re pleasant experience?I was going for something that no one has done in a really long time, she said of last year. Yeah, it didnt end wonderful for me or the way I wanted it to end. But it was all I could do. T

RIO DE JANEIRO -- If English is the language of world commerce, Brazil hasnt gotten the memo -- only a small fraction of its 200 million people have a basic proficiency. Fluency is also rare for other languages such as German, French and even Spanish, despite Brazil being bordered by seven Spanish-speaking countries.Many of the hundreds of thousands of tourists expected to descend on Rio de Janeiro for the Olympics in a few weeks could frequently find themselves in a linguistic muddle.Vanderclei Silva Santos, who sells caipirinhas, Brazils national cocktail, says he struggles to communicate with foreign tourists who stop at his stand on Copacabana Beach, so he uses his fingers and toes to write prices and shapes in the sand.Most of the time it works, but trying and funny moments are common, like the time a woman made chomping gestures to ask where she might find fresh corn on the cob. There was also the time a man seemed to be urgently asking for a banheiro, which is a toilet, but it turned out he was trying to figure out where to take a banho, or shower.Communicating is tough. We move our hips, we smile, which tourists like. We find a way, said Santos, a 39-year-old who hopes to one day take a basic English course, something that until recent years generally was available only for wealthy Brazilians and is still not widely offered.Attempting over the last year to bridge the language gap for the Summer Games, Rio de Janeiro state, the Olympic Committee and several companies have offered in-person and online English courses to several thousand service industry workers, Olympic volunteers and police -- those most likely to come in contact with tourists.Do you know the meaning of `Im going to kick your butt? teacher Rafael Vianna asked this week to a dozen tourist police in an advanced course aimed at preparing them to help English speakers sort through any issues that come up, from harassment to robbery. Its often used in sports and can be interpreted in different ways depending on the context.On the blackboard, Vianna wrote and defined some words that tourists in distress may use, such as mace, malice, mayhem and nuisance.Vinicius Lummertz, the president of Embratur, a government agency that promotes Brazil overseas, said Rio will be ready. And he argues that any linguistic struggles will be part of the experience.A lack of English is a problem, but trying to communicate with Brazilians who only speak Portuguese becomes a flavor, Lummertz said. Do you want a world that is exactly the same everywhere?Latin Americas biggest country is roughly the size of the continental United States, which has tended to insulate its people. And vast inequalities permeate every walk of life, including education. Most Brazilians have never had a chance to study other languages.Virginia Garcia, former head of the British Council in Brazil, said research by the council a few years ago found that only 5 percent of Brazilians spoke English at a proficient level.Garcia said English instruction in public schools is limited, although several big events hosted by Brazil in recent years, including the Pan American Games, the World Cup and a visit by Pope Francis, have slowly pushed the country to expand language teaching.Twenty years ago, only people coming from the high classes could learn other languages in Brazil, Garcia said. Its slowly getting more democratic.Antonio Carlos de Moraes Sartini, director of the Sao Paulo-based Museum of the Portuguese Language, said Brazils intense focus on Portuguese dates to 1750, when the Portugals monarchy made teaching the language mandatory to create a national identity different from the surrounding Spanish-speaking colonies.At the time, only about 20 percent of people in Brazil spoke Portuguese, while more than 1,000 indigenous languages prevailed. A few hundred of those languages are still spoken, mostly in the Amazonian region, but the vast majority of indigenous peoples now also speak Portuguese.The language spoken here today expresses Brazilians expansive, affectionate nature, said Sartini.That nature often includes having a good laugh when it comes to foreign languages.Joel Santana, a former soccer player and coach, has parlayed his halting English into a second career in television advertising. In 2010, while coaching South Africas national team, he gave an interview in English that was so indecipherable that it became an internet sensation. Since then, he has pitched products such as Pepsi and Head & Shoulders shampoo in commercials, throwing in barely understandable words in English.Jens Heftoy, a journalist from Norway who has visited Brazil several times in the last decade since marrying a woman from Rio, said that in his experience even Brazilians who have a decent level of English prefer not to speak it unless they work in the tourism industry.Three blocks from here, youll have problems in communicating, Heftoy said while walking on the tourist mecca of Copacabana Beach. It works out, but you have to be patient.