[abisson]

Hey guys,

I am currently starting Rosetta Stone German Level 1. So far I am liking it, but I wanted to know if any of you guys actually went trough with one of the possible languages and how did you like it?!

Thanks!

[Feyd]

Interested in this too/how well you all thought it worked.

Married a first generation American (Polish) girl. I'm thinking about picking up their Polish set for my trip to the homeland next year.

[smellfish]

Originally Posted by Feyd

Interested in this too/how well you all thought it worked.

Married a first generation American (Polish) girl. I'm thinking about picking up their Polish set for my trip to the homeland next year.

I was working through the Polish Level 1 and I got a decent amount out of it.

The only complaint is that sometimes the lack of translated words/tense gets me.

For example, the program teaches you using pictures and the foreign word. This is all well and good for stuff like mleko (milk) but becomes an issue for a picture of a man in a car. I don't know if the translation means a man is/was driving or just a guy in/with a car.

I found I was going to a English/Polish dictionary often to gain context. Maybe I didn't make it far enough into the unit or these things don't matter in Polish like they do in English. Either way working on my Masters took priority and I haven't done much with it since.

Two pieces of advice-

Get a good headset with a microphone. Using the one on my laptop was rubbish and the program isn't nearly as useful without the speech features.

Torrents are a great way to try it out on the cheap. I haven't found anything past Level 1 for Polish though. Get v3 (newest I think). The whole program looks better than v2.

Let me know if you end up going with it. I've been wanting to make a trip back to the motherland but want to have some idea of what's going on.

[T-MC-G]

i'm moving to germany and need to buy it!! let me know how it is

[AllydNYC]

Originally Posted by T-MC-G

i'm moving to germany and need to buy it!! let me know how it is

Torrent!

[08rookie]

ehh you may get a decent foundation off rosetta stone but dont expect to pop in the cd's and morph into a native.

in order to really learn the language and communicate effectively you should follow up the software with sit-coms and radio stations in the language you plan to use lol

i work in a latino neighborhood. we conduct business entirely in spanish. i know what i need to know in spanish but outside my industry talk i am lost.

[SpacE82]

Originally Posted by AllydNYC

Torrent!

This. My dad wanted to learn spanish for work. So i downloaded a torrent (for freeee) and now he can learn not only spanish, but chinese, arabic, japanese, german, polish, russian, and any other language you can think of

[immiketoo]

I have the German as well, and I think its pretty good. I was listening to some opera (Amadeus) and I understood the libretto. Pretty cool.

[BTM]

Originally Posted by immiketoo

I was listening to some opera (Amadeus) and I understood the libretto. Pretty cool.

That's impressive...songs in other languages are notoriously difficult for non-native speakers as (often) accent is lost and pronunciation/intonation is morphed to better meld with the melody/harmony/rhythm/etc

[immiketoo]

Yeah, no one was as surprised as me Still, it was pretty cool!

[kaykay]

Rosetta Stone is simply amazing. No question.

What a program, it's the de-facto standard for learning a language on a computer. Could even be better than a physical course.

[klipseracer]

I have korean and thai... Make sure you get the 3.0 version of rosetta stone. Some of the language packs aren't updated for it but its amazing. Very best advice, is try to learn the alphabets first on your own. If you can do that, you can sound the words out that they are saying to you properly and get a MUCH MUCH fuller understanding of what you are saying. I did the first unit of korean and it was alright. I managed. But I went and learned the korean alphabet(took one night) and next time through unit 1 a few months later and I could stop, sound out the words and knew for SURE which one to pick. Oh, and yeah, torrents for sure but it really is worth the money.

[SchlauCow]

Rosetta Stone is fine for maintenance of a language... but you want to get a formal lesson into the grammatical rules as well as learn about the various cases and adjective endings. Let's take German for example.

There's a picture of a bottle on a table. The caption reads, "Die Flasche steht auf dem Tisch" (the bottle is on the table) but then you see a hand holding the bottle placing it on the table, and the caption reads, "Ich stelle die Flasche auf den Tisch" -- you don't learn why it's "dem Tisch" versus "den Tisch" you just know there's a difference. The differences, however, can be found by reviewing German dative and accusative forms. If it's German you're studying, then the line of learning aides by Langenscheidt have proven helpful. If you have time, consider lessons at a Goethe Institut or hiring a private tutor.

[Chest Rockwell]

Originally Posted by BTM

That's impressive...songs in other languages are notoriously difficult for non-native speakers as (often) accent is lost and pronunciation/intonation is morphed to better meld with the melody/harmony/rhythm/etc

This is so true, I have been studying/working with Arabic for 8 years and I still can't understand most of the songs. I think it's mostly a style thing the way they draw out the words, but still. If you can understand songs and more importantly their comedy then you are doing great with the language.

