Toporrimario

Toporrimario is a unique memory game that promotes the geography, culture and language of Spain. The poems have been created exclusively using place names and have no translation into any other language. While enjoying the extravagant adventure, you come to know new places, refine your pronunciation and reading skills and have fun giving your own meaning and use of sentences to the words: poetry has never been so unique as the reader recreates the experience depending on how the poems are recited.

From plays to debates and discussion topics, we use Toporrimario as a speech therapy and phoniatry tool to help treat oral communication disorders (language, speech, and voice) and improve the vocal ability of interpreters and speakers. Reciting Toporrimario encourages critical thinking along with pattern building, creativity, and individuality.

Serving the complex geography of Spain in “chewy places” allows students to relate to those places and quickly return to that interactive experience throughout their lives as a “new beginning” or “to connect the dots.” The construction of microsystems of knowledge as “a secret route” further enhances memory, relationships, and spatial intelligence.

The 50 poems with the respective flags of the provinces form 48 Memory Cards (the Spanish deck) and 2 jockers with 12 different modes. Fun to play with, Toporrimario cards are educational as they help reinforce spelling, visual memory, and creativity. As any word can mean anything at will, alternative worlds get born in the hands of the players.

Spanish is not a tonal language like Chinese, Thai, Igbo, Yòrúba, Punjabi, Zulu, and Navajo, and it doesn’t even come close to tonally accented languages like Norwegian, Serbo-Croatian, Japanese, Filipino, Swedish, and Ancient Greek. Well, let’s change that: ignoring the accents, place names can be read differently each time you pronounce them.

Have you heard that patriots can be upgraded to earthiots? Well, getting to know and appreciate the diversity of Spain is a good starting point to get to know and appreciate it in other places. If you can’t travel, at least you have your imagination to do so, and the interactive maps we have built will guide you through each and every poem.

Most inventions happen by chance or accident rather than a carefully research-led experiment. It is the capacity for observation and the ability to keep an open mind to new things, especially those that go outside the norm, that puts us in the right place at the right time to innovate. Innovation can be also trained and triggered at will.