Two fathers from East Yorkshire who wanted to help their families learn Spanish have turned their idea into a board game.
Comprendo! will be launched by Stephen Foster, of Kirk Ella, and John Ainsley, of Welton, at Princes Quay Shopping Centre in Hull tomorrow.
The concept was born eight years ago when Mr Foster wanted a game to help his son, Oliver, then 12, with his language skills.
There was nothing available so Mr Foster designed a simple question and answer game on a sheet of A4 paper.
Oliver's Spanish improved and Mr Foster asked his friend Mr Ainsley to help develop the concept.
Mr Foster said: "We were just a couple of dads who wanted to create a fun way for our children to pick up a bit of Spanish before we went on holiday."
The game soon moved from a simple format to simulating a holiday in Spain, where players compete to fill their "wish list" of day trips and earn points by speaking Spanish words and phrases.
Mr Ainsley said: "We developed the board into a colourful map of Spain and added elements of culture, history and geography.
"The questions and choice of answers were carefully constructed to make speaking and pronunciation easy for players from around age 11 to adult."
Friends and family, including Mr Ainsley's children Lucy, Thomas and Jonathan, loved the game, prompting the fathers to think about launching it commercially.
The game was called Passport and the early prototype became Mind Your Language.
Mr Ainsley said: "Extensive research showed there was nothing like this around and that's why it has taken so long to develop the game."
Spanish teacher Isabel Smedley, of Hessle, helped create the questions and phonetics to encourage players to pronounce words correctly.
Comprendo! is now a registered European trademark and 2,000 copies have already been produced and marketed online at £29.95 each.
Mr Foster and Mr Ainsley have formed SJS Games Ltd to handle the venture and have appointed sales directors in Spain to target the large British expat community.
See more information on the game at www.comprendogame.com
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| <p>Well, if it is accurate, then I&#39;m with &quot;unidentified male #1.&quot; Granted, it&#39;s more of a maettr of improper spending rather than reckless spending. The stimulus was a huge spending package sold as necessary to get the economy back on its feet as soon as possible. Yet we find that too much of the spending is not going to &quot;getting America working&quot; in 2009 and 2010, to &quot;jobs saved or created,&quot; but rather to projects that someone just wanted funding for, irrespective of whether a job was involved or not. (In fact, I wouldn&#39;t be surprised if Robobees created or saved 0 jobs in 2009 and 2010. Will Harvard hire 1.66 more members of staff due to the project? I somehow doubt it.)It might have defense applications, but the funding didn&#39;t come from DoD. It might have general science applications, but the funding didn&#39;t come from NSF&#39;s general budget, either. It came from the stimulus, and, as such, deserves to be criticized. Maybe it&#39;s #1 because of the cute name, but it&#39;s on the list because it&#39;s spending that was billed as one thing but used for something else. If I embezzled $1 million from a company and donated it to needy families and orphans, would you be right to criticize my actions as &quot;reckless&quot;? I think so. The main difference here is that, when the government does it, it&#39;s not illegal.With so many governments, from Greece to California, in peril from spending in excess of their means, we should realize that most governmental spending &quot;looks good&quot; from the right perspective. But we can only afford to spend so much. Maybe Robobees should be part of that. But, if so, it should be funded through proper channels, not some three-quarters-of-a-trillion-dollar loophole called &quot;stimulus,&quot; which is supposed to be for short-term growth, to smooth out the effects of a down economy. Will Robobees help do that? Is $10 million the right price to save or create a job or two? If not, it should be criticized, but criticizing the way government funds a project shouldn&#39;t be confused with criticizing the project itself. Some viewers and blogs might be doing this, but so, I suspect, are those offended by the criticism.</p>
| 2/12/2014 6:29:43 PM | Tiago |