Lingo Cards brings new languages to NY NOW

Lingo Cards Keaton White at his NY NOW booth

Lingo Cards owner Keaton White brought three new catalog entries to this week’s winter 2020 NY NOW home/lifestyle/handmade/gift market trade show at New York’s Javits Center.

Russian and Greek are the latest additions to Lingo’s “Play cards—pick up a language” playing cards line (joining French, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, German, Mandarin and Indonesian), with a new American Slang deck added to British, Aussie, Kiwi and Millennial slang sets.

Each of the 54-card decks (52 standard cards and two Jokers) combine traditional game playing cards with educational flashcards. Geared toward beginners and intermediate language learners/speakers, the premium high-quality cards carry the most commonly used phrases with phonetic pronunciations.

Hailing from western Australia, White conceived the cards during his “sabbatical” from college.

“I was traveling the world with a ratty old notebook,” he recalls, noting how he ended up surfing in southwestern Mexico—and wondering how to get a bus ticket without knowing how to speak Spanish.

“My notebook was full of Spanish words and phrases I was trying to learn,” continues White. “I was in the Acapulco Gold region, and every night I’d smoke and play cards, and got the idea for Lingo while surfing: I wound up underwater, and then it hit me: Spanish playing cards! I caught the next wave in, went to my cabana and started scribbling Spanish phrases from my notebook with a Sharpie onto a deck of playing cards—and that’s how I picked up the language!”

For the past five years, then, White has manifested his “travel freely and play often” philosophy via his ever-expanding Lingo Cards.

“Look where we are now! Here!” he said, proudly greeting new and returning customers at his NY NOW exhibitor’s booth.