---Associated Press writer Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.---Online:Joel Santana interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoxA9ghHkOM---Follow Peter Prengaman at http://twitter.com/peterprengamanYeezy Boost 350 V2 Zebra 2020 . This should be celebrated because it will not always be this way. With the amount of money given to players by their clubs these days, it is a wonder that so many of those teams allow the sport to continue to take away many of their assets so they can play for a different team in the middle of their season. Yeezy 500 Salt Cheap . -- Charline Labonte couldnt have asked for a better homecoming. http://www.cheapyeezyswholesale.com/yeezy-boost-700-for-sale/discount-yeezy-700-utility-black.html . - The Oakland Raiders re-signed offensive lineman Khalif Barnes on Friday. Yeezy 500 Supermoon Yellow For Sale . It is a cliché dragged out by fans and pundits regularly when discussions take place around which teams are better than others. Yeezy Boost 700 Carbon Blue . -- On the field, it was business as usual for Jameis Winston and No.NEW YORK -- It was on a US Open practice court where, if you were especially intuitive, there were signs last year that Serena Williams was headed for an unhappy ending to her quest of completing the seventh calendar-year Grand Slam in the history of the game.It wasnt necessarily what she did that day, tossing and serving for well over an hour -- first from the deuce court, then from the ad and over to a different court for more of the same.It was more of what drove her there and the purposefulness with which she marched over directly after her match. Williams would later admit to being nervous during her eventual second-round victory against the 110th-ranked player in the world, a match in which she would squeak out a first-set tiebreaker 7-5, after committing eight double faults and 26 unforced errors in the opening set.She would close the match out 6-3 in the second; the match point was not accompanied by anything close to the shrieks heard that afternoon but rather utter silence, a disgusted look and an eye roll. She later characterized it as not one of my happiest moments.At that point, Williams was already tired of the questions and seemingly tired of the grind. Tired of being tired. She even all but demanded that any inquiries with the words Grand Slam in them cease. And when she lost in a semifinal shocker to Roberta Vinci, the 43rd-ranked player in the world playing her first career Slam semi, Serena blew through a four-minute news conference and left the grounds.You could hardly blame her. But back in the second round here Thursday against 27-year-old American Vania King, Williams mood was decidedly different.I think Im more relaxed, for sure, Williams said this earlier this week.While not exactly operating under the proverbial radar, Serena is trying to win just her second Slam in a row after prevailing at Wimbledon and only trying to surpass Steffi Grafs record of 22 career majors.And while King is an 87th-ranked wildcard who succumbed to Serena in their only prevvious meeting, 6-1, 6-0 in 56 minutes in the 2014 US Open, you suspect Williams opponent, as always, has very little to do with the outcome.ddddddddddddWhile Serena is still dealing with a shoulder issue that had her going for placement rather than speed on her serves in her 6-3, 6-3 first-round win over Ekaterina Makarova, there is considerably less emotional weight on both shoulders this year.In 2015, Williams played 17 three-setters going into the Open in 10 tournaments, plus two rounds of Fed Cup; she won 16 of those three-set matches. This year, there have been five three-setters in seven tournaments, including the Olympics. She lost that third-round encounter to 20th-ranked Elina Svitolina in straight sets on Aug. 9, her last match before New York.Even with the shoulder concerns, Williams was asked, is this US Open already a more pleasant experience?I was going for something that no one has done in a really long time, she said of last year. Yeah, it didnt end wonderful for me or the way I wanted it to end. But it was all I could do. Thats all I could do.While the three-set victories were a testament to her competitive toughness, the off-court battle turned out to be a considerably tougher one. After the 2015 Open, she cited a broken heart from her loss to Vinci in addition to other injuries and subsequently announced she was withdrawing from three tournaments, including the WTA Finals.Williams coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, said the motivation just wasnt there, and it was the only sensible decision. And this year, while Serena, who is weeks short of her 35th birthday, said she would have preferred to play more coming into the final Grand Slam of the year, she is trying to be optimistic.There is nothing we can do about it, she said. You just have to make the best of every single opportunity. Thats all I can do now.Usually, thats more than enough. ' ' '