TAMPA, Fla. — George Rose, the Yankees’ liaison for all things Japan, handed out yellow boxes containing Living Language kits to all four Japanese players in the Yankees’ camp this week. The idea is to assist the players in their efforts to learn English, a task as challenging as throwing or hitting a baseball.

But with a reverse purpose in mind, Rose also handed out two other boxes to a pair of Yankees catchers, Brian McCann and Francisco Cervelli, each of whom requested a kit that would help them learn a little Japanese.

Yankees camp is turning into a language lab.

“I like to talk too much, and I want my teammates to know what I mean,” said Cervelli, a Venezuelan whose native language is Spanish. “We can’t have a translator on the mound when I go out to talk, so I need to learn how to get my message to them.”

Good communication is vital in team sports, and in baseball, three languages dominate: English, Spanish and Japanese. (Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian and Dutch, among others, can also be heard from time to time.)