Bridging Language Gap Takes Steps From Both Sides

After her victory Sunday at the United States Open, Jelena Jankovic conducted her news conferences in two languages — English first, then her native Serbian. She probably could have conducted one in French, which she studied at a diplomacy school as a teenager back home in Belgrade, but she hasn’t kept up.
 
One of the top female players in the world, Jankovic has criticized the new demand by the L.P.G.A. that all players on that tour be able to speak adequate English by the end of 2009.
 
“To be honest, I don’t think it should be that way,” Jankovic said in a private interview Friday. “We are foreigners, and we are athletes. My language is Serbian. This is not a language school.”
 
Having blundered into this policy apparently without thinking it through, the L.P.G.A. is now trying to rationalize that it wants its foreign players to speak English so they can drum up business while they are driving and chipping and all the rest.
 
Apparently, one of the previously underpublicized roles of the players on the L.P.G.A. tour is chatting up well-heeled friends of women’s golf during the pro-am events. The women on the tennis tour are not saddled with the responsibility of charming business contacts while swatting backhands.
 
Because the golf tour has 45 players from South Korea, the impression remains that the L.P.G.A. is singling out these players with Dobbsian bluster. To the customers who pony up to play in the L.P.G.A. pro-ams, I would like to offer one word: yoboseyo. It means hello in Korean, and it always got me a smile in Seoul during the World Cup of soccer in 2002, after which people offered me directions and advice — in English, of course. And they all had relatives in my home borough of Queens. Koreans learn languages pretty quickly. It’s Americans who have language problems.