by Michael Finley
Copyright © 1997 by Michael Finley

By the time you read this, I will be back from a whirlwind trip to our sister city of São Paulo, Brazil. I was honored to be invited, along with my partner Harvey, to address a group of Brazilian executives on the topic of teams.

I even have a Brazil joke, inspired by the beachware at Ipanema:

"I'm going to Brazil, and I've already picked out my thong." (Pause) "Problem is, I have to keep picking it out every five minutes." (Rimshot)

I know all this sounds like bragging, but it is really a cry for help. Because there are two things I fear above all else -- ordinary public speaking, and public speaking in a language I don't speak. I say to you in all honesty that if my plane went down in the Caribbean last week, my last thoughts as the plane headed toward its rendezvous with fire and water would be that at least I didn't have to give that speech.

And so I have spent many hours over the past month trying to do what John Travolta did in the movie Phenomenon in half an hour: learn Portuguese in a hurry. I bought a little book, "Conversational Portuguese in 7 Days" (Passport Books, $6.95), but it appears you get what you pay for. For me to learn Portuguese in seven days from this book, they would have to be the seven days of Genesis.

I decided to come at this via software. A visit to the local superstore, however, taught me that Portuguese is not a major world language. Language software concentrates on these languages, in order: Spanish, French, Japanese, Chinese, German, and Russian. Except for Transparent Software's "Portuguese Now!" (http://www.transparent.com/), I was unable to find an all-Portuguese program from a major company. And I only found that in a catalog, not on a store shelf.

The best I was able to come up with was a program called "Easy Language 17" (IMSI, $29.95). Subtitled "Essential Vocabulary in 17 Major Languages," Easy Language 17 purports to teach people essential vocabulary and pronunciation in the languages I just mentioned, plus Italian, Greek, Danish, Dutch, Korean, Thai, Indonesian, Hebrew, Arabic -- and Portuguese.

The program is straightforward. It asks your native language and what language you want to review, then it whisks you off to a series of drills on words and phrases, broken down by category (essentials, eating out, shopping, having fun, people, etc.). Like old-style language programs, there are pictures, phonetic spellings of phrases, a dictionary, and quizzes. But there are also multimedia features to keep you on track: videos of the countries where the languages are spoken, WAV files to help you sound out the words, a microphone feature to check your pronunciation against native speakers, and a free Web site where you can connect to other language opportunities.

The product is far from perfect. I couldn't get it to install to my hard drive, and ran it direct from disk instead. The Internet connection likewise had to be made manually. And when I found the Web site, it timed out -- Easy Language 17 either hasn't gotten its act together yet, or it has decided it doesn't want to. And Portuguese, my new mother tongue, gets ultra-short shrift in the video department.

My first test I took, I got about three quarters of the answers right. But you quickly figure out how to get the right answers, using the words you learned, plus the familiar roots of the word. A farmácia pretty much has to be a drug store. Alga is seaweed. And if pinguim isn't penguin, you'll want your money back.

I like the multimedia online approach. Unlike a book, it involves several of your senses. Unlike a video or audio tape, it knows who you are, and remembers where you left off. Unlike a class, you can do it when you like, for as long as you like, and have the teacher's undivided attention.

As for my trip to São Paulo, I have no illusions that the phrases I pick up from Easy Language 17 will allow me to give a full-day talk in Portuguese. We'll have simultaneous translation for that, like at the UN. But it will be a comfort to me, in a strange land, to be able to indicate to my hosts that I respected their invitation enough to learn a few rudimentary phrases by which we could communicate. Obrigato means thank you. Faz favor is please. Muito prazer means very pleased, which, as I said, I am.

I saw it work years ago when I was working at the University. A Chinese dignitary was making a tour of the Saint Paul campus. This was just after the ping pong match that thawed relations between the two countries. Amidst his entourage and the ensuing members of the press, the minister made a wrong step in the animal husbandry area. He looked down at his shoe, smiled, and happily said the only English word he would speak the whole day. People cheered.