After throwing a dice, a player can move his or her piece on the board and in doing so passes seven different categories (including food, days, verb conjugations and time indication) with associated assignment cards.
‘Make a sentence with the verb to buy’ or ‘count to ten in French’. “You can play New Amigos with fellow-countrymen, but it is of course much more fun to play with someone from France or Spain so that you can correct each other,” says Jessica.
The aim is simple: to break the ice between different nationalities while playing and to help each other learn languages. The first does not quite seem to be happening this evening. Most of the groups consist of people from the same country.
New Amigos is played in the Clinique pub, Platielstraat 9A, every Tuesday from 19:00 hrs.
Read full article: Observant 19 January 2006
