Americans have always had a reputation for linguistic laziness, and since much of the business world is willing to conduct business in English, their deficiency tends not to hold them back. But an increasing number of Americans realize that going the extra step to hone skills in a foreign language can provide a professional edge or grease the wheels of deal-making. They are dusting off their high school Spanish, French or German, and the most ambitious of them are plunging into immersion language courses…

These programs have proliferated throughout the world and come in all sizes, lasting from a few days to several weeks, emphasizing vocabularies in a variety of professional specialties and conducted as group sessions or one-on-one tutorials.

For many American executives, Spanish is the language to learn, given the large Latin American market next door and the surge in the Hispanic population in the United States.

There are numerous immersion programs, both in Latin America and Spain, but Guatemala has become a hotbed of language study, in part because of its inhabitants’ reputation for speaking in a clear, easily understandable accent and partly because of its extremely low cost. It is home to scores of schools, many of them based in Antigua, a well-preserved colonial city with cobblestone streets and easy excursions to nearby volcanoes and Mayan ruins.

For as little as $150 a week, foreigners can receive six hours of private language instruction for five days a week. Accommodations with a local family providing three home-cooked meals a day are generally included in the price.

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