Memoria Iskonawa

Fun matching game for learning animal and plant names in the Iskonawa language.

This interactive educational game is designed to provide an entertaining means for revitalizing the highly endangered Iskonawa language of Amazonian Peru. This application is the first cellular/tablet game application developed in the Iskonawa language, and one of the few truly interactive applications created in an indigenous Amazonian language. The aim is that in the process of having fun playing the game, Iskonawas will learn 360 words in their ancestral language. It will serve as an entertaining and effective language revitalization tool that will also facilitate the intergenerational transmission of Iskonawa traditional ecological knowledge. The game is modelled after the classic “Memory” board game: upon tapping a rectangle, either an image or a written word will appear and simultaneously play a sound clip corresponding to the word or the image, the aim being to match the drawing and its corresponding written word. If a correct match is made, the two rectangles will disappear. The challenge is to try to eliminate all the rectangles in the fewest number of turns or in the shortest amount of time. This application was produced within the framework of the project “Interdisciplinary Research Program on Amazonian Linguistic Diversity” financed by the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Estación Científica Chana, and the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, coordinated by Roberto Zariquiey. The illustrations were drawn by Matses artist Guillermo Nëcca Pëmen Mënquë under the auspices of Acate Amazon Conservation.