Tongues Untied

WOODLAND HILLS — Here is how the conversation around the conference table is going:

“I drink coffee with sugar.”

“I drink tea with lemon.”

“You drinks . . .”

“No, the verb!”

” . . . you DRINK tea with lemon.”

“I drink red wine. I drink white wine. I drink beer. I drink mineral water. I drink coffee with milk. I drink coffee without milk.”

Pilar Vallino smiles a room-brightening smile at her three students, all English-speaking adults struggling in the infancy of their Spanish.

“Excelente,” she says. “Muy bien.”

It is 6:30 on a weekday evening at the Berlitz Language Center, on the ground floor of a modern, high-rise office complex. Outside, it is dark. Late-departing office workers converse in English in relieved, end-of-the-workday lilts as they walk toward the parking structure.

Inside the small conference room, however, the air is dense with mental effort. Students Kasabian Woodard, Rita Walsh and Elena Yasno gather their brows and try to conform their minds to the unfamiliar contours of Spanish. The ever-shifting verb forms. The aligning of adjectival endings with the genders of nouns. The trilled Rs.

Woodard, Walsh and Yasno, who have been at it for a little more than a month, and a growing number of other English-speaking Americans are learning foreign languages. Although Berlitz does not reveal the number of its students, a company spokeswoman says business is markedly up.

Moreover, according to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, a third of American public school students in grades 7 through 12, just over 5 million, are studying foreign languages. It is the highest rate of enrollment in such classes since 1928.

Interestingly, this is happening concurrently with the strengthening drive to require English-only education for immigrant students in public schools.

“Americans in general are realizing that, yes, English is spoken around the world, but to sell your product abroad, or to establish relationships there, you really have to have a grasp of the language,” says Erin Giordano of Berlitz International, North America, in Princeton, N.J.

“Here, we’re used to whoever has the low bid getting the work. But in other places, it doesn’t always work like that. It’s all about who you know, and the relationships you’ve been able to forge.”

But learning a foreign language is about more than just fattening a bottom line. It’s also therapy, self-improvement, an attempt to live in a larger world by penetrating the culture and psychology of other peoples. As someone once said, learning another language is like gaining another soul.

The key to doing it right is to unmoor from the comforting rules of one’s familiar language, and embrace the new language on its own terms. Trying to translate everything back and forth is a recipe for frustration.

Inevitably, living in a larger world begins with voluntarily becoming very small in one’s ability to self-express.

Inside the Woodland Hills classroom, the 120-year-old Berlitz method is followed strictly; a student’s primary language is verboten--in this case, prohibido. Central to the thesis is that language is not an academic subject, but a skill that must be practiced, like tennis or golf, if proficiency is to result.

“This pen is cheap.”

“A Mercedes is very expensive.”

“Where is the pencil?”

“The pencil is on the book.”

“Excelente. Muy bien.”

When a student is forming a response, eyes closed, lips struggling to get the sounds right, the others around the table watch keenly. Their own mouths move silently with the answer. When the called-upon student finally manages, “The pen is in your . . . right hand,” the others smile and nod in affirmation.

“We are becoming a kind of team,” says Elena Yasno after class.

The self-reduction required to begin speaking a foreign language isn’t always easy for adults. Most of them are accustomed to being competently assertive, not sounding like preschoolers.

“Some people are terribly afraid of that humbling experience,” says John Foy, Berlitz’s North American pedagogical director. “My personal view is that it is very helpful. It makes you realize that, while you may be in charge of a vast business empire, there are things that you don’t know and that there is no shortcut to learning. You have to have the psychological ability to let go of the reins.”

Woodard, Walsh and Yasno have their practical reasons for learning Spanish.

Woodard, a 27-year-old South-Central Los Angeles resident who is production manager for an apparel company in Pacoima, deals with a Spanish-speaking work force. His company is paying for his lessons.

“I know that Spanish is not going to be secondary in L.A. anymore,” he says. “I have to communicate with my workers. I know street Spanish. This is like kindergarten, but if I want to climb up the corporate ladder, I’ve got to learn correct Spanish.”

Yasno, 36, a West Hills accountant and co-owner of a software company, sees Spanish as a tool to help her expand her business.

And Walsh, a nurse who is 50 and lives in Calabasas, has tired of her inability to say much to Spanish-speaking patients beyond “respire profundo”--”take a deep breath.”

But Walsh admits she has a more private reason. “I want to be able to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Spanish,” she says. “I know I’m missing nuances in the English translations.”

Similarly, Yasno’s reasons extend beyond business. What with work and two children at home, too many of her energies get directed outward. “This is something I do for myself,” says Yasno, who emigrated from Ukraine 18 years ago, and speaks Russian and Ukrainian as well as English. “I feel we are accomplishing something here.”

Woodard survived a jeopardy-filled youth in South-Central. Now that he has two small children, his view of the world has been altered in every dimension.

“I was an ‘eff-up’ all my life, but now that I’ve got kids, I want to go forward and rise above my peers,” he says. “Learning Spanish is like a mind-goal for me. I have to raise my kids and help them understand other people.

“And when they get in school, I can show them, yo, Daddy’s studying, too.”

Excelente.

Muy bien.