The Language Merchants

U.S. businessmen are learning that money talks better overseas if it speaks the local language. The man who has done the most to teach them that fact of life--and the languages--is President Robert Strumpen-Darrie, 51, of Berlitz Schools of America. Berlitz has profited greatly from the expansion of U.S. companies abroad; since 1952, the number of executives taking company-paid language courses at Berlitz has jumped from 300 to 3,500. And President Strumpen-Darrie is convinced that every syllable is worth its rather high cost. "We have found," he says, "that an executive who speaks the language of the country can start being effective six months earlier than one who does not."

Welcome for Wives. Last week circuit-riding Berlitz instructors were teaching Japanese in Chicago to employees of Caterpillar Tractor, Spanish and German in Moline to officials of John Deere, and French in Wilmington to executives of Du Pont. U.S. Steel sends large groups of executives to Berlitz to determine which ones can learn Spanish fastest, later selects some of them for assignment to Venezuela. Corporation wives are almost always included in the various courses; companies have found that wives who are left speechless abroad soon start clamoring for a costly transfer back home.

With U.S. businessmen buying and selling in increasingly remote parts of the world, Berlitz now teaches 46 living languages from Afrikaans to Urdu. President Strumpen-Darrie (who gets by in half a dozen languages) and 48-year-old Vice President Charles Berlitz (15 languages fluently, another 15 passably) insist that non-European tongues are usually no tougher than European ones, and that almost anyone can gain a rough working knowledge after 30 hours of instruction and a good fluency (a 3,000-word vocabulary) after 120 hours. The price: $3 for group lessons, $6 for individual sessions. For Berlitz, this amounts to a profitable business that grosses some $4,000,000 a year from teaching, translation and textbook royalties through 32 branches in North and Central America. A separate Paris-based company, spun off after World War I, runs 208 Berlitz outlets overseas.

Speak No English. Whether the learners are businessmen or Peace Corps volunteers, Berlitz teaches by what it calls The Method. The system was devised by Charles Berlitz's mustachioed grandfather, Maximilian, who came out of the Black Forest 85 years ago to start a language business in Providence, went on to engage such temporary teachers as Leon Trotsky and James Joyce. Using The Method, native-born instructors today speak in class only the language they teach, forbid English, repeat constantly, and guide befuddled beginners with props and pictures. Nelson Rockefeller learned his Spanish that way, and Douglas Dillon perfected his French. Academic critics charge that The Method is acultural and fails to teach people to comprehend such things as the nuances of foreign-language poetry. Berlitz does not debate the point; but it does claim that it can help a businessman close a deal by giving him an effective working knowledge of the everyday language.

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