Undaunted by the mountain of books and tapes already available, LeBow produced and is marketing a Spanish language course that has enjoyed such demand throughout Idaho that she's just come out with a new version featuring CDs instead of tapes.

Demand continues to be brisk, according to LeBow, who is about to begin marketing her "Spanish Simplified!" program out of state.

LeBow's Spanish odyssey began decades ago with six-week trip to Spain with her husband, Dr. Robert LeBow, until recently director of the Terry Reilly Health Clinic in Nampa.

"I had taught myself basically how to teach Spanish in six weeks," LeBow said in an interview at her Garden City home, which doubles as her marketing and sales headquarters.

"I just wanted to get myself understood without being misunderstood. It is very logical, and it is very simple."

She began experimenting with her system around 1990, and tried the method in a fewclasses, such as at the state Department of Health and Welfare.

In the year since "Spanish Simplified!" has been on the market, LeBow has sold about 1,000 copies, most in Idaho. So far, she said, sales are breaking even with expenses, but she hopes to begin making a profit as the program is distributed beyond Idaho and sales increase.

She still scratches her head that it took so long after her trip to Spain to realize she discovered a marketable language course, but the advent of "Spanish Simplified!" has made her a sought-after by Idaho businesses as well as education, government and other groups that want to help their employees interact with the growing number of Spanish-speaking customers, employers, and others with whom they do business.

Hispanic "buying power" is growing faster than that of other minority groups, according to a report last summer by the University of Georgia's Selig Center for Economic Growth. Researchers pegged Hispanic buying at $580 billion in 2002 and projected it would reach $926 billion in five years. (Buying pow-er is basically disposable income, or the total available for spending on goods and services after taxes.)

Not only has "Spanish Simplified!" worked, it's also become a fund-raising tool for various groups that buy the program at a bulk discount and use the proceeds for their causes.

Through sales by the Caldwell Chamber of Commerce, for instance, LeBow donated $1,600 to the Hispanic Cultural Center of Idaho, while the Nampa Chapter of the American Business Women's Association raised $1,400 from its sales for its scholarship program. The women's association named LeBow its Business Associate of the Year last summer.

Diana Brown at the Caldwell Chamber of Commerce said her office sold so many copiesof Spanish Simplified! that LeBow had to order more.

"It went really well," Brown said of the Chamber's sales. "People came from Boise to get them."

For many businesses, it makes common sense to have employees who can communicate in Spanish, Brown said – particularly in parts of Idaho where the language has become commonplace.

"It's to their advantage to be able to communicate with who their customers are, "Brown said. "Most of our sales weren't even to our members, but to individuals." When the Idaho Press-Tribune ran a story about LeBow and her program, mentioning that the Cald-well Chamber would be offering it for sale, "We were inundated with calls," Brown said, even though the Chamber had not yet received its shipment.

Alisa Clifford at the Nampa office of contracting firm Hansen-Rice Inc., studied the program on her own, learned Spanish, and introduced "Span-ish Simplified!" to others at her firm.

"It seems to be really easy," Clifford said. "The way she (LeBow) has put it together, it builds your confidence as you're going through it."

Key to LeBow's Spanish program is its simplicity: 200 basic words and six conjugated verbs deployed with a set of audio tapes (and as of earlier this month, easier-to-use CDs), flash cards, and a 150-page instruction book that compresses the course into eight lessons aimed at converting complex English sentences into basic Spanish. LeBow's program is different from most other off-the-shelf language programs in that it uses a low number of words that must be memorized. That teaches students to rethink what they're about to say and "downsizing" their sentences. Rather than trying to remember little-used words, they substitute those used more frequently.

"Life is too short to memorize every single word in Spanish that you know in English," LeBow said. "You have to live within your (vocabulary) budget." For instance, "I have to go" becomes "It's necessary to go," while "I must finish" becomes "It's important to finish," and "You don't need to come tomorrow" becomes "It's not necessary to come tomorrow." The idea is that it's better to know how to string together fewer words in many ways than to know many more words but be clueless about putting them together in coherent sentences.

"With very few words, you can make a tremendous number of sentences," she said. Clifford agreed. Since students need only conjugate a half-dozen verbs, and can produce phrases that otherwise would require a greater vocabulary, "it makes it so much more usable right away," she said. "There are phrases you or I could use anywhere."

LeBow doesn't teach her course so much as explain it in two-Extension Service offices in Ada and Canyon counties, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, churches, health and medical clinics, schools, and businesses such as the Rogers Seed Co., Boise, a division of Syngenta Seeds Inc.

The program costs $40 per set with audio tapes, or $55 with audio CDs, plus mailing. Orders of 10 sets or more are $24 for tapes and $33 for CDs.