[hks786]

Originally Posted by Chest Rockwell

This is so true, I have been studying/working with Arabic for 8 years and I still can't understand most of the songs. I think it's mostly a style thing the way they draw out the words, but still. If you can understand songs and more importantly their comedy then you are doing great with the language.

I was going to ask if anyone has tried Rosetta Stone for Arabic. What have you been using to help learn?

[Chest Rockwell]

Originally Posted by hks786

I was going to ask if anyone has tried Rosetta Stone for Arabic. What have you been using to help learn?

I learned it in the military, so we cram 4 years of college into a couple months and do it that way, then have taken a bunch of classes along the way. I have taken a look at the Rosetta Stone and wasn't impressed. That is probably because of the way I learned it though. There is so much grammar that you have to know to make sence of the language that without it you'll never really figure out what's going on.

Go to the local college and take an intro course to get the basics down and then RS may help out to expand the language. I think that Arabic is one of those languages you need to be taught though. Here is a sentence you would see in Arabic:

Accused Jim, Tom of killing his wife. (not entirely accurate but close for the purpose of explination)

The way it is vowled and pronounced is going to determine is Jim or Tom is the one who is accused of killing his wife. It was frustraiting as shit for the first little while. It is a great language, but there are others I would learn before it if your job didn't depend on knowing the language. The reason for that is that after you learn the basic language (MSA) all you can really do is watch the news, if you want to interact with people you need to then learn a couple dialects.

If you're just looking to pick up a second language go for one of the romance languages (spanish, italian, french), if you need Arabic though I would recommend a class.

Sorry for the thread jack

Chest

[hks786]

^^^ Thanks a lot for the advice. I hope maybe I can learn it quicker than others because I can already read it fluently (Quran) and I have decent pronunciation of it too. I might invest in taking a class. I've always wanted to learn the language.

[Chest Rockwell]

Originally Posted by hks786

^^^ Thanks a lot for the advice. I hope maybe I can learn it quicker than others because I can already read it fluently (Quran) and I have decent pronunciation of it too. I might invest in taking a class. I've always wanted to learn the language.

Can you read and understand the Quran or just pronounce? I only ask because I have met people that can read but don't know what they are reading before, it's strange. Because if you can read and understand the Quran then you are at a level that is very hard to get to for most linguists. Understanding a guy on the street really isn't that dificult, being able to take a Quran verse and comprehend what is going on is a tallent that most people don't have.

[hks786]

Originally Posted by Chest Rockwell

Can you read and understand the Quran or just pronounce? I only ask because I have met people that can read but don't know what they are reading before, it's strange. Because if you can read and understand the Quran then you are at a level that is very hard to get to for most linguists. Understanding a guy on the street really isn't that dificult, being able to take a Quran verse and comprehend what is going on is a tallent that most people don't have.

Sorry my bad. Should have made it more clear. Basically for religous reasons as a child I learned how to read arabic. I cant understand it though. Yeah I know it sounds weird but I only have minimal understanding of the language. The only reason I have good pronunciation of it is because I've read it for years and years. I know many parts of the Quran from memory too. So hopefully learning the language wont be impossible though I do expect difficulty due to the nature and style of its language being complex.

[Chest Rockwell]

Originally Posted by hks786

Sorry my bad. Should have made it more clear. Basically for religous reasons as a child I learned how to read arabic. I cant understand it though. Yeah I know it sounds weird but I only have minimal understanding of the language. The only reason I have good pronunciation of it is because I've read it for years and years. I know many parts of the Quran from memory too. So hopefully learning the language wont be impossible though I do expect difficulty due to the nature and style of its language being complex.

I figured that was the case, there are a lot of people in that same boat. It will be a lot easier since you already have the knowledge of the alphabet and the proper pronunciation. Basically for you it will be a vocab drill and then figure out the grammar and you're there. Rosetta Stone would probably be a safe bet for someone in your boat.

Chest.

[doc1911]

Originally Posted by Chest Rockwell

.

If you're just looking to pick up a second language go for one of the romance languages (spanish, italian, french), if you need Arabic though I would recommend a class.


Chest

He's right on. I used Rosetta Stone for Arabic and it is impossible. I think any of the Latin based languages would be okay but anything like Arabic, an Asain language or something like that is just too difficult w/o having someone there to help you.

It was said before but get a good set of headphones with a microphone. It is key.