Habla video?

Why use a textbook to learn a foreign language when you can play a video game?

That's the premise of West L.A.-based Alelo, a virtual reality video game developer solely for foreign-language instruction.

It works like this: On downloadable software, which launches a video game on a computer, the user can role-play with virtual humans on the screen through a microphone.

For Arabic, in one scene, a man is standing outside a Sikh house. The user is required to speak the proper Arabic greeting into the microphone and, using a keyboard command, produce a customary gesture of putting the right hand over the heart and bowing slightly.

The company produces a similar type of simulation for the Pashto language from the Pashtun regions of Afghanistan, and French as spoken in Africa.

Since September 2006, the video game has been used to train 25,000 members of the Marines, Navy, Army and Air Force.

Alelo is rolling out civilian products such as a Chinese-language video game for a university publishing company.

Staff reporter Booyeon Lee can be reached at [phone], ext. 230, or at [e-mail].