>>Figured it out. I have to set the Visible property of the label to true first. Then the new width is correct.
>if the labels were initially set to accomodate the largest "language word", it seems the smaller would fit.

The smaller would fit, but then the associated textboxes are too far away for my tastes. The problem is that the new width is not calculated internally by VFP until the Visible prop is true. :-(